Mondo Knows Facts
Mars once had a global magnetic field
Remanent magnetism in old crust shows it switched off billions of years ago The MAVEN orbiter maps magnetic stripes frozen into the northern crust. Without a field, the solar wind stripped much of the atmosphere over time. Volcanic eruptions in that older, wetter era left the lava plains still visible today. It sits in Mondo's space collection, one of 200 facts that each trace back to the reference below.
Where this comes from
Facts that can change over time are reviewed and updated. If something here looks wrong, Mondo would rather know than be confidently incorrect.
Go further
More facts like this
Sunsets on Mars appear blue to the human eyeFine Martian dust scatters red light while allowing blue light to pass throughA day on Mars lasts 24 hours 40 minutesRover teams work on Mars time and shift their day slightly each dayMars hosts the largest volcano in the solar systemOlympus Mons on Mars stands about two and a half times taller than Mount EverestValles Marineris on Mars is the largest canyon system in the solar systemStretching over four thousand kilometres it dwarfs Earth Grand CanyonMars has two tiny irregularly shaped moons named Phobos and DeimosThe dark cratered satellites resemble captured carbonaceous asteroidsCuriosity rover sang Happy Birthday to itself on Mars in 2013Engineers programmed vibrating sample frequencies to hum the melody
๐ช Spacefact 180 of 200
โ โ to keep reading, or swipe
Tags: mars, magnetism, atmosphere
Mars once had a global magnetic field: the short answers
- Where does this come from, and can I check it?
- Remanent magnetism in old crust shows it switched off billions of years ago. The figure is taken from NASA MAVEN, which is linked in full on this page. Every fact on Mondo Knows names its source rather than repeating an unsourced claim.
- Is this really a space fact?
- Yes. It sits on the Space shelf, one of 2,600 sourced facts grouped into space, animals, the human body, history, science and more. Category pages collect every fact in the same field.
- What else can I read about it?
- The links under the fact point to a quiz, game, puzzle or calculator on the same subject, and the shelf below shows related facts. The wording here is original, and quoted phrases are marked as quotations.