Space/Science — HabitableZone

Space/Science » in reply to re: Venus planetary dynamo

re: Venus planetary dynamo
et — (archived)

Thanks for speaking up on this


5) As to dynamos, whether or not the crust contains magnetic minerals, we would measure a strong planetery magnetic field (if it had a geodynamo), not just from orbiting spacecraft, but by observing interactions with the solar wind and solar storms.

I agree, all I was saying was the fact that the surface (and presumably the entire crust) is hotter than the Currie temp of magnetite and all other natural paleomagnetic minerals. As a result, we can't tell IF Venus HAD a dynamo because all the paleoreminance would've been thermally randomized by the current temp of the surface, to say nothing of the effect of catastrophic resurfacing the whole planet during a convective overturn.

Plus, we could perhaps measure the disturbance of the interplanetary magnetic field when Venus passed between the Sun and the Earth.

Hmm, I'm sceptical of this.

I'm not however saying that Venus has a dynamo now, it clearly doesn't.

The IMF is much more than the solar dynamo field, it's carried by the solar wind by the time you reach planets. The IMF is also a spiral and if you accept that an imaginary Venus dynamo (scaled by moment/mass ratio to Earth) would have an effect that far downstream, it wouldn't be between the Earth and Sun but at a small phase angle prograde in the ecliptic.

I think that the chaotic nature of the IMF would remove any influence, except perhaps compositional difference, of a Venusian magnetosphere out at earth.

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