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Three More Solar Flares
Evil Adrian writes "Space.com reports that the sun shot off three more solar flares on Monday. This is quite a historic period for solar activity." The article breaks down the recent flares, and what the effects have been. Update: 11/05 01:57 GMT by T : cyberMalex writes "Space.com is reporting the 10th in a string of major solar flares which have been errupting from the sun over the past two weeks. "This one saturated the X-ray detectors on the NOAA's GOES satellites that monitor the Sun. The jury is therefore out on the definitive classification of the flare." "Other scientists have indicated the flare may indeed be an X20 or stronger. Only one X20 event has been seen in recent years, and it was not Earth-directed and had little effect.""
"I think the last week will go into the history books as one of the most dramatic periods of solar activity we have seen in modern time," Brekke told SPACE.com.
...No it wont. Doesn't anyone understand, the general public doesn't CARE about this crap. In 20 years, when people look back at this period in history, they'll see the WTC. Operation: Iraqi Freedom. The video tape of Saddam's fire-ant torture. In 100 years, They'll see the WTC. In 1000 years, they'll see America, and they'll say exactly what we say about the Romans, "Wow, they really owned while they were around. It's too bad they had to fade away." Think about it, can YOU name any war that happened 1000 years ago? How about all the leaders of a country somewhere?
One thing that I'm really enjoying about the solar flares, unlike most Earthly climate events, is that we can be absolutely certain we didn't cause it via pollution or global warming or what have you. When I see the hurricanes and tornadoes and big wildfires, there's always this nagging worry in the back of my mind that it might not be happening if we weren't spitting out all the pollution.
:-)
But we have no effect whatsoever on the Sun, so I can sit back and watch the show guilt-free.
I always find it fascinating, when the universe demonstrates just how small and insignificant we really are... that, and watching aurora is a great way of getting kids interested in astronomy.
We have samples from icebergs measuring beryllium-10, which give us a good picture of solar activity for the past couple thousand years or so.
Aside from that, it's a historic period in solar flares simply because we haven't seen it happen before. Just because we don't know how common this occurence is in the full grand scheme of things, doesn't mean that it isn't noteworthy when we see it for the first time!
Yes, they're larger than everything we've previously observed but given our incredibly limited amount of data and the fact that the sun has been around for quite some time, we don't know whether or not it is unusual. It could be unusual or there could be a much longer cycle that we are completely unaware of due to our limited vision.
I hate liberals. If you are a liberal, do not reply.
Is the sun dying?!
Does it matter?
I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.
I'm no solar scientist, but I don't think it is even remotely reasonable for anyone to say anything about the sun is "unprecedented." The percentage of the sun's life that human beings have been observing has to be less than 0.01%
Maybe everything we've seen up to now has been atypical and this represents a return to the norm.
For the record, most environmentalists are less worried about the planet and more worried about you.
No one has any doubts that if human kind makes the biggest mess we can of this ball of mud that life will go on. The industrial companies are right, human kind is small change in the cycles of global climate.
Of course, when you're small change it doesn't take a whole hell of a lot to exterminate you and most everything like you.
No one thinks we're gonna wreck the planet, but aside from Al Gore, most of us wouldn't want to see Florida under water.
Humankind probably won't make any major changes in the global scheme of things, but the minor changes we make could cause untold havoc, suffering, and chaos... at least on the human scale.
So yes... the Sun might be the major cause of global warming.... in much the same way that your heater is the major thing that heats your house.
Does this mean it's a good idea to set the drapes on fire?
Killfile(TGK)
No trees were killed in the creation of this post. However, many electrons were inconvenienced.
No. Here's the monthly averaged daily SSNs and here's the last six daily SSNs (scroll a third of the way down to see 'em). The daily SS numbers for the six day period ending on Oct. 28 were 122, 160, 139, 191, 238, and 230. The number dropped to 76 today, which is roughly normal this late in the cycle, but that's because the huge spots are rotating out of view (not to worry, they'll be back in 2 weeks). Once the monthly averages are updated, we'll see that this solar cycle has a peculiar third peak (and even a second peak is somewhat unusual).
"I'm so moist I'm sticking to the leather." -Kermit the Frog on The Late Late Show
While we've never seen two Jupiter size sun spots before, doesn't mean it has not happened. Remember, before a few years ago, we did not have the instrumentation that we do now in observing the sun.
M42gal AKA St.