Astronomers Find Secret Planet-Making Ingredient: Magnetic Fields

https://www.quantamagazine.org/simulation-reveals-how-magnetism-helps-form-planets-20210607/

by pseudolus • 5 years ago

89 11 5 years ago

cletus• 5 years ago

That's an interesting idea. A couple of thoughts spring to mind.

First is that the heaviest of the "natural" fusion byproducts is iron. Iron is magnetic. How significant is that? Does that make it more likely iron will form into clumps? Given the seeming importance of iron to an industrialized society, at least based on our own experience, this bears more investigation.

The second is that you know other substance has a whole bunch of magnetic properties, particularly at low temperatures and/or high pressures? Oxygen.

topspin• 5 years ago

"Does that make it more likely iron will form into clumps?"

Anyone that's seen iron filings line up on magnetic field lines can answer that. Iron drifting around in space will react readily to magnetic fields.

thaumasiotes• 5 years ago

Given the seeming importance of iron to an industrialized society

Is it more important now than it was in medieval society? We make more of it, but that seems to be mostly because we can, not because it became more important.

tamaharbor• 5 years ago

This seems like something smart people should have come up with a long time ago.

tacticalmook• 5 years ago

The article explains this.

wyattpeak• 5 years ago

The article seems to suggest that they did, but lacking sufficiently powerful simulations couldn't make progress on the idea.

w33dwizrd• 5 years ago

ah yes, the standard fallback answer in graduate level astro classes. If you can't explain something... magnetic fields?

ncmncm2• 5 years ago

If you do not say what the magnetic fields are doing, or what effects they are having, you are working with a wholly unphysical model. When referees allow that, they have failed in their job.

madqntareader• 5 years ago

Does anyone have a link to the original article?

Quanta and outfits like it (eg Atlas) have this incredibly sad tactic of explaining around research and quoting the authors without ever citing the paper.

rendall• 5 years ago

The article links to the original paper.

A new study, however, published in [Nature Astronomy in February](link to paper)...

ncmncm2• 5 years ago

Imagine writing the whole article without ever so much as mentioning ions or plasma, never mind plasma fluid dynamics. What matter is supposed to be affected by magnetic fields? What generates them? What effects do electric currents induced by varying fields have on mixing and segregation?

That plasma fluid effects are routinely neglected is a disgrace, an indictment of everybody who pretends to be serious about studying the topic.

The article abstract mentions MHD, the trivial cousin of plasma fluid dynamics. MHD mostly occurs only in artificially stabilized environments designed to prevent mathematically intractable phenomena. Modeling while avoiding general PFD is looking for your keys under the streetlamp solely because the light is better there.

Astronomers Find Secret Planet-Making Ingredient: Magnetic Fields

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