Missing On Mars

Missing on Mars The Earth’s magnetic field is vital in shielding the planet from dangerous radiation caused by solar winds, a shield powered by a dynamo formed from molten metal deep in the planet’s core. Mars, however, lost its dynamo billions of years ago. And while scientists believed that Mars’ dynamo had a short lifespan, a new study shows it was active for longer than previously thought, United Press International reported. For the study, a team of researchers used data from the Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution satellite to detect evidence of magnetism in Martian rocks. Initially, Mars’ dynamo was believed to have operated somewhere between 4.3 billion and 3.9 billion years ago, but results showed that it was active even longer: between 4.5 billion and 3.7 billion years ago. “We have these two observations that point to a dynamo at the earliest known time in Mars’ history, and a dynamo that was present half a billion years after many people thought it had already switched off,” said co-author Catherine Johnson. The authors explained that studying dynamos is pivotal to learning more about a planet’s evolution, not to mention learning why the Red Planet ended up becoming a barren wasteland.