I'm already in love with the concept, and I'm wondering how magnetism and besides that radiation might could come into play in systems like this? I wanted to write a story about a planet that's so heavily magnetic that it just jams everything, how would that work? If not by magnetism, what would it be?
Not remotely covered by the system generator but I have snagged the physicist about it and got them talking because this is a fun question so:
Earth's magnetic field is in microtesla so even a pretty little increase will have an effect
Anything that involves moving electrons around will be affected - in power transmission, for example, electrons aren't moving all that fast but the charge is travelling at about two thirds the speed of light.
An electromagnetic wave (like light or radio waves) is half in the magnetic field so if your background magnetic field is strong enough you'd get something happening, but whether that's a block or an amplification is a question for a different kind of physicist.
Exactly how the magnetic field increase affects your signal transmission is out of field for either of us sorry.
Very good question!
Hi! I am taking my final exam for electromagnetism ii tomorrow at 3:30. So I’m not like an expert but I have had some recent experience.
My instinct is to say that actually the magnetic field probably wouldn’t do much provided that it’s constant or roughly constant with time; light is a pair of oscillating electric and magnetic fields, but because of the principle of superposition, light can still travel through electric and magnetic fields because the oscillation remains, it’s just that the ‘zero state’ shifts. That is, instead of oscillating between, say, positive and negative 35 nanoteslas (ie the strength of the magnetic field due to sunlight at the surface of the earth, according to this Reddit user (https://www.reddit.com/r/askastronomy/comments/1m96yjo/solar_magnetic_field_strength_at_earths_surface/) (I. Don’t want to do the math right now.)), it would oscillate between, say, 20.003 and 19.997 microteslas. However, this is exactly what happens on Earth, and we can still get sunlight and radio waves. Basically the same thing would happen on this hypothetical planet; the only way it would interfer with light is if it were also oscillating on a similar timescale- which is to say on the order of around a trillion times a second. This can’t happen due to a spinning metallic core, but if the planet were putting off blackbody radiation due to heat, I could conceive of that being sufficient to ‘jam’ some frequencies. However I’m not sure if that would happen at the desired frequencies at reasonable temperatures. This may be a case where you need to apply a little bit of Artistic License and do it anyways.
Reddit - Please wait for verification
@kissysanguine was hoping this would happen, expressing uncertainty summons an expert :)
Hiiii i took a physics class this past semester that had a unit basically on this so I have some hyperspecific comments to add.
TLDR: A strong magnetic field around a planet is going to make your space weather situation ~funky~ (with consequences).
Ignoring solar wind effects, a breathable atmosphere means that there will be a plasma formed around your planet that will move along/interact with your planet's strong magnetic field. This has the potential cause some problems with communications both on-planet and between planet and space, since waves of certain frequencies can't pass though a plasma the same way they do normal atmosphere and empty space.
A planet that for whatever reason cant communicate with the outside solar system and therefore has to rely on physical mail, even in a GFFA type universe where space travel is commonplace, is a super fun concept imo. Snail mail planet.
Links below if you're curious, showing some of the differences between planets with strong/weak mag fields and a short one about Earth's magnetosphere that talks a bit about the impacts on space travel at the end.
Mercury has a weak magnetic field, while Mars and Venus have no measurable magnetic fields. Jupiter is the largest planet and has the strong





















