mchargue wrote: This might be of interest. It talks about how even a small magnetic field can be used to repel the solar wind – comprising protons & electrons in a plasma. It notes a particular effect of the plasma interacting with the small magnetic field that causes a repulsion effect much larger than what was originally expected.
It may be of interest & utility as so much of the FF is based on the interaction of plasmas with magnetic fields.
Pat
Magnetic sheild article
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20727701.300-shields-up-force-fields-could-protect-mars-missions.html?DCMP=NLC-nletter&nsref=mg20727701.300
I find it quite strange no-one had considered this earlier. However the wording of the article seems a little strange
The Larmor radius of the particles in that weedy magnetic field is about 120 millimetres: they should have smashed right into the magnet. But they didn’t
This seems to suggest a weak field results in a small larmor radius. It is the other way round: r=mv/qB, where v is velocity perpendicular to the field.
for protons; taking the component of the velocity as 100km/s (typical solar wind) and r=120mm gives the B field they used as ~ 100Gauss, which is orders of magnitude stronger than the Earth’s.
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