New Mars Forums

Light doesn't escape a black hole not because is "drawn" toward the "gravitational source" by some form of "energy", but because the space itself around a black hole is curved up to the point where it is *closed*. 

If you were a photon in a light beam inside a black hole's horizon of events, you will "believe" that you are actually traveling in straight line (at least in your frame of reference). For an observer outside, you are "travelling in circles" inside the black hole's event horizon.

Picture this: you are a little tiny car, remote controlled, and you have been placed *inside* a big empty sphere, but with solid walls and no openings. No matter how much you drive in a straight line, you'll always remain in the sphere. You can never get out. I hope this is a understandable analogy for the event horizon around a black hole and a light beam inside it.

There is no "energy" implied at all in this scenario. Just the spacetime which is closed onto itself.

How about neither of these 2 ?

Look for Dynamo theory, for an explanation of how Earth generates its magnetic field. Unfortunately just making a machine like that doesn't mean you'll get a magnetic field at all. If you stir the tea in a cup with a teaspoon, you won't get any magnetic field.

Earth has a solid iron core (called the Inner Core), engulfed in a sea of melted iron (called the Outer Core). Above that are the mantle and the crust.

Our magnetic field is produced by the currents in the ocean of iron from the Outer Core, because iron conducts electricity and is ferromagnetic. Some of these currents are generated by the rotation of Earth (actually by the difference in Earth's rotation and Core rotation), some by heat from the Inner Core.

But Mars' core is less dense, cooler, and appears to be (almost) entirely solid at this point. Also, it doesn't appear as made entirely from iron, but a mix of sulphates and iron.
So this is the reason Mars doesn't have a magnetic field, and is hard to change that. The first step would be to heat it's core, which is impossible for the next... 1000 years? After that, maybe Mars will get it's own magnetic field without the aid of any machine in orbit.

@Tom: it's not the rotational speed that matters, but the difference in speeds of the core and mantle, their chemical composition and how hot and liquid they are.

I added the option "Hi-Tech".

I don't see the option Hi-Tech in the poll....

Now the question is: how quick can we get there ? At least with some probes... :cry:

Oh yes ! Finally. Some very good news.

LE: I edited the title to make it more obvious.

Josh, have you considered switching the entire site to something better, an integrated CMS like Joomla, Mambo or e107 ?

0.005 $/KW ?

Yttria stabilised zirconia cells ?! What else ?

For example, read this

There are also a lot of PDF papers out there. There was even an experiment with such a cell, I believe at Arizona Univ. Very small, but very effective. Also, I think YSZ acts like a catalyst, thus you need a very small amount.

Just search google for something like "ISRU Yttria stabilised zirconia", "Mars Yttria stabilised zirconia" etc.

Well done Josh ! And I like those forum rules .
Sorry for my prolonged absence, but I just got married .

BTW, I had a lot of problems lately on another forum from spam bots, all coming from the same IP, but with different hosts.
Domains like:
wpoejgpwjeg3wg.org, dfpijfpwiejf.org, flghewegwopegh.org, ofdjgpwrigp.info....

Every day they register another domain, with emails coming from those, but the same IP. It's overkill. When I banned the IP we had a quiet period for 2-3 weeks, but soon human users started activating accounts and entered the forum from different IPs, but the users were created from the same old IP.

Just wondering if you know this Josh, where can I report those IPs ? I have no clue.

User ViagraGeneric...
Has done nothing wrong, but his name.... I'm not sure about this one.