What are the mysterious magnetic pulses detected on Mars?

The strange pulsations that occur at midnight have gotten the scientists scratching their heads

Mars is the only planet that has been studied in so much detail apart from Earth. Now a new discovery may nullify all the previously held notions that the red planet does not have a magnetic field. Mars Global Surveyor in 1997 came to the conclusion that the red planet once had a magnetic field similar to the one we have around our planet.

There are a couple of leading theories regarding what vaporized the planet’s magnetic field. The first one suggests that huge asteroids continued to bombard Mars until its magnetic field was shut down. Or one massive asteroid, like the one that wiped out Dinosaurs from our planet, might have walloped the planet’s magnetism in one catastrophic collision.

The second theory speculates that the magnetic filed only covered one hemisphere of the red planet, which might explain its eventual weakening overtime before turning off. As the outer core of Mars seized up causing the collapse of the magnetic field some 4 billion years ago, relentless radiation from the sun fried its atmosphere and turned a potentially life-supporting habitat into a cold desolate place as it is today.