The unusual radiation belts of the ice giant planets

冰巨行星不寻常的辐射带

• 批准号: 2890429
• 金额: --
• 依托单位: Imperial College London
• 依托单位国家: 英国
• 项目类别: Studentship
• 财政年份: 2023
• 资助国家: 英国
• 起止时间: 2023 至 无数据
• 项目状态: 未结题
• 来源: https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=studentship-2890429
• 关键词: unusual; radiation; belts; ice; giant

In April of 2022 the results of the latest Planetary Science & Astrobiology Decadal Survey were announced in the USA, recommending that a mission to put a spacecraft in orbit around the planet Uranus should be NASA's highest priority flagship over the next decade. This mission will revolutionise our understanding of such "ice giants", and there are also plans to visit the other ice giant, Neptune. This project builds on our leadership in defining the science goals of these pioneering missions on the horizon.The aim is to assess whether the unusual magnetic fields generated inside these ice giants could explain their equally unusual "radiation belts", all observed by Voyager 2 when it flew by these planets in the 1980s. Radiation belts are regions of space around a magnetised planet where high-energy charged particles are trapped within the surrounding magnetic field structure. We have proposed that some of the unusual aspects of the ice giant radiation belts could be due to their more complex magnetic fields, compared to other magnetised planets like the Earth.The work will involve simple numerical modelling of how charged "test" particles move through the two planetary magnetic field structures, to ultimately establish the extent to which observed radiation belt properties can be explained by the additional field complexity. As the project moves forwards there will be potential to greatly expand the numerical modelling effort, to compare all the Solar System's magnetised planets, to modify existing theory to the ice giants, and even extend beyond the Solar System with a more general assessment of radiation belts supported by multipolar magnetic fields.

2022年4月，最新的行星科学和天体生物学十年调查结果在美国公布，建议将航天器送入天王星轨道的使命应该是NASA未来十年的最高优先级旗舰。这一使命将彻底改变我们对这种“冰巨人”的理解，也有计划访问另一个冰巨人海王星。该项目建立在我们在确定这些前沿任务的科学目标方面的领导地位之上。其目的是评估这些冰巨人内部产生的不寻常磁场是否可以解释它们同样不寻常的“辐射带”，所有这些都是旅行者2号在20世纪80年代飞越这些行星时观察到的。辐射带是一个磁化行星周围的空间区域，高能带电粒子被困在周围的磁场结构中。我们提出，冰巨星辐射带的一些不寻常的方面可能是由于它们的磁场比其他磁化行星（如地球）更复杂。这项工作将涉及带电“测试”粒子如何通过两个行星磁场结构的简单数值模型，以最终确定所观察到的辐射带特性可以通过附加的场复杂性来解释的程度。随着项目的推进，将有可能大大扩展数值建模工作，比较太阳系所有的磁化行星，修改现有的冰巨星理论，甚至扩展到太阳系之外，对多极磁场支持的辐射带进行更全面的评估。