Spencer Pettee E SCI
11.5.15 Current Events
Chang, Kenneth. "Solar Storms Strip Air From Mars, NASA Says." The New York Times. The New
York Times, 05 Nov. 2015. Web. 05 Nov. 2015.
In an article written by Kenneth Chang, called “Solar Storms Strip Air From Mars, NASA Says” the author discusses how the solar winds are affecting mars and its atmosphere. The article starts by saying that the atmosphere of the planet is leaking away at a rate of about half a pound per second. According to scientist the planet used to have an atmosphere much like Earth’s. Mars might have been able to have lakes and oceans on it, as well as being habitable, had it not been loosing air for 4.5 billion years. Also, Mars’ atmosphere is losing mass because the planet does not have a magnetic field like the Earth does. The Earth’s magnetic field provided protection from the solar winds and helps the atmosphere stay intact. Most of this information is coming from NASA’s Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution mission which is also know as MAVEN. It entered Mars’ atmosphere last september, and it holds instruments for measuring the effects of the solar winds. Sometimes when solar storms hit the planet the force is equivalent to one million tons of TNT. MAVEN also discovered that Mars has UV auroras all over the planet, like the northern lights on our planet. Earth would probably have the auroras all over the planet too if not for the Magnetic Field. Overall MAVEN discovered some of why mars is losing its atmosphere, and how there might have been life along time ago.
This article has a large impact on Society. One example of it impact is the idea of life that might have lived on mars. If people know that there could have been life there then maybe they would want to discover the planet in greater detail. This could inspire more projects by NASA and maybe corporations too. Also, if people see the effect of having no magnetic field maybe they will become concerned with earth's magnetic field getting weaker. It is probably not very likely for the earth's magnetic field to die off however, this could start a new type of doomsday preppers. A final effect this could have on society is that people might want to make an artificial magnetic field for mars. Although this quite unlikely, some might want to save the planet's atmosphere with a very expensive device.
The author of the article did a good job of writing. I thought that the ideas were all there and there was a good chunk of information for the reader. There were all the important facts as well as information on how this deal differs from Earth’s situation. The article was not as well done when it comes to flow. The author could have use better transitions as the article was slightly choppy. To do this he could have added connecting facts, and more words that helped the sentence to paragraph flow. Overall the article content was good but the article could use another draft or two.
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