- 4274 - MARS - changes are occurring? Almost unbelievable': Rare void from the sun briefly blew up Mars' atmosphere last year, and it could happen to Earth too. On December 26, 2022, the “MAVEN Orbiter” witnessed Mars' magnetic shield and atmosphere drastically "balloon" outward by thousands of miles. The sudden expansion was triggered by a rare gap in solar wind.
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4274 - MARS
- changes are occurring?
-
- Mars is constantly
being bombarded with high energy particles from solar wind. Mars' atmosphere briefly blew up to around
three times its normal size without warning. Researchers have discovered that
the expansion was triggered by a rare gap, or "void," in the charged
particles that continuously stream out of the sun, known as solar wind.
-
- This sudden
atmospheric "ballooning" has also happened on Earth at least once
before and could happen again soon.
Mars' magnetic shield, or magnetosphere, swelled outward by
"thousands of miles". This enabled the wispy Martian atmosphere to
temporarily expand and fill the extra space.
-
- The atmospheric
expansion coincided with a 100-fold decline in solar wind particles hitting the
spacecraft. Normally, solar wind
constantly bombards Mars and every other planet in the solar system, which has
caused Mars to lose most of its atmosphere. Mars' magnetosphere, or what is
left of it, is always pushing against the solar wind, which diverts most of the
streaming particles around the planet.
-
- However, when the
solar wind dropped off there was nothing for the magnetosphere to push against,
so it "ballooned" outward.
But as soon as the solar wind returned to normal it shoved the
magnetosphere back into place.
-
- A similar
phenomenon occurred on Earth in 1999, when the solar wind "nearly
vanished" for three days (May 10 to 12), which enabled our atmosphere to
swell up to 100 times its normal volume before eventually returning to its
previous size. This event did not cause any noticeable short-term or long-term
damage to our planet.
-
- Researchers believe
these sudden disappearances of solar wind are the result of rare gaps in the
streaming particles. These gaps occur because unusually fast particles in
solarwind sometimes catch up to or overtake the particles ahead, leaving a
space where solar wind would normally be.
-
- In a 2008 study
researchers linked the 1999 atmospheric expansion event on Earth to a large
"coronal hole," or gap in the solar surface, that appeared shortly
before our planet's atmosphere swelled. Coronal holes have weaker magnetic
fields than the rest of the sun, which enables solar wind to race out of the
sun faster than normal.
-
- Coronal holes could
become more common over the next few years as the sun reaches the explosive
peak of its roughly 11-year cycle of activity, known as the solar maximum. We
are already starting to see evidence of this.
-
- NASA's InSight
mission shows that Mars's rotation is speeding up and its days are growing
slightly shorter. Here is another
mystery occurring on Mars. Like an ice
skater tucking their arms for an elegant spin, the planet Mars appears to be
rotating slightly faster with each passing year.
-
- The Red Planet's
spin is accelerating at a rate of 4 milliarcseconds — one one-thousandth of an
arcsecond per year. As a result, the length of a Martian day is getting shorter
by fractions of a millisecond annually.
-
- InSight was able
to collect over four years of data before it ran out of power in December 2022.
The new study examined measurements taken from the mission's first 900 days on
Mars which was enough time to pick up on even subtle changes in planetary spin.
-
- By bouncing radio
waves into space and assessing how long they took to get back to the surface of
the planet, InSight painted a detailed portrait of the planet's spin. They aren't 100% sure what's causing the
acceleration, but they have a few ideas. One is that ice accumulation at the
planet's poles is causing a slight change in how its mass was distributed.
-
- Or, it could be due to a phenomenon called
post-glacial rebound, where landmasses rise up after millennia buried under the
ice. In either case, the gradual shift might have been enough to subtly change
Mars's rotation over huge spans of time.
-
- In addition to
tracking the planet's spin, InSight's data provided an unprecedented look into
Mars's core. Upon analyzing it, researchers discovered that the Martian core
has a radius of about 1,150 miles smaller than Earth's 2,165 mile core, but
larger in proportion to the planet.
-
- The study also
revealed that this core is not uniform. Instead, it has regions of higher or
lower density, causing its molten material to "slosh" as Mars spins.
This suggests it could be another possible reason for the Red Planet's
accelerated spin.
-
-
December 17, 2023
MARS -
changes are occurring? 4274
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