Is it possible to revive the Mars geodynamo? [closed]

Question

I’ve done a bit of reading and have found multiple theories suggesting how the Mars geodynamo stopped fully working.

This site suggests that one possibility could be volcanic activity ejecting water and other necessary elements from the mantle significantly slowed the natural convection process.

Where as this site says that it also could have been massive asteroids colliding with the surface, heating the planet up to temperatures that would disrupt convection.

No one is quite certain what happened, all that is known is Mars doesn’t have much of a magnetic field at this point.

Today I saw that there’s an idea to create an artificial field that’ll act in place of a geodynamo’s naturally generated one.

My main concern for this is that the units creating the artificial field could be destroyed and the entire planet would become unstable afterwards.

It would seem if the magnetic field is supported by the planet itself, it would offer a higher degree of stability and less involvement for humans in the long run.

What’s the possibility for ‘restarting’ the Mars geodynamo or perhaps ramping it up enough to support a strong enough field? And if so, how would we be able to do it?

Answer 1

Let's do a bit of math: magnetic energy density is at least $u = \frac{1}{2}\frac{B^2}{\mu_0}$. The magnetic field at the surface of Earth is of the order of 30µT which gives us a magnetic energy density in the order of $10^{-3} J/m^3$ Now we need to fill the entire volume of the planet and some surrounding space with this field in order to get some protection from the solar wind; let's assume a cube of $(20000km)^3 = 8\cdot 10^{21}m^3$. So that means that we need an energy in order of $10^{18}W$ to sustain a comparable field which equates to roughly 1 million state-of-the art GW nuclear power plants. We currently have significantly less than 1000 in the whole world combined and I have not considered losses of any kind (thus 100% conversion of power into magnetic field)

My rough calculation also does not include any additional power needed to sustain the field extent into space when subject to the magnetic pressure of the solar wind which will be needed in order to keep the atmosphere inside the magnetic field, especially in direction of the sun.

So please go and figure whether these scenarios are really realistic. Actually reviving any dynamo on Mars is an altogether different story and would need to understand how exactly it works/worked; it might entail to heat up the core which requires probably more energy and will pose even more severe technological challenges than a giant dipole magnet of planet size.

Answer 2

I think a superconducting cable system around the Martian equator is far more easy. To get an Earthian $\rm B$, which is $\approx 4 \mu T$, from a Martian radius ($\approx \rm{3000 km}$), we would need $I=\frac{2\pi r B}{\mu_0} \approx 680 \rm{MA}$. It is about 6000 times of the ITER main coiling, elongated throught the whole Martian equator.

This might be even much smaller, depending on the magnetic permeability of the planet. While it currently does not have a magnetic field due to the lack of the convection in the mantle, it is likely magnetizable, because its iron content is probably higher than of the Earth^(ref).