Possible Connections Between the History of the Venus Magnetic Field and Observable Features

Details Possible Connections Between the History of the Venus Magnetic Field and Observable Features Possible Connections Between the History of the Venus Magnetic Field and Observable Features

May 2002

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2002agusm.p21a..08s&link_type=abstract

American Geophysical Union, Spring Meeting 2002, abstract #P21A-08

Physics

5440 Magnetic Fields And Magnetism, 6295 Venus, 1510 Dynamo Theories

Scientific paper

Venus does not have a global magnetic field at present and we have no information that relates directly to the past history of the field. Yoder finds evidence in gravity data to suggest a liquid iron core and this is reasonable on the basis of mineral physics alone. Dynamo scaling suggests that if Venus had a dynamo, it would generate a field that is quite large, about 5-10 precent of Earth's field. The most likely explanation for the absence of a Venus field is the absence of convection in the liquid core. Stevenson et al (1983) suggested that this arises because Venus has no inner core (because it is too hot and the pressures are too low). Earth's inner core is believed to play an important role in generation of the geomagnetic field. Here I discuss the alternative that Venus's field died as Venus transitioned from a mobile surface to a stagnant lid regime, gradually or catastrophically, beginning around 700 million years ago. This transition led to mantle heating and cessation of the cooling and hence convection of the Venus core, irrespective of whether it had an inner core. Parameterized convection models suggest that this is possible, although it depends on the layering of the Venus mantle and the extent of a boundary layer above the core-mantle boundary. In this story, there is a strong connection between the volcanic and resurfacing history of Venus and the presence of a global magnetic field. There is a slight possibility that paleomagnetic signatures (similar to Mars but much subdued) could be observed on Venus for terrains that were resurfaced more than 500 million years ago.

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