Bonjour, new guests from small-town India
Puneet Dhawan of Accor is brimming with ideas on ways to revive the hospitality sector
Solar winds may have led to Mars losing its atmosphere, according to a computer simulation study which confirms the long held belief that planets need a protective magnetic field to block such harmful radiations in order to sustain life.
While factors like the existence of a moderately warm, moist atmosphere and liquid water determine whether a planet can host life, the study, published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, noted that the ability of planets to generate magnetic fields around them is an overlooked aspect.
According to the scientists, Arnab Basak and Dibyendu Nandi from the Indian Institutes of Science Education and Research (IISER) Kolkata, these magnetic fields enveloping planets can act like a protective umbrella, shielding the atmosphere from the super fast plasma winds of the Sun.
On the Earth, they said a geo-dynamo mechanism generates the planet's protective magnetosphere -- an invisible shield that stops the solar wind from eroding away our atmosphere.
In the current study, the scientists simulated two scenarios of the Red Planet -- one considering a young Mars with its magnetosphere intact, and the other with the planet without this force field.
The simulations revealed that in the young Mars, the magnetosphere may have acted as a shield stopping the solar wind from coming too close to the planet's atmosphere thus protecting it.
Without an intrinsic magnetosphere, the researchers said the solar wind magnetic field may have first draped around, and slipped past Mars, carrying bits of the planet's atmosphere away, eventually eroding it completely.
They said the findings confirm the belief that the magnetospheres around planets play a crucial role in determining their ability to sustain life.
Alternatively, planets that lose their magnetic field eventually become inhospitable with loss of their atmosphere, the scientists added.
The researchers believe the study has important implications for the search for habitable exoplanets via initiatives like NASA's James Webb Space Telescope and ISRO's ExoWorlds mission.
Puneet Dhawan of Accor is brimming with ideas on ways to revive the hospitality sector
Citroen’s first vehicle sports a novel design and European interiors. It is also meant to be as comfortable as ...
The pandemic is only the tip of the iceberg that the country’s cash-poor airlines — both regional and national ...
The government is yet to specify the framework of its recently announced old vehicle scrappage policy
This Women’s Day, we discuss the features of a few financial products that aim to help you save, get insured ...
Sensex, Nifty 50 make a strong bounce-back, but test resistances
Avenue Supermarts (₹3,286.1): Makes fresh all-time highIn October last year, the stock of Avenue Supermarts ...
The exchange-traded fund ticks all boxes as an efficient tool to track gold prices
They are the health warriors who battled the Covid-19 pandemic on the ground, and are now the face of the ...
Uzbekistan’s grandest city dazzles tourists with its history, architecture and food
It’s the birth anniversary of Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni, one of the great artists and ...
Reading in the loo — flipping through anything, really — appears to help the locomotion
Its name is the starting point of a brand’s journey and can make a big difference in the success sweepstakes
Sober spirits are the in thing
A peek into where ad spends went last year and where they are headed tomorrow
Can Swiggy Instamart disrupt the ecommerce groceries space, currently ruled by the Amazons and Big Baskets? ...
Three years after its inception, compliance with GST procedures remains a headache for exporters, job workers ...
Corporate social responsibility (CSR) initiatives of companies are altering the prospects for wooden toys of ...
Aequs Aerospace to create space for large-scale manufacture of toys at Koppal
And it has every reason to smile. Covid-19 has triggered a consumer shift towards branded products as ...