DeMultaNocte, 24/11/2009 10.55:
Mi sa che ci ho capito poco....
Effettivamente l'articolo in questione è (appena!) un po' carente dal punto di vista scientifico!!!
Ho trovato anche questo da news.indiainfo.com:
Chandrayaan-1 has another first to its name. It has found small magnetic field on the lunar surface, raising hopes about the possibility of colonies in moon in future.
Scientists got evidence of the magnetic field after analysing the data obtained by the Sub Key Atom Reflecting Analyser (SARA). SARA was one of the three instruments contributed by the European Space Agency (ESA) to Chandrayaan-1. The lunar orbiter, built jointly by scientific groups from Sweden, India, Japan, and Switzerland, completed its mission in August 2009.
The finding was revealed in a presentation on SARA made by Anil Bhardwaj, head of the planetary space branch at Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre (VSSC), Thiruvananthapuram, during the platinum jubilee celebrations of the Indian Academy of Sciences (IAS) in Bangalore.
"The finding has been submitted for peer review," he said.
The Swedish Institute of Space Physics, which is the European Principal Investigator for the SARA payload, made the finding while investigating why 20 per cent of protons hitting the moon's surface in the form of solar winds got reflected as hydrogen molecule.
"This (the magnetic field) is being discovered for the first time," said Bhardwaj. The moon does not generate a global' magnetic field, but some lunar rocks are magnetised. These generate magnetic bubbles, which divert the incoming protons to the surrounding regions.
"We do not as yet know how many such structures exist, but we assume there must be around 100 such magnetospheres," he said. The mini magnetosphere was found near the Gerasimovic crater at far side of the moon, he said.
This will help the scientific community study the effects of magnetic fields in the lunar environment. Such magnetospheres can be ideal space for moon colonies also, Bhardwaj said.
The magnetic field will deflect the solar radiation, which is harmful to living bodies, Bhardwaj said. And since the magnetic 'bubbles' are dome shaped, house that are also dome-shaped can be built in future, he said. But an environment with enough gases is also needed to make human living possible in moon, and creating such an environment is a complex procedure, he explained.
The latest discovery will now make the scientific community look for such magnetospheres in other bodies of the solar system like asteroids, planet mercury and satellites of mars, which are thought to have no atmosphere but could experience similar phenomenon.
The discovery comes at a time when scientists and engineers are readying the ESA's Bepi-Colombo mission to Mercury that carries instruments similar to SARA to look for similar phenomenon.
Comunque lo strumento nominato dovrevrebbe fare rilevamenti a livello atomico quindi... aspettiamo qualche info più dettagliata!
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