Re: Dies the Magnet

Jacey Bedford wrote:
Without its magnetic fields isn't the whole planet pretty well buggered for various reasons of solar bombardment? Or am I completely arse about face? Just recalling something I read recently, but I may have got it wrong.

It would have an effect, but not a major one. Earth goes without a significant magnetic field for centuries on a regular basis whenever the polarity of the magnetic field flips, which happens every few hundred thousand years. Earth's upper atmosphere is able to absorb solar radiation on its own. As an example, consider Earth's polar regions right now, where the magnetic field lines are almost vertical and actually funnel solar radiation down to produce aurorae. Recent ozone depletion issues aside, it's still a perfectly habitable area.

The bigger problem, as pointed out by others in this thread, is that the fundamental behavior of chemistry will subtly change. Since biological life is dependent on those subtleties to function, pretty much everything instantly drops dead.

(I say "pretty much" because I suppose it's possible there may be some simple life forms sufficiently robust or lucky in their choice of biochemical pathways that they might be able to muddle along in a crippled state with the new physics. Since they won't have competition they'd eventually evolve out of crippledom and diversify, but it wouldn't help us much. Might be an interesting story to have intelligence re-evolve and discover some human relics on the Moon or somesuch - you might be able to fudge something about the new rules of chemistry making things like neurons easier to come up with to explain how you could even do it before Earth's era of habitability passes.)
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