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Reversing Magnetic Poles Observed in Another Star
Babu 'God' Hoover tips us to news out of the University of Hawaii Institute for Astronomy that for the first time, a magnetic pole reversal has been observed in a star other than our own. Tau Bootis, while similar to the Sun, also has a planet more than six times larger than Jupiter orbiting at only a twentieth of the distance between Earth and the Sun. Scientists hope to use this discovery to learn more about the magnetic dynamics in the Sun, which can affect our telecommunications, among other things.
Star systems suffer from a similar naming convention problem as open source software.
Nobody is going to relocate to an outpost in Tau Bootis. On the other hand, everyone would be clambering to go and live at the iPost in Apple Centauri.
Right. But in the meantime we have to go ahead with the knowledge we have, safe in the knowledge that even if we are by some twist of fate completely wrong about the causes of climate change that we have at least weaned ourselves off fossil fuels in the meantime.
Going on the assumption that man is causing climate change means we win either way, doing nothing in the hope that we're somehow wrong means that the very best possible outcome is that we're still completely dependant on fossil fuels in 50 or 100 years time. And the worst possible outcome doesn't bear thinking about. So, while it's all well and good to say we should be investigate every possible cause of climate change, there is absolutely no excuse for us to not be acting now to minimise our our impact on the environment.
Spelling mistakes, grammatical errors, and stupid comments are intentional.
I don't disagree... well, except for the fact that we humans often go headlong into a decision, sure that we are right, only to find out later that .. well, ooops, maybe killing 6 million other people wasn't such a good idea.
I'm all for making life energy efficient, for not polluting our eco-systems, and for doing all we can to make life healthy. We should have been doing that all along. We may make our species extinct with gray goo before global warming has a chance, by the way.
My point was simply that more information means better decisions all around. I'm not advocating that we wait for the information before doing anything. I'm saying that every bit of information should be used to shape our decisions as we move along. Is anyone worried that we are almost out of helium? What effect does that have?
The brain trust needed to put all this together is huge, so sure, do what we can, but do not be blinkered into thinking that we are done with the decision making.
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The article is a bit light on details.
How can we actually detect the magnetic field of another star?
I thought that the distance is certainly too big to observe it directly, and we barely have the resolution to tell that there is a planet there at all.
Another example of lazy astropsychology. That's how they're diagnosing every star these days. When's the last time you heard of a star being a magnetic mono-pole? Exactly. I rest my case.
By not fully predicable I refer to that the flows that occurs are similar to the weather we experience here on Earth. The weather can be predicted with an acceptable accuracy over a week, but longer than that is hard. However the timeframe for magnetic fields are different, so they are predictable over a longer period of time.
Anyway - this means that the flows inside a star can change pattern, or that the electrical currents induced can change (not always the same thing) and they in turn will cause the magnetic field to change. Changes involves flares, sunspots and magnetic field disturbances - even as far as changing the polarity. So if our sun does that it's not surprising that another star with similar properties also exhibits the same behavior.
More interesting stellar objects to study would be red stars like the Betelgeuze star or giant blue stars like Rigel. Since they are much larger they can offer different results. Same goes for white dwarfs. Some stars are very strong in their radiation and can provide a great deal of information from a distance, but not everything. There may still be surprises waiting for us!
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
Why would you bring up climate change? We've known for many years that the Sun flips its magnetic field every 11 years or so. This is simply the first time we've observed it in another star. The flipping of Sol's magnetic field causes a change in the number and size of sunspots which do affect solar output. This has been taken into account with climate models that show the earth is warming due to human influence. This news story offers absolutely no information pertinent to climate change.
Because we do not know some things does not mean we cannot know others. The fact that the theory of General Relativity does not work at atomic distances does not mean that we can't use it to determine clock skew in different gravity fields. GPS would not work without taking General Relativity into account if you want proof you can hold in your hand. Because we do not know everything about Quantum Mechanics does not mean that we cannot use the theory to create lasers, which are a direct result of quantum mechanical theory. You would not have CD and DVD drives if the theory wasn't mostly correct.
What you are basically saying is that we should throw up our hands and say that whether climate change is occurring due to human influence is unknowable. That sounds nothing like an 'INFORMED decision' as you put it. If you are truly interested, do some research yourself. I questioned man's influence on climate change also until I looked into it. Researchers who study the subject are almost completely of one mind, that humanity is influencing the climate and causing the world to be warmer that it has been in the past. These are people that spend their lives looking at all of the evidence, people that ask the questions you want the answers to and try their best to find them. The people that just throw their hands up and say that it is unknowable are the ones that deny global warming is happening. Some point to one of the warmest years on record being in the 1940s, but that is explainable due to normal cycles. Check out the trends though. Global warming is a FACT, that human influence is causing it is a theory with mountains of evidence supporting it and no evidence against it. The only other thing that people can point to as the cause for global warming is "something we don't know yet".
If you cram six billion termites into the same relative space to size as six billion humans on this planet, I'm sure that in a good amount of time you'll see some pretty significant damage take place.
This isn't to say that it is indeed possible that there are other factors not related to our activity as causes of global warming. I am saying it seems that a lot of those who don't believe we have a significant effect on the planet tend to be the ones that don't want to either act in order to possibly mitigate the impact, or find it completely plausible that we could terraform some other world, but there's NO way we're responsible fucking up the Earth!
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