Geomagnetism—The Space Shield of the Planet Earth

Peccerillo, Angelo

doi:10.1007/978-3-030-78013-5_4

Cited by 1 publication

(1 citation statement)

References 7 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…A planet with a sufficiently powerful internal dynamo will have an intrinsic magnetic field reaching multiple planetary radii into space (Elsasser, 1950); and it is often believed that such intrinsic magnetospheres protect the planet's atmosphere from solar wind erosion (Bertrand & Legendre, 2021;Peccerillo, 2021;Bennett et al, 2020). The existence of an intrinsic magnetic field on Earth and the lack of a significant intrinsic field on Mars has been used to explain why Earth hosts a dense atmosphere while Mars does not (Jakosky, 2022).…”

Section: Mainmentioning

confidence: 99%

Atmospheric Retention on Demagnetized Earth

Hinton,

Brain,

Schnepf

et al. 2024

Preprint

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

It is commonly claimed that Earth's intrinsic magnetic field protects its atmosphere from being stripped away by the solar wind. We test this claim by analyzing the stability of Earth's atmosphere in the case that the geomagnetic field is turned off. We use a hybrid particle-in-cell code (RHybrid) to simulate the global plasma interaction of demagnetized Earth with the solar wind. We vary the global ionospheric outflow rate, and quantify the resultant planetary ion escape rates (O+ and H+) and the solar deposition rate (H+). We use these results to compute the net mass flux to the atmosphere and find that the solar ion deposition rate can be comparable to planetary ion escape rates. Our results show that under modern solar wind conditions, the mass of the atmosphere on demagnetized Earth is stable within 3% over a billion years, suggesting that Earth's intrinsic magnetic field is unnecessary for atmospheric retention.

show abstract