The Magnetosphere May Not Act Like a Shield

In recent times, the international scientific community has been trapped in a debate seeking to establish whether the magnetic fields surrounding Earth are indeed responsible for our planet's appearance.

One of the reasons why these discussions started is that Mars and Venus are bone dry planets. Though we are located right between the two, our planet features lush vegetation and more than 70 percent of its surface is covered in water.

It has been proposed in past studies that solar winds are responsible for what happened to our neighbors, and that the magnetosphere is the only thing that stood between these winds and Earth's surface, preventing a similar fate.

The theory went that the speed at which solar winds traveled allowed them to basically rip off water from the two planets, turning them into deserts. Since Earth's core was still active, and generating a protective magnetic halo around itself, the winds were unable to do the same here.

But that line of thought is currently being challenged by experts, who say that the much-praised layer of the atmosphere may not be a shield after all. One of the things that led to this idea is the fact that both Mars and Venus are losing oxygen ions.

While this is nothing new, the interesting thing is that this happens at the same rate as it does here on Earth. Until this discovery was made, experts believed that Earth's magnetic field was preventing solar winds from stripping particles from the upper atmosphere.

“My opinion is that the magnetic shield hypothesis is unproven. There's nothing in the contemporary data to warrant invoking magnetic fields,” explains University of California in Los Angles (UCLA) expert Robert Strangeway.

The question on everybody's mind right now is why are the other two planets dry while Earth is not, if all three are losing atmosphere and water due to solar winds at the same rates? The planets apparently lose one ton of atmosphere every hour.

"The problem is in taking today's rates and trying to guess what was happening billions of years ago. People aren't putting all the cards on the table. We can't say that magnetic fields are unimportant from the current data.” says University of California in Berkeley (UCB) expert Janet Luhmann.

According to the expert, all three plants may have had a rather similar water “budget” to begin with. Therefore, it means that changes which occurred later on influenced the final outcome of their oceans.

Scientists are currently determined to continue investigating the matter. If scientists arguing that the magnetosphere is not responsible for Earth defenses are correct, then we need to find the thing protecting us from solar radiation right away, Space reports.