UCL: Strong 'Electric Wind' Strips Planets of Oceans & Atmospheres

[bystander]

Strong 'Electric Wind' Strips Planets of Oceans and Atmospheres
University College, London | 2016 Jun 20

[img3="This is an artist's concept of the electric wind at Venus. Rays represent the paths that oxygen and hydrogen ions take as they are pulled out of the upper atmosphere.
Credits: NASA/Goddard/Conceptual Image Lab, Krystofer Kim"]http://www.ucl.ac.uk/news/news-articles ... cwind_.jpg[/img3][hr][/hr]

Venus has an ‘electric wind’ strong enough to remove the components of water from its upper atmosphere, which may have played a significant role in stripping the planet of its oceans, according to a new study by NASA and UCL researchers.

"It's amazing and shocking," said Dr Glyn Collinson, previously at UCL Mullard Space Science Laboratory and now a scientist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center. "We never dreamt an electric wind could be so powerful that it can suck oxygen right out of an atmosphere into space. This is something that definitely has to be on the checklist when we go looking for habitable planets around other stars."

The study, published today in the journal Geophysical Research Letters, discovered that Venus’ electric field is so strong that it can accelerate the heavy electrically charged component of water - oxygen - to speeds fast enough to escape the planet's gravity.

When water molecules rise into the upper atmosphere, sunlight breaks the water into hydrogen ions which are fast and escape easily, and heavier oxygen ions which are carried away by the electric field. ...

‘Electric Wind’ Can Strip Earth-like Planets of Oceans, Atmospheres
NASA | Goddard Space Flight Center | 2016 Jun 20

“Electric Wind” can strip Earth-like planets of oceans and atmospheres
American Geophysical Union | 2016 Jun 20

Venus has potential – but not for water
ESA | Space Science | Science & Technology | Venus Express | 2016 Jun 20

The electric wind of Venus: A global and persistent “polar wind”-like ambipolar
electric field sufficient for the direct escape of heavy ionospheric ions - Glyn A. Collinson et al

• Geophysical Research Letters (online 20 Jun 2016) DOI: 10.1002/2016GL068327

[neufer]

The gravitational attraction between two protons is only ~0.822*10⁻³⁶ of the electrostatic force of repulsion at the same separation.

Click to play embedded YouTube video.

The gravitational attraction between two oxygen ions is only ~52.6*10⁻³⁶ of the electrostatic force of repulsion at the same separation.

The gravitational attraction between one oxygen ion & Venus (~4.87×10²⁷ g) is roughly equal to the electrostatic force of repulsion between one oxygen ion & a quarter of a micro-gram of oxygen ions at the same separation.

Hence Venus has an overall negative charge of about one micro-gram of residual oxygen ions.