Slashdot Mirror
Sunspots Return
We're emerging from the longest, deepest sunspot drought since 1913 (we discussed its depths here) with the appearance of a robust group of sunspots over the weekend. Recently we discussed a possible explanation for the prolonged minimum. The Fox News article quotes observer Michael Buxton of Ocean Beach, Calif.: "This is the best sunspot I've seen in two years." jamie found a NASA site where you can generate a movie of the recent sunspot's movement — try selecting the first image type and bumping the resolution to 1024. The magnetic field lines are clearly visible.
No, the magnetic field is real but invisible. Magnetic field lines, on the other hand, are simply a mechanism for representing (e.g., on paper) magnetic field orientation and strength. The lines themselves are not real. (Compare with, for example, a topographical map. The height of the earth's surface is real, but the lines on a topographical map are a representation of height; they're not real.)
Go check it out at http://www.solarcycle24.com/
This guy's everything about the sun that one can track. In particular, he has an image of the sun on the upper left hand corner that shows how pathetic this sunspot group.
I wouldn't say the sunspot drought is over, until there is sustained progress.
This is my sig.
Magnetic field lines are not really like the lines on a topographic map. The lines of a magnetic field represent paths from high potential to low potential, rather than delineations of equal-potential regions.
It's more like a river. The river flows perpendicular to the lines on the topographic map, from high to low, and its "line" is quite real, while the lines on the topographic map are not. Thus it is an unfair comparison to say magnetic field lines are "imaginary" in the same sense that contour lines on a map are. You cannot physically demonstrate the contour lines on a map, whereas you can demonstrate (with water or iron filings, as the case may be) a path from high potential to low potential.
IOW, inasmuch as there is a very real path that a drop of water will take when placed at any specific point on a 3-D surface, there is also a very real path that an electron will follow from a specific starting point in a 3-D electromagnetic field.
The lines themselves are imaginary, but they are real paths. Of course, there are infinitely many of the paths, densely packed, and so we pick only a few representative paths and call them the "magnetic field lines".
Alexander Peter Kristopeit bought his basement from his mommy for one dollar.
I saw the tag but haven't seen this explicitly mentioned yet: one theory is that lack of sunspots causes Earth to warm up. (There is a very strong negative correlation between sunspot activity and temperature on Earth.
Nope. People have been looking for correlations between sunspots and weather for years, but never found much. If there's a correlation, it's weak. http://www.crh.noaa.gov/fsd/astro/sunspots.php
To the extent that there's any correlation, however, it tends to the the opposite of what you said-- positive correlation between sunspots and temperature, not negative. The "Maunder Minimum" period of very few or no sunspots occurred about the same time as the "Little Ice Age" of cold temperatures. (But note that a single period of low temperatures ocurring during a period of low sunspots, however extended, does not mean statistically significance).
If that correlation were indeed true, then the recent solar minimum would have been correlated with low temperatures, and hence would have been masking some of the effect of global warming-- in other words, that greenhouse-effect warming is actually occurring to a greater extent than the data shows.
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
Because local climate suddenly equates to global mean temperature? Huh... go figure...
I was wrong about the correlation being negative, but I was not wrong about the correlation. But one thing pointed out in your video, that solar activity has not corresponded to temperature in just the last few years, is totally meaningless. Long-term trends are the only ones that matter. And as for long-term predictions, nothing comes close to beating the analysis of sunspots. The science is good. Very good.
I'll see your YouTube video, and raise you one:
video
video
And a whole bunch of articles:
article
article
article
article
article
article