Thursday, March 22, 2012

Magnetic Fields(INDUCTION!!!), Who Have Them and Who Don't?

The Earth as we all know has a very active magnetic field. As it turns out it is not just our planet that produces a magnetic filed. In fact nearly all of the planets in our solar system produce some sort of magnetic field themselves. Before looking at the other planets lets take a moment to understand our own magnetic field. So first we need to know what actually makes a magnetic field. Magnetic fields are most usually the resultant of the motion of some charged particle, and that is exactly what is occurring with Earth. The Earth's core is composed of two parts the inner core and outer core. The inner core is a solid composite of iron and nickel, while the outer core is also iron and nickel, however simply liquid. What happens is the liquid core swishes about the solid core the electrons in the outer core move about creating what we know as our magnetic field. So in our case it was pretty easy to see why we have a magnetic field, What about the other planets? As it turns out most of the planets generate magnetic fields in a very similar way as the Earth does. But wait!, if the reason for our magnetic field is the molten metal in our core what about the jovian planet? These planets definitely do not have molten cores to generate their fields.

Real quick here is a list of planets and their magnetic fields relative to Earth's:

Mercury 100*Earth Field

Venus (1/25000)*Earth field

Earth ~50µT

Mars (1/5000)*Earth Field

Jupiter 20000*Earth Field

Saturn 540*Earth Field

Uranus 40*Earth Field

Neptune 0.25*Earth Field

Pluto None measurable

Sun Variable

First lets look at the rocky planets. In fact all of the rocky planets do have measurable magnetic fields, however the range all over the place in reference to Earth's magnetic field. Although it is not known for sure the cause of each of the fields, it is hypothesized that many are made in similar ways to Earth's. However notice the two strange values above the fields of mars and venus, they have rather small fields compared to the Earth. Mars does not have a molten core as Earth, but little is known as to what produces its field. Venus as you can see above has a very small field as compared to the Earth. Venus also does not have a liquid core and however it also rotates at a very slow speed, these are thought to be the main reasons for its tiny field.
Then there is the no longer terrestrial planet pluto, which has no measure of ever having a magnetic field.
Now how about the gas planets they rotate nicely, but they do not have a molten core as a source of moving charge for their fields. These planets actually have something very similar going on, instead of molten metal they have liquid metallic hydrogen causing their fields, which looking at jupiter has quite good potential for field production as molten cores do. Notice as we go further form the sun these fields drastically drop in magnitude, this is because as we go further the system gets cooler, and there is less liquid metal to generate fields.
Also I should mention the Sun. From the 3table I provide above you could see that the sun's field is not defined. This is because it undergoes something called differential rotation, meaning that material at the center of the sun rotates faster at the center and slower at the poles. this causes crazy magnetic fields that change all the time. Also as you may have guessed the the Suns produces its field similarly to the Earth, motion of charged particles.



Picture of our magnetic field deflecting charged particles from the sun.

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