Typhoon is equivalent to one million tons of explosives causing Mars to be dry

Solar storms with an energy equivalent to one million tons of TNT per hour turn Mars from an environment with a dense atmosphere and liquid water that is conducive to life into an arid dead planet.

The solar storm has turned Mars into a dead planet

Researchers believe that Mars's original atmosphere is as dense as Earth today and that the gradual evaporation of more than 4.5 billion years of solar system history does not explain why the atmosphere on the planet This becomes very thin at the present.

New findings from the probe MAVEN (Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution) were announced by the US Aerospace Agency (NASA) yesterday in Washington DC, USA. The findings indicate that when Mars is affected by solar storms, intense bombardment of molecules from the Sun quickly blows up the planet's upper layer.

Solar storms blew away the Martian atmosphere.(Photo: NASA).

This conclusion may explain the disappearance of the Martian atmosphere . The sun at the time of the formation of frequent solar storm eruptions. It glows stronger with long ultraviolet wavelengths, contributing to the destruction of atoms in the atmosphere on the red planet.

Understanding what happens with the Martian atmosphere is important for the perception that Mars used to be a warm and convenient planet for life. The planet once had lakes and oceans covering the northern hemisphere but when the atmosphere disappeared, liquid water no longer existed.

The MAVEN project team, led by Dr. Bruce M. Jakosky, scientist at the Space Physics and Atmospheric Laboratory at the University of Colorado, USA, published the findings in the journal Science.

MAVEN probes joined Mars orbit in September last year, carrying equipment to analyze the solar wind and its effects on the atmosphere.

Mars once had a dense atmosphere like the Earth.(Photo: NASA).

The Martian atmosphere disappears in two ways. Sometimes an electron is knocked out of an atom in the upper layer, then the electric and magnetic fields of the solar wind push away charged atoms. Gas molecules can also be destroyed in space by colliding with molecules from the solar wind.

According to Dr. Jakosky, these two phenomena are equally important. The team focused on the effect on the charged atoms at a rate of about 100g a second. During the solar storm that took place on Earth on March 8, the proportion of atoms carrying electric charge flying into the universe was 10-20 times higher, at 2,000g per second. This event gives the team a good measure of when solar storms attack Mars.

Jasper Halekas, professor of physics and astronomy at the University of Iowa, USA, a member of the MAVEN project, said the energy bounced off the Martian atmosphere in a solar storm equivalent to one million tons of TNT. in an hour . "It is no different from a large-class nuclear weapon , " the New York Times quoted Halekas.

Mars (left) is not covered by magnetic fields like Earth.(Photo: NASA).

The MAVEN ship's equipment also recorded the aurora sometimes glowing in the Martian atmosphere - once a few days in December last year, three more flashes in February and March this year.

On Earth, the magnetic field leads the solar wind to the polar regions. Aurora is most often encountered at high latitudes and rarely appears near the equator.

Mars once owned a magnetic field that covered the planet, but it turned off about 4.2 million years ago. The process of Mars lost its atmosphere after a few hundred years. Much of the process takes place very early when the solar system is newly formed and the Sun is also active with violent storms. At the present time, it is almost impossible for the Earth to end up similar to Mars.

From other observations of uniformly distributed dust at a high position in the Martian atmosphere, researchers conclude that dust particles come from the space between planets and not the stars' surface. Fire.