How did Mars lose its magnetic field and then its oceans? Could this happen to our planet? 

The Creator, Glory be to Him, bestowed life on all His creatures.

Although our Sun is a very harsh place where it produces huge amounts of radiation, the protective effect of our planet's magnetic field has made life possible on Earth.

Without the magnetic field, the solar wind would strip our planet of its atmosphere, and the oceans would evaporate into space.

Here, the Earth may end, as did Mars.

Our planet is the only rocky planet in our solar system to have a strong magnetic field, and its presence and continuity is likely one of the main reasons why Mars and Earth are so different.

Mars has captured the imagination of humans for centuries as one of the closest planets to us (NASA)

What happened to Mars' magnetic field?

Scientists know that billions of years ago the Red Planet had oceans filled with water, due in part to a protective magnetic field similar to that of Earth.

However, this field disappeared, and so did the oceans and waters of the Red Planet.

Recently, new research published in Nature Communications on 3 February was able to explain why.

Researchers at the University of Tokyo recreated the expected conditions in the heart of Mars billions of years ago, and found that the behavior of the molten metal believed to have been present likely gave rise to a short magnetic field that was destined to eventually vanish, and that is what happened.

Mars has captured people's imagination for centuries as one of our closest planets, and has been studied using the various unmanned space probes that have explored it and continue to do so, according to a Science Daily report.

Despite this, there are some big unanswered questions about the Red Planet, the answers to which could shed light on our distant past and future, given that Earth, Mars and all the neighboring planets were born from the same things in the universe.

One question in particular was on the mind of Professor Kei Hirose of the University of Tokyo's Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences: If there was a magnetic field around Mars, why was it there in the first place and what happened to it?

The diamond anvil used to simulate the heart of the Red Planet (Yurik Alert-University of Tokyo)

Mars Heart Simulation

Hirose's team simulated a Martian core in the laboratory, making a material using a mixture of iron, sulfur and hydrogen, which is believed to be present in the Martian core.

"Earth's magnetic field is driven by unimaginably massive convection currents from molten metals in its core. It is believed that magnetic fields on other planets work in the same way," Hirose says in the university's press release.

Although the internal composition of Mars is not yet known, evidence from meteorites indicates that it consists of molten iron enriched with sulfur.

And seismic readings, from NASA's InSight probe on the surface, indicate that Mars' core is larger and less dense than previously thought.

This indicates the presence of additional lighter elements in the core of the Red Planet, such as hydrogen.

Through these details, the research team prepared iron alloys that are expected to form the core and then subjected them to experiments.

The experiment included diamonds, lasers, and a prepared sample containing iron, sulfur and hydrogen "Fe-SH", which is expected to have formed the core of Mars before.

The team then placed this mixture of iron, sulfur and hydrogen between two diamonds, and heated it with an infrared laser to simulate the high temperatures and pressures found inside a rocky planet's core.

They photographed what was happening during melting under pressure, and mapped how the composition of the sample changed over that period.

Hydrogen escaping from the atmosphere by solar winds, evaporating water vapor and evaporating oceans (Getty Images)

Behavior explains a lot

"We were very surprised to see a specific behavior that could explain a lot," Hirose says. "The homogeneous Fe-SH was initially separated into two distinct liquids with a level of complexity that we had not seen before under these kinds of pressures."

One of the iron liquids was rich in sulfur, and the other in hydrogen, which is key to explaining the birth and eventual death of the magnetic field around Mars.

Liquid iron rich in hydrogen and poor in sulfur, being less dense, would have risen above liquid iron rich in sulfur, which lacks hydrogen, causing convection currents.

These currents, similar to those on Earth, formed a protective magnetic field around the planet.

This is similar to what was happening in the early history of Mars, but these currents are short-lived, and they would not have lasted, unlike Earth's internal convection currents that last very long, once the two liquids separate completely, there will be no more currents to drive a magnetic field.

When this happened, the hydrogen in the atmosphere was blown into space by the solar wind, dissolving the water vapor.

Eventually the oceans of Mars evaporated.

This is what was happening about 4 billion years ago.

It may be believed that the Earth may lose its magnetic field one day as well, but there is no need to worry, this will not happen for at least a billion years.

These findings have implications for the search for habitable exoplanets.

Routinely, the primary criterion for determining whether an exoplanet can host life is whether it has potential for water on its surface, and is somewhere not too cold or too hot.

Perhaps, the strong magnetic field should be another key measure to determine whether a planet can hold on to its water.