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The Quietest Sun
Orbity sends in a Boston Globe report on the unusual calm on the surface of the sun. The photos, many taken in more active solar times, are excellent — see the sequence from last year of a coronal mass ejection carrying away the tail of a comet. "The Sun is now in the quietest phase of its 11-year activity cycle, the solar minimum — in fact, it has been unusually quiet this year — with over 200 days so far with no observed sunspots. The solar wind has also dropped to its lowest levels in 50 years. Scientists are unsure of the significance of this unusual calm..." As if to be contrary, New Scientist mentions that the number of sunspots seem to be increasing.
We're all screwed...
You can't take the sky from me.
The sun is dying. Netcraft confirms it.
What?
it's quiet out there... too darn quiet... I don't like it...
Donald 'Duck' Dunn: We had a band powerful enough to turn goat piss into gasoline.
I just think it is cool that we finally have a few satellites gathering data on the sun.
If there is a mass ejection in our direction it will not matter anyway. Since the new satellites were launched with equipment to monitor the sun from outside our atmosphere, all the really large ejections have been away from us. Give it 10 - 20 years and we should no allot more then we do today.
Is your Internet Throttled? Install DD-Wrt, OpenWRT or Tomato to learn the truth! Google: 1Gbps/1Gbps: 5 Communities
Speaking of the sun, I recently bought a DSLR camera, and I would like to take pictures of the sun with it. Does anyone of you know how to go about that without destroying the camera's sensor or my eyes? What kind of filter do I need? Some people suggested a piece of glass that people use for welding; is that good enough?
-- Cheers!
Perhaps the ancients, who had nothing else for entertainment other than to religiously observe the Sun, were on to something.
this is even worse english and even more nonsensical than the spam mails i get from time to time.. :S who writes this kind of stuff?
This tropical paradise looks as calm as one trillion nuclear bombs. Honey, we're going on vacation.
Full Tilt
You know, so it can play WoW. Maybe it's fed up of voyeurs photographing *every* goddam coronal mass ejection, can't a ball of nuclear fusion have some time to itself?
Task Mangler
... burns you to a crisp... now it's in a calm state... but it's waiting, taunting us with massive flares... during the so called calm period there was that really big flare on 20080929... yikes... crispy... Sol... stay cool...
The five trillion tons of Clearasil must be starting to kick in.
That's not Picasso, that's Kandinsky!
You might check with your local 'Astronomy Club', or if a planetarium is nearby, maybe someone there could give you the benefit of their (individual/group) experience.
Even though I have benefited from some real gems at /. , I would still do some independent research for something like this.
Down With Slashdot BETA!!! I've been around the corner and seen the oliphant; you can only abuse me from your perspecti
The second paragraph of your diatribe should start with a capital G. You fail.
Always proofread carefully to see if you any words out.
so THAT is what caused the economic crisis...
People, pray to your favorite deity for more sun spots!
This story is a little late. Since then a cycle 24 spot group has been seen. Even so, solar activity is still rather low, cycle 24 is late. What does it mean? It means we're going to be in for some very cold weather in the near future.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2008/10/11/significant-cycle-24-sunspot-group-emerges/#more-3635
Have a look at the SIDC. We count sunspots and get payed for it!
The sun is using ProActive
TOP DSLR Cameras Reviews of the top DSLRs
You did.
Apparently
As the sun has an 11 year cycle of activity, is it really that significant that this is the least active it's been in 50 years? That would mean that out of the last 5 solar minima this is the quietest, which it doesn't take a physicist to notice is a 1 in 5 chance - hardly breathtaking.
Come on! We must be able to link this to some kind of human activity!
(1) those are *stunning* pictures
and
(2) did I not hear that this is linked to the lull in global warming recently, and as soon as the sun picks so does the heat? is this true....?
New spots are beginning to break out on the face of the Sun and may signal the end of a dry spell in solar activity.
This will give us good readings on how the solar cycle affects this climate.
Stop the brainwash
It's the aliens that are supposed to be visiting today! They're calming our sun as a token of good will. Clearly, they plan to cozy up, have fun stringing us gullible earthlings along, and then put their sun-calming machines into reverse and roast us alive whilst they laugh.
See, even the sun is dropping like the credit market.
Maybe the solar cycle directly controls the markets..... woooooooooooooooo
Prepare for 2012, when the sun will go dark for 3 days on equinox day.
Liberty freedom are no1, not dicks in suits.
.. but the Sparc 1 in my basement is damn silent, I tell you.
cmd-q.co.uk - some sort of stupid fucking internet bullshit
Dont people google any more?
Google answers all of you questions just ask, its like the oracle , it sees all, knows all, its your friend. Google just needs a 3d avatar, and a voice of Hal.
Liberty freedom are no1, not dicks in suits.
If, even after you've gone blind, you continue to stare at the sun, then you WILL get cancer.
But what you do is you stand around drums of chemicals until they spill into your eyes and give you a tremendous sense of hearing.
Could anyone tell me what the mechanism behind an accelerating wavefront is ? The caption creates the impression that this is physics for 12 year olds ...
"Violence is the last refuge of the competent, and, generally, the first refuge of the incompetent" - Thing_1
you have got it backwards global warming is causing the sun to cool. Ask al gore, he knows.
Global warming is but a hoax to cover up for a sun going nova?
If the lack of sunspots holds on, then, if we get declining global temperatures, then, we might actually be headed into an ice age. Knowing our luck, this would become evident AFTER we've blown ten trillion dollars to lower our CO2.
This is my sig.
The cycle's AVERAGE is 11 years. It could go longer or shorter. This is not a big deal. I believe one past cycle (IIRC) lasted 13 years. Give it a few months. It'll start kicking in.
Sun will fuck us
There are electromagnetic cords between the sun and the earth. Our use of electricity is causing a feedback loop that is disrupting the sun. Abandon all hope, technology, and self determination. Go live in a cave. The earth, and the sun, will thank you.
Wow, I have had 4 Cisco switches reload this year due to "Parity Errors", which they attribute to 'Cosmic Radiation*'. I thought that we were in a high point of solar activity.
* Not sure if solar activity is source of said cosmic radiation.
Just a dude. Stuck in IT.
(enter Space Worm)
Perhaps our solar panels are absorbing TOO MUCH SUNSHINE!!!!
There is mounting evidence that sunspot activity has an effect on the Earth's temperature. I believe this will be one of the coldest winters in the past 10 years.
This evidence also suggests that Earth is trending towards cooling overall. Not warming like all the 'experts' claim.
Wait and see, this will be one of the coldest winters we've seen in a long time.
They're using their grammar skills there.
It has to be a bot. This same garbage gets posted to almost every Slashdot article, relevant or not. The person (I'm being generous here) who thought up the original boilerplate needs some serious help.
There was one here in Europe a few years back, and all stores were offering cheapo, but safe "stare at the sun like you are an idiot" cardboard glasses with some kind of "save your ass from going blind" plastic film lenses.
It's really an impressive thing to see, and you can really imagine how private humans must have went literally ape-shit during an occurrence.
Oh, you might need to wait a bit for an occurrence in your area.
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
No they will try to blame it on the Bush administration, because as we all know everything that has gone wrong in the universe over the last eight years is W's fault.
is a mass of incandescent gas, A gigantic nuclear furnace......
Why, without your clothes, you're naked, Miss Dudley!
I've got a baaad feeling about this.
Yeah, the old "cosmic rays ploy." Back when we used Motorola machines, I had one system that would crash on a parity error. One. Out of five machines, and the only one with that specific type of memory. Also, there were between 12 and 20 other machines in that room that never crashed. The third time the tech came out on a service call he told me the problem was cosmic rays. We dumped the Motorola machines before Y2k, and have not had a cosmic ray problem since.
Why, without your clothes, you're naked, Miss Dudley!
+1 insightful
The calm before a storm?
Great! Now we're waiting on the sun to break wind!
I use irony whenever I can, but my shirts are still wrinkled...
Don't some people blame solar activity for global warming? This would appear to refute that claim.
Global warming is a trend of increasing temperatures over decades. A quiet solar cycle isn't enough to establish even a correlation, so forget about causation.
Every time a scientist picks up a fossil and says "hmmm" a hundred creationists are poised to claim that evolution is flawed. Likewise, whenever there's any news on the sun (whether of high activity, low activity, or average activity) dozens of people leap on it as evidence of causation for global warming. Politicization of science sucks.
After all, it is well known that the sunspot cycle and the economy are somehow linked. It's not the bankers' fault after all. Darn you, sun! Darn you to heck!
I follow this blog which gives regular reports on the sun.
The problem is all up until yesterday-ish had been short lived, less than 24-hour sunspots at a latitude consistent with the previous solar cycle. (There seems to be a pattern where spots begin and progress to during the cycle's life cycle.)
However to really understand just how quet the sun is, look at this animated graphic
Many, many people are predicting another mini-ice age as a result. Check out this article for a wavelet image of sun spot numbers. The only other part of the chart that looks like today is the Dalton Minimum.
Slashdot's rate-of-post filter: Preventing you from posting too many great ideas at once.
I mangled the link.
Slashdot's rate-of-post filter: Preventing you from posting too many great ideas at once.
That's how you know that you've got a *REAL* recession on your hands.
Joey
This is the start of Cycle 24, not Cycle 5. People have been watching the sun for a long time. It's the solar wind that's only been measured for 50 years.
The world is made by those who show up for the job.
"Kelvins" are units and have been for 40 years.
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
There was a quiet period in the 16th and 17th century. It corresponded with a brief global cooling. I wonder if scientists have looked for other quiet periods. Most of the studies have been the opposite, suggesting solar cycles hundreds of millions of years ago. Looking for "absence of evidence" is harder to establish scientifically.
There's a sunspot going on today: http://sohowww.nascom.nasa.gov/sunspots/
What about this beautiful solar prominence on october 10: http://sohowww.nascom.nasa.gov/pickoftheweek/
We all understand that the number of sunspots can be low and increasing at the same time?
Patrick Doyle
I mod down every jackass who puts his moderation policy in his sig. Oh, wait a sec....
Don't quit your day job.
Patrick Doyle
I mod down every jackass who puts his moderation policy in his sig. Oh, wait a sec....
Oh my God! Its everywhere! Everywhere! My eyes, oh my eyes!
http://cache.boston.com/universal/site_graphics/blogs/bigpicture/sol_10_13/sol07.jpg
The cancel button is your friend. Do not hesitate to use it.
I don't suppose we can blame global warming for this...
Trex thought the sun looked quiet that last morning to...
Well I told this really hot chic in school once told me that she'll go out with me when the sun freezes over - I clarified that it's not hell.
I think I'm getting close!!!
+5 informative for "RTFA", outstanding!
We currently are at 15 sunspots for this year (with a small one fading at the time of this post). Low, but not absent.
http://www.growth-dynamics.com/articles/sunspots.pdf
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
Yeah, what will we do with all that alternative energy and highly efficient technology?
nuke it from space?
Sounds like a gigantic Earth is forming. That's one planet we won't need to morph.
"I guess I'm gonna fade into Bolivian."
El Nino cycles in the pacific ocean are more important than the solar cycle:
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2008/07/global-trends-and-enso/
Also, if you measure ocean temperature, not air temperature (oceans have a higher heat capacity than air), there has ben no lull in global warming:
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2008/06/ocean-heat-content-revisions/
No it wouldn't lead to an ice age.
Another Maunder Minimum elimination of sunspot activity might cool the climate by about -0.2C which would unwind 2 decades of global warming and get us back to the 80s or so. Solar cycles, however, are not important in generating ice ages, the ice ages are triggered by the Milkankovich cycles -- which is ultimately solar in nature but the variability is due to changes in the Earth's orbital parameters and not changes in solar output.
"The sun is God"
Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. - Voltaire
this would become evident AFTER we've blown ten trillion dollars to lower our CO2.
1) I can only assume you aren't American. Last I checked, the US had given the finger to the rest of the world on the whole carbon reduction thing.
2) I fail to see how that money is "blown". Energy efficiency *saves* money, while lowering CO2 emissions in the process. Green technology is *good* for the economy, not bad.
3) A reduction in sunspots has fuck-all to do with GW. The amount of solar variation isn't nearly enough to account for the global increase in temperature over the last 50 years, and that's ignoring the fact that over said 50 years, the solar cycle has been uncorrelated with global temperature trends. Look it up, the facts are there if you want to find them.
this is caused by our emissions of CO2 and we need to cut back. Global warming doesn't just affect the earth you know.
Does this mean we'll soon have a killer snowboard/ski season? Totally righteous, dudenuggets!
There is an excellent essay in Spencer and Weart on the history of this connection, from William Herschel's suggestion of Sun-induced climate variability in 1801, to the widespread interest in 1850.
In short, nobody has been able to demonstrate that the total energy reaching the earth from the Sun changes by more than about 0.1%. As early as 100 years ago we knew this figure was under 1%.
People try to link global warming to all sorts of things, for all sorts of deluded reasons. If you have the time, or find yourself engaging with people who dispute the consensus position, do put aside an hour or so for reading the The Modern Temperature Trend essay, or the history section of the IPCC AR4 - though I found Spencer & Weart much more engaging. A lot of people arguing against the consensus haven't read the history and often don't know that the arguments they're putting forth as if nobody ever thought of it before were discredited decades ago.
I can read that Binary, but i'm not a geek! Now let me get back to cleaning my mum's house, seen i'm 35 and still at home:( lol.
01001001 00100000 01101100 01101111 01110110 01100101 00100000 01001111 01101100 01101001 01110110 01100101 01110011
http://www.abc.net.au/rn/scienceshow/stories/2008/2388008.htm Ken McKraken, an aussie scientist, said that this would happen.
"Persistance is Fertile" - Me. I can quote myself if I want to.
The Sun provides for all our needs: heat, light, food, energy and beautiful reflections on a lake, and unlike some other gods, I can actually see the Sun. There is no praying or concept of good/bad and heaven/hell. There are no wars, no crusades and no one is burnt alive. - George Carlin.
Another Maunder Minimum elimination of sunspot activity might cool the climate by about -0.2C .
So.. if it gets colder then, by 1C, then, what do you say? You do understand that the wall street crisis was precipitated ultimately by a misplaced faith in computer models. You trot this stuff out as a fact and you have absolutely no control.
This is my sig.
I fail to see how that money is "blown". Energy efficiency *saves* money, while lowering CO2 emissions in the process
Both US candidates are looking at a carbon reduction deal, and for this reason I'd rather have Obama win so that Republicans won't get stuck with the fallout from this stupid self imposed disaster. When you talk about a 90% reduction in CO2 you are not talking about efficiency, you are talking about impoverishment. So, let's get that on the table right now. You are creating a great depression to save the planet. When people have less, that's called poverty.
fact that over said 50 years, the solar cycle has been uncorrelated with global temperature trends
Correlation doesn't mean anything. To me, the recent wall street meltdown is a repudiation of the use of computer models for forecasting. If the richest banks in the world cannot approximate differential equations to protect their investment then no one can and its back to square one.
This is my sig.
Look, a beautiful sunspot is going on today: http://sohowww.nascom.nasa.gov/data/realtime/eit_284/512/
When you talk about a 90% reduction in CO2
They do? Citation please.
you are not talking about efficiency, you are talking about impoverishment.
Oooh, I see, so the government is out to impoverish everyone.
How's that tinfoil hat fitting?
Correlation doesn't mean anything.
Umm... what? Correlation is a *necessary condition* to prove causation.
They do? Citation please
Daily Green : Gore calls for 90% CO2 Reduction
http://www.thedailygreen.com/environmental-news/latest/3083
Oooh, I see, so the government is out to impoverish everyone.
http://www.culturechange.org/cms/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=128&Itemid=33
And is not only environmental web site saying this. Most hard core enviros are in fact looking for policies that would impoverish humans to help bolster, gasp, the eco-system.
Umm... what? Correlation is a *necessary condition* to prove causation.
Correlation is only good if you think you have all the variables involved. If you are missing one, you could be completely screwed. Work with me on this thought experiment..
a -> b + 1
b -> when odd a then d
b -> when even a then c
c -> 4 or 5 randomly
d -> 4 or 5 randomly
If you have a system where you know about a, don't know about c, and are looking to infer b's behavior from a, you could conclude that they aren't correlated at all.
The case I came up with here might actually be not good, but I should think that for any given correlation detection algorithm, a case can be constructed that allows a genuinely causal relationship to escape it. The same sort of information laws that say that there can't ever be a universal virus checker also means that there can't ever be a universal cause detector.
This is my sig.
Daily Green : Gore calls for 90% CO2 Reduction
And Gore represents the entirety of the anti-pollution movement?
I think you need to do better than that.
Most hard core enviros
Right, wackos. So? Last I checked, they don't represent anything but the fringe environmentalists.
By this logic, I should rule out all of conservatism because of right-wing nutters like Rush.
Correlation is only good if you think you have all the variables involved.
What the hell are you talking about? If you're trying to prove that A causes B (in this case, sunspots cause GW), and you discover that there is no correlation between A and B, then A *cannot* be causing B. Period. End of story.
The case I came up with here might actually be not good, but I should think that for any given correlation detection algorithm, a case can be constructed that allows a genuinely causal relationship to escape it.
Uhh, no, you can't. If two events aren't correlated, then one *can't* be causing the other. That's part of the very fucking definition of causation. In order for A to cause B, there must be a correlation between the change in A and the change in B. Otherwise, there is no relationship between A and B, and therefore A does not cause B.
And Gore represents the entirety of the anti-pollution movement? I think you need to do better than that.
Gore carried the popular vote in 2000. You don't get much more a leadership of the anti-pollution movement than that.
What the hell are you talking about? If you're trying to prove that A causes B (in this case, sunspots cause GW), and you discover that there is no correlation between A and B, then A *cannot* be causing B. Period. End of story.
No, not at all. The problem with your statement is that for every function you come up with that shows correlation, I can come up with a case that shows that your correlation function would not detect. All you can credibly say is that based on the correlation detection functions you have used, there is no sunspot cause to global warming. Anything else is laughable.
Uhh, no, you can't. If two events aren't correlated, then one *can't* be causing the other. That's part of the very fucking definition of causation. In order for A to cause B, there must be a correlation between the change in A and the change in B. Otherwise, there is no relationship between A and B, and therefore A does not caus
You just missed the point of what I said and completely blew off my example. In my example, clearly A is "driving" the results of B, as it chooses C or D. Since you are not aware of or not even looking for C or D, then, you don't know what happens.
Let's take my system in the real world. Recall that A chooses C or D which drives B. All you have is instrumentation for A, a button, attached to a box, and B a measurement of a lightbulb connected to that box. You don't know what is in that box, or haven't thought to check. Unbeknownst to you, C and D inside the box are both radioactive decay detectors such that each time C or D gives off a particle, the light goes on. Inside the box, they are separated by a shielded door such that the emissions from only C or D are picked up by the detector driving the light. The door is controlled by A. So, if you push A, the door flips allowing C or D to drive the detector. Because C and D are completely random, whether you push A or not push A to you has absolutely no effect on the light as there is no correlation to it. But, inside the box, A is most certainly controlling the light.
This is my sig.
Is it just me or does #16 look like a phoenix rising up out of the ashes?
All you can credibly say is that based on the correlation detection functions you have used
Umm... "detection functions"? We're not talking about mystical heuristics, here. Computing correlation between two variables is, quite literally, basic statistical science.
Because C and D are completely random, whether you push A or not push A to you has absolutely no effect on the light as there is no correlation to it. But, inside the box, A is most certainly controlling the light.
All you're doing is introducing noise into the system. But over a long enough period of time, you can detect the signal, the correlation, in the noise. It's pretty easy, too. Leave the box for a year. Two years, without pressing the button. Then press it and hold. Why, lo and behold, the light starts going on and off. It's random, to be sure, but it starts happening.
But, you say, perhaps the first two years were just luck, and the light just happened not to blink that whole time. Well, sure, that may be, but statistically, given the rate of blinking after you push at, you can pretty safely surmise that pressing the button correlates to the light turning on and off. And by graphing the data you can demonstrate, quite trivially, that the probability of the light going on and off increases when the button is pressed. Guess what that is? *Correlation*.
But ignoring all this, the scenario you posit is "tricky" because the indicator, the light going on and off, has a lot of noise to it, thanks to the random behaviour. In the case of GW and sunspots, we're not talking about a system with a great deal of noise. We're talking about a steady trend that's clearly obvious in the temperature graphs. With that kind of data, it's absolutely trivial to demonstrate that the frequency of sunspots has absolutely no correlation to the data, as while the rate of sunspots increases and decreases on an 11-year cycle, the global temperature has steadily trended upward.
I'm not basing this on computer models, I'm basing it on observation. For a million years and multiple ice age cycles there has been correlation between changes in solar insolation due to changes in the orbital parameters of the Earth (modulo a couple supervolanoes, etc). This correlation also establishes an upper bound on the intrinsic variability of the Sun's output over the past million years since if you increase the intrinsic variability of the Sun enough you would destroy the correlation between the Earth's orbital parameters and the Ice Ages. That is experimental evidence, not computer models, and has nothing whatsoever to do with CDO valuation models.
So we can state that the effect you suggest of having the Sun dim enough to cause an Ice Age, has not been a factor in climate change for the past million years.
We also have experimental evidence which shows a decline in temperature of about 0.2C due to the Maunder Minimum when sunspot activity went away. That sets a reasonable bound on what to expect from solar variability.
So, unless you have some evidence of a fundamental change in the way the Sun has worked for the past million years, I'm heavily betting that the worst that could happen is a new Maunder Minimum with a decrease of about 0.2C, and what is vastly more likely is that the new sunspot cycle is going to start soon and all this will blow over.
And just because Outliers can happen doesn't mean that you get to make up whatever you want. The collapse of CDOs and their valuation models was foreseable (I've been in cash since 2004 and warren buffet saw this trainwreck coming), because it was obvious that their statistical basis was fundamentally flawed and that they had no way to price in a bad recession. There's no similar obvious flaw in solar models or our historical understanding of solar output.
And the fundamental mistake that was made in the financial sphere by everyone (once again) was assuming that "this time it is different". That mentality is behind every single financial bubble going back for as long as there are records. And arguing that we're suddenly going to enter an Ice Age due to some kind of solar minimum is "this time it is different" mentality. Not only are you assuming that this solar cycle will deviate from the pattern over the past several hundred years, but will exceed the pattern over a few thousand years and create a once-in-a-million years event, pluging the world into an Ice Age. Typically it doesn't work that, patterns and cycles tend to repeat. My money is on a mostly normal new solar cycle.