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Old 19-May-2008, 11:56 AM
Richard Holle Richard Holle is offline
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(I stated >)You are right that the permanent field of Venus is weak and disoriented. The permanent magnetic fields of other planets have been measured by NASA probes. Such fields are too weak, and the other planets much too far away, to have any noticeable effect on the magnetic field near the Earth. Maybe a little basic electronics training is in order here, Ferro magnetic materials take on a permanent magnetic field orientation when in the form of crystals that cooled quickly. The orientation of the permanent fields orients with the field lines dominate at the time of quenching from the melted or heated state.

(edited here to add next paragraph as well for clarity >)However the magnetic permeability (the ability to conduct magnetic fields) remains strong in the gaseous or liquid state, and in varying degrees in solid compounds. Looking at the solar system as a composite system, with the sun at the magnetic center, and the planets, and all of the small
bodies revolving around it as an integrated magnetically connected whole. The natural assumption I make is that all of the dynamically fluxing magnetic fields extending from the sun are coupled into all of the bodies in a relevant strength, dependent upon the amount of magnetically permeable material included in that body. Not the weak standing residual field created from the solidification of their crusts.

(below is a current link V)

http://www-ssc.igpp.ucla.edu/personn...ers/venus_mag/

(Excerpt from article>)Magnetic Field

When Mariner 2 flew by Venus in 1962 at a distance of 6.6 planetary radii (Rv), it did not detect any evidence of an Earth-size magnetosphere. Mariner 5, passing within 1.4 Rv in 1967, detected the signatures in the solar wind of deflection around an 'obstacle' at Venus. The small inferred size of that obstacle placed an upper limit on the magnetic dipole moment of Venus of ~ 10-3 that of Earth. Later Venera 4 made magnetic measurements down to 200 km altitude, still detecting no planetary field but providing data that reduced this estimate by about an order of magnitude. In a 1974 flyby, Mariner 10 merely confirmed the existence of a small, nearly planet- size obstacle. Venera 9 and 10 were put into orbit around Venus in 1975, but did not approach Venus closer than ~ 1500 km. Nevertheless, the data that these spacecraft obtained in the wake of the planet provided the first evidence that an Earth-like magnetotail was absent, and that instead a structure related to the interplanetary magnetic field occupied that region of space. The most definitive measurements of the magnetic moment of Venus were obtained during the Pioneer Venus Orbiter mission in its first years of operation (1979-1981). Repeated low-altitude (~ 150 km) passes by that spacecraft over the antisolar region, coupled with dayside observations to the same altitude, proved the insignificance of a field of internal origin in near-Venus space. The observed fields for the most part could be explained as solar wind interaction-induced features, to be described below. The new upper limit on the dipole moment obtained from the Pioneer Venus Orbiter wake measurements placed the Venus intrinsic magnetic field at ~ 10-5 times that of Earth.

Of course, the weakness of the present measurement does not imply that Venus has always been bereft of an intrinsic field. Theories of the dynamos operating in the liquid cores of the newly accreted terrestrial planets suggest that there was a magnetic moment of Venus of the same order as Earth's for about the first billion years of Venus' life. During that time, thermal convection from the heat left over from accretion drove the dynamo. However, after that energy source diminished, there was apparently no source to replace it. While solid core formation in Earth's interior maintains its dynamo to this day by virtue of the related 'stirring' of the molten core around it, Venus appears to either lack the necessary internal ingredients (chemical or physical) for solid core formation, or to have ceased such processes at an earlier time if they resulted in complete core solidification or arrested core solidification. It is important to note that, contrary to popular belief, dynamo theory does not credit the smallness of the magnetic moment to the slow rotation of Venus (a Venus day of ~ 243 Earth days is almost equal to the length of its year of ~ 224 days, and its sense of rotation is retrograde). It is also notable that Venus would not have maintained any remanent crustal magnetic fields from its proposed early period of dynamo activity because the temperatures in the crust are expected to be above the Curie point (below which such fields could persist in rocky materials).

Last edited by Richard Holle; 19-May-2008 at 09:58 PM.. Reason: added the next paragraph from original text for clarity