tagged w/ sun spots
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Philadelphia Inquirer...
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Monday, March 19, 2012
Evolution Under a Temperamental Sun
By Faye Flam
INQUIRER STAFF WRITER
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You didn’t need to be a solar physicist to be riveted by the “solar storm” that sent a blast of charged particles our way this month. That particular flare-up fizzled, but in the long term, the sun’s temper is worthy of our attention.
Our sun changes, and living things adapt or die.
Our planet circled a very different star when life first emerged on Earth some four billion years ago. The sun was dimmer and cooler, but more violent, sending deadly blasts of X-rays as well as particles that would have lit up the skies with spectacular auroras.
The displays would have been visible worldwide, but probably had no spectators, since life needed to stay deep underwater or buried inside minerals to survive until the sun calmed down.
For most of human history no one realized that the sun was fickle, breaking out in spots, flares, and eruptions, and would eventually kill all life on our planet.
“It was a huge part of Western culture that the heavens were forever and unchanging,” said University of Michigan astronomer Fred Adams, who has written books on the beginning of the universe and the end.
Galileo was the first to see spots on the sun, which did not ingratiate him with the church. Even Einstein was influenced by the cultural bias toward unchanging heavens, Adams said, altering his theory of general relativity to work in a static universe. Soon after he published his theory, Edwin Hubble showed the universe was in fact expanding.
It wasn’t until the mid-20th century that people realized the sun was running on nuclear fusion, and that when its fuel started to run low, the sun would die a violent death, blowing up into an enormous red giant.
For those concerned that the Mayans have forecast the end of the world this year, the astronomers’ threat of more solar storms may seem even more ominous.
It’s true we’re moving into a stormy season that should last into 2013, but this happens every 11 years, said Douglas Duncan, an astronomer at the University of Colorado and director of the Fiske Planetarium. Astronomers still don’t know why solar storms come in cycles or why it takes 11 years, he said. Duncan has catalogued similar cycles on other stars, and learned that sunspots and solar storms come in cycles all over the galaxy.
The cycles vary in length depending on a star’s age — the cycles lengthening as stars get older.
During the peaks, or solar maxima, the spots on the sun increase, and the sun bursts with flares and storms. The sun always sends us a solar wind of protons and electrons, but during a solar storm, these shoot out in gusts. When the particles reach Earth, they light up molecules in our atmosphere as if it were a giant fluorescent bulb.
The effects on Earth are more dramatic if the gusts are released on a direct path to Earth, as scientists thought happened earlier this month. That would be unlikely to affect human health directly, but it could have disabled satellites, particularly ones that channel GPS signals.
When Duncan was comparing sunspot cycles on different stars, he said he got a call from Carl Sagan wanting to know how solar activity might influence the course of life on Earth. That, Duncan said, would take an expert on our planet’s early history.
We humans couldn’t have tolerated the ultraviolet radiation and X-rays that pummeled our planet during life’s early history. About three billion to four billion years ago, the UV intensity was between 8 and 20 times what we have now, said geochemist Stephen Mojzsis of the Université Claude Bernard in Lyon, France. So for several billion years, life survived protected by water. As the sun cooled down and oxygen began to rise with the advent of blue-green algae, he said, life expanded to fill up the land as soon as it became habitable.
The sun was also cooler and was red rather than yellow, and we may carry an evolutionary fossil of that time in our eyes, he said. On the early Earth, microbes that were just starting to use photosynthesis began manufacturing a pigment called rhodopsin, which is good for absorbing red light. As the sun became yellow, the ability to make rhodopsin persisted, though different organisms used it for other purposes.
We use it in our retinas for night vision.
The sun was also 30 percent dimmer in the distant past, said Mojzsis. If it dimmed that much now, the Earth would freeze solid, but on the early Earth, different configurations of land masses and a different atmospheric chemistry kept the oceans liquid under such a cool sun.
The sun is getting hotter because it’s fusing hydrogen into the heavier element helium. That’s causing the sun to get denser and the nuclear fusion that powers it to become more efficient.
Scientists estimate that in 500 million to 1.5 billion years, the sun will be hot enough to wipe out all life on Earth. Moving to Mars would only postpone the apocalypse.
Our neighbor, Alpha Centauri, shines in a brighter, more bluish light because it’s older and hotter than our sun. If it had any habitable planets, they are now burnt to a crisp, said Mojzsis.
In an additional five billion years, the sun will start to run out of fuel, and before it dies, it will expel its outer layers, becoming a red giant. Astronomers used to assume that the sun would swallow our planet, said Duncan, but more recent calculations show it will expand to just about the size of Earth’s orbit. Either way, it will broil us.
As for those pessimists who worry about the Mayan predictions, Duncan said he’s looked into the matter and the ancient civilization didn’t really predict the world would end this year. Mayans did create an advanced calendar that was so good they extended it many centuries into the future. It just happened to end with 2012.
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Monday, March 19, 2012
Evolution Under a... more
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The Sun is predicted to "hibernate" during its next cycle in 2020.
A recent press release states that the Sun's activity will slow to an unprecedented decline in the next ten years. The prediction is based on "...three independent studies of the sun's insides, surface, and upper atmosphere..." According to the article, the drop in output could initiate climate effects comparable to the Maunder Minimum between 1645 and 1715.
Predictions about how the Sun will behave are reliable only if the interpretation of the data upon which the prediction was made is reliable. As many past Picture of the Day expositions have revealed, however, conventional theories of solar dynamics leave much to be desired. For example, attributing to internal heating the unexpected "weather patterns" recently discovered below the photosphere is like ascribing Earth’s weather patterns to heat escaping from within the Earth. The possibility that weather systems may be externally electrically powered has not occurred to investigators.
The Electric Universe theory proposes that stars are primarily electrical phenomena and not strictly based on gravitational compression somehow balanced by internal thermonuclear energy. Stars are electromagnetic in nature, responding to the laws of plasma physics and electric circuits and not those of gas dynamics or electrostatics.
This alternative view applies to the Sun, as well as to all other stars that populate the Universe: celestial bodies exist in conducting cosmic plasma and are connected by electric circuits. The Sun is "plugged-in" to a galactic power source and behaves like an electric motor and electric light. The faster rotation of the solar equator is prima facie evidence of an external force acting to offset the momentum loss of the solar wind.
Electric stars are not born from cold nebular clouds. Rather, their genesis resides in the electric currents induced in moving plasma. The electric currents induce their own encircling magnetic field, which "pinches" the currents to flow in filaments. Photographs of plasma in the laboratory show those currents forming twisted filament pairs called "Birkeland currents." Birkeland currents follow magnetic field lines, drawing ionized gas and dust from their surroundings and then "pinching" it into heated blobs called plasmoids.
As the so-called "z-pinch" effect increases, it strengthens the magnetic field, further increasing the z-pinch. The resulting plasmoids form spinning electrical discharges that glow first as red stars, then "switch discharge modes" into yellow stars, some intensifying into brilliant ultraviolet arcs, driven externally by the Birkeland currents that created them.
Since this view of the Sun is at great variance with the conventional view, the mainstream "predictions" concerning solar activity should probably be taken with a grain of salt.
Stephen Smith and Wal ThornhillThe Sun is predicted to "hibernate" during its next cycle in 2020.
A... more
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The biggest solar blast in four years erupted late Monday, and it’s sending jets of charged particles right at Earth. The flare will spark bright auroras when it hits the magnetosphere in the next 24 to 48 hours.
A cluster of sunspots called Active Region 1158 unleashed the flare at 8:50 p.m. EST, Feb. 14 [1:50 a.m. UT, Feb. 15]. The flare was classified as a class X2.2, meaning it is the most powerful flare since December 2006. The sunspots have continued to let loose smaller flares and may still be active now.
NOAA forecasters estimate a 45 percent chance of geomagnetic activity on Thursday, Feb. 17, when the bulk of the radiation hits Earth’s magnetic field. It may create a stunning display of aurora borealis, better known as northern lights. So look up! If you take pictures, send us your best shots. If we get enough, we’ll create a reader gallery.The biggest solar blast in four years erupted late Monday, and it’s sending jets... more
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NASA is set to launch a satellite next Tuesday (February 9th) that will probe the sun in greater detail than ever before.NASA is set to launch a satellite next Tuesday (February 9th) that will probe the sun... more
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The average person may not associate coolness with the sun.
The sun releases energy through deep nuclear fusion reactions in its core and has surface temperatures as hot as 10,000 degrees Fahrenheit, according to NASA's Web site.
Not cool at all.
But the sun's recent activity, or lack thereof, may be linked to the pleasant summer temperatures the midwest has enjoyed this year, said Charlie Perry, a research hydrologist with the U.S. Geological Survey in Lawrence.
The sun is at a low point of a deep solar minimum in which there are little to no sunspots on its surface.
In July through August, 51 consecutive days passed without a spot, one day short of tying the record of 52 days from the early 1900s.
As of Sept. 15, the current solar minimum ranks third all-time in the amount of spotless days with 717 since 2004. There have been 206 spotless days in 2009, which is 14th all-time. But there are still more than 100 days left in the year, and Perry expects that number to climb.
Perry, who studies sunspots and solar activity in his spare time, received an undergraduate degree in physics at Kansas State University and a Ph.D in physics and astronomy at The University of Kansas. He also has spent time as a meteorologist.The average person may not associate coolness with the sun.
The sun releases energy... more
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When the sun's weather is most active, it can impact Earth’s climate in a way that is similar to El Niño and La Niña events, a new study suggests.
The sun experiences a roughly 11-year cycle, during which the activities on its roiling surface intensify and then dissipate. (One noted sign of a highly active period is the number of sunspots dotting the solar surface).
The total energy reaching Earth from the sun varies by only 0.1 percent across the solar cycle.
Scientists have sought for decades to link these ups and downs to Earth's natural weather and climate variations, and to distinguish their subtle effects from the larger pattern of human-caused global warming. But that link has proven difficult to find.
Scientists at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) in Boulder, Colo., used computer climate models and more than a century of ocean temperature records to tease out just such a connection.
"We have fleshed out the effects of a new mechanism to understand what happens in the tropical Pacific when there is a maximum of solar activity," said study leader Gerald Meehl. "When the sun's output peaks, it has far-ranging and often subtle impacts on tropical precipitation and on weather systems around much of the world."
Solar La Niña, El Niño
The model results, detailed this month in the Journal of Climate, showed that as the sun reaches maximum activity, it heats cloud-free parts of the Pacific Ocean enough to increase evaporation, intensify tropical rainfall and the trade winds, and cool the eastern tropical Pacific.
The result of this chain of events is similar to a La Niña event, although the cooling of about 1-2 degrees Fahrenheit is focused further east and is only about half as strong as for a typical La Niña.
Over the following year or two, the La Niña-like pattern triggered by the solar maximum tends to evolve into an El Niño-like pattern, as slow-moving currents replace the cool water over the eastern tropical Pacific with warmer-than-usual water.
Again, the ocean response is only about half as strong as with El Niño.
True La Niña and El Niño events are associated with changes in the temperatures of surface waters of the eastern Pacific Ocean.
After a couple of years of El Niño-like conditions, the event settles down and the system returns to a neutral state.
Looks like we all have to look forward to some crazy weather in the future!
El Nino is Back.........When the sun's weather is most active, it can impact Earth’s climate in a... more
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The theory that climate change is chiefly caused by solar influences “is no longer tenable,” says US National Academy of Sciences president Ralph Cicerone. Carbon dioxide, he argues, is the key driver of recent climate change. I beg to differ.
The amount and distribution of solar energy that we receive varies as the Earth revolves around the Sun and also in response to changes in the Sun’s activity. Scientists have now been studying solar influences on climate for 5000 years....The theory that climate change is chiefly caused by solar influences “is no... more
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There’s a wonderful irony in the fact that, back in the 1970s, the Greens were issuing warnings and even writing books about the coming Ice Age. They would abandon this issue, based in well-known and accepted solar science, in favor of a vast international hoax alleging man-made global warming.
There’s a wonderful irony in the fact that, back in the 1970s, the Greens were... more
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