jonathan wrote:
wrote in message
oups.com...
I think its funny when people talk of mars quarantine The multi month
trip home should be enough to answer that question, no need for
extended stay at a space station///

More likely they'll need straight jackets for the return trip
not a quarantine.

They won't be able to answer the question of life on Mars.

On the way home they'll go nuts trying to figure it out and
trying to reconcile their emotions from being responsible for
such a Grand Scientific Failure.
I tend to agree with that anti-Mars mindset of yours, as for Mars being
nothing but another spendy space-toilet that's anything but end-user
friendly.

However, since we haven't bothered to establish the most ideal and
relatively energy efficient LL-1 science platform, as such we still
know next to nothing about the Earth/moon relationships and thereby
zilch as to that of our vanishing magnetosphere. We don't even know of
the voltage differential that exist between Earth and our moon, or of
whatever's potentially alternating in polarity as our moon orbits about
whatever's left of our magnetosphere.

Of course, our rad-hard Buzz Aldrin on C2C will soon enough set that
almighty record straight, along with all of those missing Apollo-11
records. Fortunately for our NASA, Hoagland still thinks we've walked
on that gamma and hard-X-ray lethal moon, rather than on some passive
guano island that's xenon lamp illuminated.
http://www.coasttocoastam.com/shows/2006/07/31.html

The Earth's Magnetic Field is Still Losing Energy / 7.5e12 MJ
-0.05%/year
http://www.creationresearch.org/crsq...9_1/GeoMag.htm
http://www.creationresearch.org/cgi-...9_1/GeoMag.htm

This paper closes a loophole in the case for a young earth based on the
loss of energy from various parts of the earth's magnetic field.
Using ambiguous 1967 data, evolutionists had claimed that energy gains
in minor ("non-dipole") parts compensate for the energy loss from
the main ("dipole") part. However, nobody seems to have checked
that claim with newer, more accurate data. Using data from the
International Geomagnetic Reference Field (IGRF) I show that from 1970
to 2000, the dipole part of the field steadily lost 235 ± 5 billion
megajoules of energy, while the non-dipole part gained only 129 ± 8
billion megajoules. Over that 30-year period, the net loss of energy
from all observable parts of the field was 1.41 ± 0.16 %. At that
rate, the field would lose half its energy every 1465 ± 166 years.
Combined with my 1990 theory explaining reversals of polarity during
the Genesis Flood and intensity fluctuations after that, these new data
support the creationist model: the field has rapidly and continuously
lost energy ever since God created it about 6,000 years ago.
-
Try replacing "God" with seriously smart ETs and you've got yourself a
working deal, along with rational accountability.

http://www.sdsc.edu/GatherScatter/GS...95/raeder.html
Simulating Earth's Magnetosphere on the Paragon
Joachim Raeder, Jean Berchem, and Maha Ashour-Abdalla, University of
California, Los Angeles

Earth's magnetosphere is that region of space where the Earth's
dipole-like magnetic field is confined by the solar wind, a tenuous,
fast-flowing, and magnetized plasma stream coming from the sun. Because
the solar wind is supersonic, a bow shock forms in front of the Earth,
at a distance of approximately 15 RE (1 RE is 6,372 kilometers, or one
Earth radius). The magnetosphere extends from the ionosphere about 100
kilometers above the Earth and is bounded by the magnetopause, which
lies at about 10 RE on the Earth-Sun line; towards its flanks, it
flares out to about 14 RE, and, beyond 20 RE behind the Earth, it
becomes nearly cylindrical with a radius of 15-25 RE.

While the solar wind compresses the Earth's dipole on the sunward side,
it also causes the Earth's magnetic field to be stretched out several
hundred RE in the anti-sunward direction, thereby forming the
geomagnetic tail. Most of the oncoming solar wind is deflected around
the magnetosphere to form the "magnetosheath," the region between the
bow shock and the magnetopause. However, a small fraction of the
impinging energy of the solar wind enters the magnetosphere by various
local processes. The energy is ultimately dissipated, mostly in the
ionosphere.
-

It's sufficiently clear that without a rotating core of such highly
magnetic iron and having sufficient metallic elements within the crust
would have excluded our having a viable magnetosphere, by which we
certainly wouldn't have all that much of a remaining atmosphere, and
obviously we'd be summarily irradiated from the solar, cosmic and lunar
dosage by at least a thousand fold greater dosage, from which our frail
human DNA couldn't survive.

Once upon a time Earth's atmosphere was 50+ bar, and of it's
magnetosphere at the time was substantially greater. Today we're at
something less than 1 bar, and even though it has become rather badly
polluted with damn near everything including the kitchen sink, it's in
the process of losing rather than gaining mass.

Solar winds that often vari from 1e14 to 1e15 Joules can at short
periods of time exceed 1e16 Joules. Earth's protective magnetosphere
of perhaps 7.5e18 Joules (1e19 joules maximum) is reported by others as
somewhat greater by way of using the rotational energy loss being
worthy of 6.33e19 joules at 100% efficiency, that's otherwise having
been well established as currently losing magnetic flux intensiity at
an accellerated rate of roughly better than 0.05% per year.

I'm estimating that's putting our magnetosphere half life at a very
predictable threshold or critical point of no-return, whereas we either
unavoidably start to die off or perhaps get saved by something of the
interstellar ice-age cycle that's roughly transpiring every 105,000
years, that'll either reset our magnetosphere's clock or allowing some
ET intelligent design improvements to our otherwise frail DNA, that
which as is can only take so much radiation trauma without mutating in
the wrong direction.

Life as we know it, of which the entire species of humans represents
such an itsy bitsy part of that life, and that's mostly as having been
destructive at that, probably couldn't have ever existed without a
robust atmosphere as would have been magnetosphere enhanced, any more
so than a mostly water world could have managed so well without having
involved a tidal generating moon. If all things being equal from a
given starting point, except going without a magnetosphere and
especially without a moon would have made such a wet and salty Earth
into a rather tough place to live, if at all. However, if having been
a sufficient ET terraforming wizard, whereas first things first, we'd
have to either establish the magnetosphere prior to having incorporated
such a gamma and hard-X-ray moon to deal with, or else we'd have to be
damn happenstance lucky as all get out to have been given such a nifty
one in a billion trillion of a do-everything planet to start with, and
yet if that were there case, here we're still into doing everything
imaginable in order to global pollute and warm it to death, with far
less than 50% of those diatoms available for converting and/or storing
the excess CO2 (are we good at nailing mother Earth, or what?).
-
Brad Guth