Hello,

I'm a student working on serious games project and we're focusing on aurorae. Our game revolves around the player engineering a way for the solar wind to reach earth, and thus generating the lights, using extreme simplifications of physics. We wanted the player to use magnets to manipulate the solar wind, and so I have been trying to find out if an enormous human-made magnet could possible change the path of solar wind, or perhaps rather alter the magnetic field extended from the sun and affecting the wind that way.

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Could a magnet affect solar wind?

About as much as a vacuum cleaner can affect an Atlantic gale.

It's a game so don't sweat the physics.  The trick is to refer to some real physics concepts but unrealistically extend them and be very vague.  Whenever a game or science fiction story tries to get specific it always fails (it's science fiction!  You know fiction).  Keep it vague and it will be believable because there won't be glaring errors.

40 minutes ago, Bufofrog said:

It's a game so don't sweat the physics.  The trick is to refer to some real physics concepts but unrealistically extend them and be very vague.  Whenever a game or science fiction story tries to get specific it always fails (it's science fiction!  You know fiction).  Keep it vague and it will be believable because there won't be glaring errors.

A better way in a game (not reality) might be to posit an 'opening zone ' where nature has done it for us.

This has already happened with the South Atlantic Magnetic Anomaly , where some solar wind is already getting through.

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Atlantic_Anomaly

20 hours ago, studiot said:

About as much as a vacuum cleaner can affect an Atlantic gale.

This brought laughter to our team, thank you!

Thank you for your feedback, while disconnected from reality we hope it will do a good enough job of demonstrating how the solar wind causes the aurorae on earth while also being fun to play. I briefly checked out the South Atlantic Anomaly and I'll look into it more, very interesting but will probably not be used in the project. Thank you both for your time!

The Earth is a magnet, with a very weak magnetism, and yet it is strong enough to divert much of the solar wind.  Otherwise, our atmosphere and oceans would have been stripped away long ago, like on Mars.

Thanks for the response! That is true, gives a bit of perspective on our premise.