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The Sunspot Cycle Explained
An anonymous reader writes "After the recent spate of auroras visible as far south as Florida and Greece, and radio amateurs having lots of fun bouncing their signals off the auroral curtain, maybe some explanation was needed. It has been known for a while that the peak of solar activity trail trails the sunspot cycle peak by a couple of years, but this BBC article appears to explain why. As you may expect most of the data came from the SOHO satellite and the theory has been put together by some scientists using what appears to be data mining."
radio amateurs having lots of fun bouncing their signals off the auroral curtain
Could this mean, that when I'm watching a re-run of my favorit tv-shop, it is actually a re-re-run??
First e-bombing, now data-mining. They're really putting the Slash back into Slashdot!
Easy, just write down all the wars and revolutions that don't coincide with the sunspots. :)
It has nothing to do with sunspots, really. Those student riots and wars are somehow triggered by the Illuminati and the Gnomes of Zurich having their global conventions on the exact same day, which only occurs every 21 years.
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
If you're searching for the motive force behind wars, I think you're looking at too long a period of fluctuation in the 11-year sunspot cycle, because the relevant periodicity is a 24-hour one.
:-)
The sun goes down, people engage in a spot of fun hanky panky, a politician is born, and you have wars. Pretty simple, very accurate, and as predictable as night follows day, which indeed it does.
QED
"The question of whether machines can think is no more interesting than [] whether submarines can swim" - Dijkstra
They're stll using a SOHO satellite? They could have learned a lot more if they had upgraded to a larger enterprise class solution. Hmm, enterprise .. catchy!
(Ogg and Ugg look at each other, nod, then beat proto-Poindexter to death with sticks and rocks.)
Science, The Early Years.
you forgot oil