loss of atmosphere *DELETED*

[tropicalzone]

Post deleted by tropicalzone

 

[qso1]

Certainly a possibility, especially over a period of time say...hundreds of years maybe. Just a guess on my part and the time would depend on how rapidly the sun gets more powerful. <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <p><strong>My borrowed quote for the time being:</strong></p><p><em>There are three kinds of people in life. Those who make it happen, those who watch it happen...and those who do not know what happened.</em></p> </div>

 

[pyoko]

I was going to create a new thread, but I think I'll put this here.<br /><br />For the following question, please assume the following: Mars was once covered with water (partially) and had a richer atmosphere, only a little thinner than Earth. (this is hypothetical, not a wild proclamation)<br /><br />Question: What process could have led to Mars becoming what it is now? Water frozen on the surface, possibly lots of it underground, and an atmosphere that is extremely thin? <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <p> </p><p> </p><p><span style="color:#ff9900" class="Apple-style-span">-pyoko</span> <span style="color:#333333" class="Apple-style-span">the</span> <span style="color:#339966" class="Apple-style-span">duck </span></p><p><span style="color:#339966" class="Apple-style-span"><span style="color:#808080;font-style:italic" class="Apple-style-span">It is by will alone I set my mind in motion.</span></span></p> </div>

 

[3488]

It is worth remembering that over time, as the convection in the Earth's outer core diminishes, the magnetosphere will collapse. The Earth could well maintain a strong 'fossil' field, due to the amount of iron present in the interior, but will not be nearly as strong as the internally driven one we have now.<br /><br />Look at Mars. Most of its atmosphere was lost because of the same thing. Bearing in mind that sunlight at Mars averages 44% the strength as at the Earth (or the moon).<br /><br />With Earth, due to its strong gravity, it may keep an atmosphere more like that of Venus, heavy gasses such as CO2. <br /><br />However the sun will become more powerful over time, so yes, I suspect in time as the sun turns into a star more like Arcturus / Alpha Bootis or Aldebaran / Alpha Tauri (about 140 sun power), the Earth will lose its atmosphere. <br /><br />This even takes into account of the Earth's orbit becoming larger as the sun losses mass in the meantime.<br /><br />In order for the Earth to remain as it is now during this phase, the Earth would have to orbit about 14 AU away from the ageing sun. This is even further out than Saturn!!!<br /><br />Andrew Brown. <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <p><font color="#000080">"I suddenly noticed an anomaly to the left of Io, just off the rim of that world. It was extremely large with respect to the overall size of Io and crescent shaped. It seemed unbelievable that something that big had not been visible before".</font> <em><strong><font color="#000000">Linda Morabito </font></strong><font color="#800000">on discovering that the Jupiter moon Io was volcanically active. Friday 9th March 1979.</font></em></p><p><font size="1" color="#000080">http://www.launchphotography.com/</font><br /><br /><font size="1" color="#000080">http://anthmartian.googlepages.com/thisislandearth</font></p><p><font size="1" color="#000080">http://web.me.com/meridianijournal</font></p> </div>

 

[nexium]

At present we lose perhaps a kilogram of oxygen and 10 kilograms of nitrogen per year to outer space due to the Sun's radiation (includes average CMEs = coronal mass ejection, solar wind, neutrinos etc) If the radiation doubles we will lose about 2 kilograms of oxygen and about 20 kilograms of nitrogen per year due to solar radiation = still negligible, but only the poles of Earth and very high elevations will cool enough for humans to go outside at noon. A doubling of the solar radiation is likely to be billions of years in our future. Hydrogen, helium, and water vapor will, however, be lost at several times the rate of solar radiation increase, as they are likely non linear. Neil

 

[tropicalzone]

well i hope you got your bags packed so we can go to one of saturns moons!!

 

[pyoko]

Someone said that 'the Sun will get more powerful'. I would like to make sure there is no 'something coming out of nothing'. Will it get more powerful, or will the diameter of the Sun grow? <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <p> </p><p> </p><p><span style="color:#ff9900" class="Apple-style-span">-pyoko</span> <span style="color:#333333" class="Apple-style-span">the</span> <span style="color:#339966" class="Apple-style-span">duck </span></p><p><span style="color:#339966" class="Apple-style-span"><span style="color:#808080;font-style:italic" class="Apple-style-span">It is by will alone I set my mind in motion.</span></span></p> </div>

 

[nexium]

A few experts think we should expect the worst, others are more optimistic. My guess is the sun will expand a few parts per trillion per century for several billion years. Total life on main sequence will exceed ten billion years if some mechanism brings hydrogen from the mantle to the core, and pushs some helium out of the core. There will be small fluxuation in total solar output, but not big enough spurts to prevent the average color temperature from decreasing over the very long term, as the power is spread over a slowly increasing surface area. The sun will get more powerful (very long term) The diameter will increase, but very slowly. Neil

 

[nexium]

Perhaps 100 small asteroids pass close to Earth each century. Likely they mostly cancel each other moving Earth closer or farther from the Sun and increasing or decreasing how eliptic our orbit is. We would need to fine tune about 100 asteroid orbits per century to move the Earth even 1% farther from the Earth in 100 million years, in my opinion.<br />A big sun shade with a millionth the mass of a typical asteroid would require less station keeping energy to keep it in solar sychronous orbit. Also the sun shade would cause far less surface damage if it crashed into Earth compared to a bad correction of an asteroid orbit. Neil

 

[pyoko]

Is it possible for the Sun to have some sort of sudden 'burst', hence semi-instantly stripping the Earths' atmosphere? Has there been evidence of such an event? <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <p> </p><p> </p><p><span style="color:#ff9900" class="Apple-style-span">-pyoko</span> <span style="color:#333333" class="Apple-style-span">the</span> <span style="color:#339966" class="Apple-style-span">duck </span></p><p><span style="color:#339966" class="Apple-style-span"><span style="color:#808080;font-style:italic" class="Apple-style-span">It is by will alone I set my mind in motion.</span></span></p> </div>

 

[yevaud]

No, that would require a flare star of some sorts. Ours is quite stable, varying in output only up to a percent or so over time. <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <p><em>Differential Diagnosis:  </em>"<strong><em>I am both amused and annoyed that you think I should be less stubborn than you are</em></strong>."<br /> </p> </div>

 

[CalliArcale]

A bigger threat than terrorists might be solar wind pressure. This force is negligible in most situations, but for an object with so much surface area to so little mass, it might be significant. You'd basically be building a big solar sail, except that its propulsive effect is an undesirable side-effect that you'd need to counteract somehow. <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <p> </p><p><font color="#666699"><em>"People assume that time is a strict progression of cause to effect, but actually from a non-linear, non-subjective viewpoint it's more like a big ball of wibbly wobbly . . . timey wimey . . . stuff."</em>  -- The Tenth Doctor, "Blink"</font></p> </div>