Planetary Magnetic Fields Kurt Feltenberger (02 May 2018 02:00 UTC)
Re: [TML] Planetary Magnetic Fields Richard Aiken (03 May 2018 00:28 UTC)
Re: [TML] Planetary Magnetic Fields Bruce Johnson (03 May 2018 17:22 UTC)
Re: [TML] Planetary Magnetic Fields Richard Honeycutt (04 May 2018 06:40 UTC)
Re: [TML] Planetary Magnetic Fields Rob O'Connor (05 May 2018 02:28 UTC)

Planetary Magnetic Fields Kurt Feltenberger 02 May 2018 02:00 UTC

I want to preface this post with a big thank you to everyone who
commented on the Neurological EMP thread; it was a lot of good
information and convinced me that unless there's some sort of
super-science involved, it's a no-go for how the author intended it to work.

Now...planetary magnetic fields.  A couple years back, I was researching
coronal mass ejections and solar storms for a PBEM that I was planning
to run.  I'm not sure where, but I remember one article (IIRC, it even
had some illustrations) mentioned that when a massive CME hit a planet,
that it had the potential to "stretch" or "pull" the magnetic fields out
of shape and elongate them in a direction away from the sun and went on
to suggest that there could be some unexpected "side effects" of such an
event happening.  As I find myself collecting new background material,
this time most likely for a serialized story than an actual game, my
mind went back to this article and came up with two questions:

1.  Would/could this happen?

2.  What might be the "side effects" if it did?  I have a mental image
of a rubber band being stretched away from the sun and then released,
snapping back and momentarily (or for more than a few moments) actually
brushing/hitting the planet's surface.  If such a thing happened, what
sort of damage would occur where the field hit the surface?

Thanks!

--
Kurt Feltenberger
xxxxxx@thepaw.org/xxxxxx@yahoo.com
“Before today, I was scared to live, after today, I'm scared I'm not living enough." - Me