The Sun's Odd Behavior

gyrogeerloose writes "Most of us know about the sun's eleven-year activity cycle. However, relatively few other than scientists (and amateur radio operators) are aware that the current solar minimum has lasted much longer than expected. The last solar cycle, Cycle 24, bottomed out in 2008, and Cycle 25 should be well on its way towards maximum by now, but the sun has remained unusually quiescent with very few sunspots. While solar physicists agree that this is odd, the explanation remains elusive."

Comments

Global warming is the cause

[Anonymous Coward]

This is clear to everyone except the Denialists.

Re:Global warming is the cause

[binarylarry]

No it's worse than that.

ITS GALACTIC WARMING!

We're doomed, the end is nigh!

Re:Global warming is the cause

[Anonymous Coward]

Correlation is not causation!!

Our computer models will show causation. Coding starts on Tuesday.

Re:Global warming is the cause

[Bing Tsher E]

Worse yet, it's Anthrogenic Galactic Warming. It's all the fault of Western Civilization.

*pounds on bongo drum in protest*

Re:Global warming is the cause

[davester666]

The aliens realized we could hack their systems using TCP/IP, so instead they are just going to slowly boil us off the planet, then reduce the temperature and take all the resources after we die.

Re:Global warming is the cause

[Anonymous Coward]

Not to break off this delightful train of thought, but the problem is that the sun is getting cooler. A lot cooler. It's magnetic field is looking dismal. It hasn't thrown a single plane even slightly off course for years, when predictions were it should have caused at least a few disasters by now (at it's higher intensities it can block radio communcations for weeks, make every compass useless (including ill-shielded gyroscopic ones, so it can even make the instruments in older planes miss where the ground is. Confused instruments and the resulting panicking pilots do not make for safe air traffic), and in simulations it has destroyed every electricity grid on the planet in a matter of seconds). And every day it is cooling and weakening a bit more (this "bit" more meaning you could power Al Gore's electricity bill for a billion years with the "bit" of power that it loses in a nanosecond). It's not yet "oh no it's the end of the world" solar cooling, ... but it's confusing and if it doesn't stop, it won't be long for that.

And while everyone fully expects the sun to start it's next cycle any second now (it hasn't for 1.5 years now, only a few pathetic false starts), if for any reason it doesn't do so soon there won't be any more global warming for 2010-2020 than there was for 2000-2010, or it might even cool significantly more. And while global warming, in the worst cases, displaces a few coastal cities and makes jungles the size of continents out of deserts (esp. in conjunction with rising co2 levels), global cooling does indeed the reverse (deserts are created by cold, not warm, weather, and the process is sped up by low concentrations of co2 (today's "alarming" concentrations of co2 are still in the "I'd like 10 times that, please" level where plants are concerned)).

Needless to say, the IPCC's predictions are entirely dependant on the assumption that you could correct cesium clocks by checking the solar cycle.

Re:Global warming is the cause

[phoenix321]

Be sure to include stations on sinking sand ground from Hong Kong in the sea level measurements and metropolitan area warming in the temperatures. And tree ring proxy data from errm "selected" trees. Hide the decline and make sure your raw data is only peer-reviewed by YOUR peers.

Re:Global warming is the cause

[witch-doktor]

Smart people train themselves not to miss the forest for the trees.

Re:Global warming is the cause

[PhilipPeake]

You truly do need to be an Anonymous Coward to cite anything on realclimate,org as a reference.

Get a life.

Get an education.

Get better friends.

Re:Global warming is the cause

[shadowbearer]

First off, my last comment was a joke, and quite clearly marked as such (";-)"). That my post was modded flamebait, and quickly, tells me that someone is abusing the moderation system. This isn't the first time I've seen the symptoms, although it is the first time it has happened to me specifically.

Then let me speak up. The standing assumption is that "solar output" only varies by approx. 0.1%, and therefore has almost no effect on global warming and cooling. IOW, they say that the sun has no effect on how warm or cool the earth is. Yeah, right. That is so pathetically wrong, I can barely comprehend the lack of understanding of how the earth is heated that could result in such a ludicrous contention (with apologies for so badly paraphrasing Babbage).

We have extremely good data on solar radiance variation nowadays; it is not an "assumption". People who think that climate scientists don't take our direct measurements of solar variation into account have very little understanding of the science involved. Who are the "they" you are talking about?

so-called "climate scientists"

Oh, please. Your lack of education about the subject is showing.

assume that measured solar irradiance is in one-to-one correspondence with energy transport from sun to earth.

No, they don't.

What about poorly or incorrectly measured wavelengths of solar output?

Which what? Unless you would prefer we invalidate of our current understanding of EM radiation, we have to accept that what we know about energy transport in that realm holds. Since our understanding of the subject also underlies our technology - including the computer you are typing on, the lights you read by, solar cell technology, lasers, etc, it's an incredible stretch to assume that we are that wrong.

What about magnetic coupling from sun to earth? What about other forms of radiation, particles/solar wind streaming from the sun to earth?

The magnetic field interactions between the sun and earth are fairly well known and have already been shown to have a much, much smaller effect on the temperature of the atmosphere than direct radiance does.

If there are other forms of radiation coming from the sun that we can't detect, it's foolish to speculate about their effects.

What about the effect of CMEs hitting or not hitting the earth?

Since we've been observing the effects of CME impacts for nearly a half a century...

I may be _very_ wrong, but in the little reading I've done I've seen no mention of such effects.

Then do some more reading, and get a decent educational background in the hard sciences. I did more than twenty years ago and as an avid amateur astronomer I follow the field rather closely.

One thing that bothers me is it seems (not all, but) a bunch of these "experts" have studied these questions just a deeply as I have, which is to say, hardly at all.

Which "experts" would you be referring to? The tens of thousands of them who have devoted years to decades of their lives studying the subject?

and they all start screaming of the coming Ice Age like back in the '70's

A few papers and a lot of media attention from ignorant journalists? You really do need to do some more reading - this particular part of the subject has been addressed literally thousands of times in the last five years just right here on this website, and given your low UID, you have certainly had the opportunity to read the rebuttals.

Look; I don't know you, and I don't mean to be insulting, but it's obvious to me that you don't have the faintest clue what you are talking about. I've been following this subject for nearly a quarter of a century, I have a good background in physics, chemistry, and mathematics, and I read as many of the papers published in the field as I can find t

Enough data?

[fenring]

I almost know nothing on the subject, but I'm thinking the 11 year cycle was empiricaly determined. One has to wonder do we have enough data on the subject compared to the age of the sun?

Re:Enough data?

[quanticle]

Its a good point, but, ever since Galileo observed that there were sunspots, scientists have observed the sun to be on a fairly regular 11 year cycle of maxima and minima. So, until now, the scientific consensus was that the 11 year cycle was due to some kind of underlying fluctuation in the sun itself. Now that theory has to be revised (or maybe even rejected entirely) as this prolonged solar minimum continues.

Re:Enough data?

[clintp]

Or maybe there some longer cycle of...cycles ;) With the Sun now manifesting a shift of this ubercycle, which will give "short" cycle of different lenght.

Epicycles! Ptolemy was right, just not about the planets.

Re:Enough data?

[sznupi]

It's cycles all the way...up?

Re:Enough data?

[Bobke]

That is not entirely correct. There is a period after Galileo's discovery called the Maunder Minimum where sunspots "became exceedingly rare", from wikipedia:

The Maunder Minimum (also known as the prolonged sunspot minimum) is the name used for the period roughly spanning 1645 to 1715 by John A. Eddy in a landmark 1976 paper published in Science titled "The Maunder Minimum",[1] when sunspots became exceedingly rare, as noted by solar observers of the time.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maunder_Minimum

So, is it really odd behavior?

Re:Enough data?

[The Hatchet]

Well, all this time we have known about different cycles, but we don't know why they happen. That is a problem. The sun is really just a huge fucking fusion reactor, and having any kind of regularity is confusing. When we understand the layers, processes, and everything else about the sun, it might make a bit more sense.

Re:Enough data?

[BitZtream]

We define odd as anything we haven't witnessed directly before.

Global warming is a prime example. Theres plenty of scientific evidence that we're in just another normal cycle and the heat isn't even close to being abnormal, but since we've never actually witnessed them directly, certain groups of people freak out and think the end of the world is near.

Re:Enough data?

[X0563511]

So perhaps there are two (or more) close, but different, mechanisms at place - and the resulting interference gives us the large cycles.

Think about what happens when you combine a 440Hz tone with a 439.5Hz tone.

Re:Enough data?

[techno-vampire]

Given that the Maunder minimum led to global cooling, killing off (every last man, woman and child) in the -then- populated Greenland, almost a million people, and caused a number of famines everywhere else, I sure hope so

That's not only wrong, it's nonsense! First, the Norse Settlement died out in the early to middle Fifteenth Century, two hundred years before the Maunder Minimum or the journal you cite. Second, the colony never exceeded a population of about 4500 or so. Not only couldn't the land have supported the million you claim, if you tried to stuff that many people into the sites of the two settlements, they'd be standing on each other's toes.

Re:Enough data?

[x_IamSpartacus_x]

The journals literally end mid-sentence with the author describing how it's "suddenly warm", after having lost animals, the city, his family and finally his life, in a process taking years.

Sheesh how slow did this guy write?

Re:Enough data?

[AliasMarlowe]

...ever since Galileo observed that there were sunspots, scientists have observed the sun to be on a fairly regular 11 year cycle of maxima and minima...

Where did that "fairly regular" assertion come from?
The cycle is on average just under 11 years in duration, but is somewhat irregular. Individual cycles have varied between 9 and 14 years in duration in the couple of dozen cycles for which adequate observations are available. See http://www.infiniteunknown.net/wp-content/uploads/2009/06/sunspot-observations.png or http://odin.physastro.mnsu.edu/~eskridge/astr102/bfly.gif for example. The variations in sunspot cycle duration do not appear to be related in any simple way to the variations in amplitude.

Re:Enough data?

[RSKennan]

We clearly don't know enough about the sun. It's too bad no one's thought of a way to take core samples...

I've got it. If we could only place some sort of "rig" on the sun, with a kind of "pipe"...we could pump solar material to Earth for further study.

I know what you're saying. The Sun's really, really hot. We could pump the solar plasma to a place that was already used to warmth. Like, say the Gulf coast of the US.

Someone make me the president of something.

Re:Enough data?

[pz]

... the scientific consensus was that the 11 year cycle was due to some kind of underlying fluctuation in the sun itself. Now that theory has to be revised (or maybe even rejected entirely) as this prolonged solar minimum continues.

I would seriously doubt that anyone is questioning whether the fluctuations are from an internal process.

We can barely -- barely -- predict weather on the *surface* of our globe for a period of a few days. We can't even accurately predict how many storms there will be in a given cyclone / hurricane season yet, and that's one of the biggest periodic features. To say that we have a good enough understanding (and therefore can predict) what amounts to three dimensional weather in a volume six orders of magnitude larger than the earth to be able to predict even the coarsest features to eleven years is mistaken hubris at best.

We have a few hundred years' worth of sunspot observation. Is it so shocking to think that there might be patterns that are on a longer timescale than our stretch of observations would reveal? Personally, I see no reason to think that the underlying mechanism is not still entirely within the sun. It certainly might be the case that it is due to external influences, but it would seem improbable.

Re:Enough data?

[the_bard17]

So then you end up having a leak or a big bad explosion, so that the "rig" "sinks"? Then you spend over a month trying to solve the problem while the Sun leaks all over the world?

No thanks. The oil leak in the Gulf is bad enough. I don't to see what happens when we hand you the Sun and a really big pipe.

Re:Enough data?

[RSKennan]

Wow. I never thought of it that way. Sorry guys.

Someone call the Nobel committee and tell them that the deal's off, and the teamsters who were planning to start work on Monday to tell them that Christmas is going to suck again this year. Kids need to learn that.

You're a hard man, doing hard things, the_bard. I respect you for making this decision. Could you break it to 'lil Barak Obama though? I just keep thinking about how his eyes lit up when I told him my plan... and I don't have the heart.

Re:Enough data?

[Mspangler]

"That's not only wrong, it's nonsense! First, the Norse Settlement [wikipedia.org] died out in the early to middle Fifteenth Century, two hundred years before the Maunder Minimum... "

You are correct. Although the northern Norse settlement died out first about 100 years before the southern one. They went down due to the same cooling trend that hit Europe in the 1300's.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Famine_of_1315–1317

"The Great Famine of 1315–1317 (occasionally dated 1315-1322) was the first of a series of large scale crises that struck Europe early in the fourteenth century, causing millions of deaths over an extended number of years and marking a clear end to an earlier period of growth and prosperity during the eleventh to thirteenth centuries. "

Re:Enough data?

[gstoddart]

Think about what happens when you combine a 440Hz tone with a 439.5Hz tone.

It goes all the way to 11?

Re:Enough data?

[dpastern]

400 years is NOT enough data, not when looking at a star that might have a lifespan of nearly 10 billion years. All stars are variable to some degree, and 11 years is a very tiny period.

Dave

PS If the sun is cooling, (yeah right!), then the amount of radiated heat we receive will drop, and that means our core mean temperature will also drop. If that is the case, then why are our temperatures rising? Maybe there is something to global warming being man made ;-)

Anthropomorphic

[Anonymous Coward]

All these solar power devices are using the sun up.

Re:Anthropomorphic

[kestasjk]

Seriously though; supposing (just because we're being crazy and ridiculous) that global warming is happening, wouldn't it be a concern that the next solar cycle will be starting later, reducing only the short-term effects of a problem that is only significant in the long-term (and without delaying/decreasing those long-term effects)?

Put another way: Supposing the temperature is going to be X degrees higher by 2YYY, wouldn't it be much better for the increase to be steady and predictable?

Re:Anthropomorphic

[a2wflc]

some (many) pro-agw people have been saying for a couple of years that man-made co2 has caused temps to increase but the lack of solar activity has negated the increase so we don't see an increase in measured temps. People who want agw to be true say "yeah, that sounds good". People on the other side say "that's convenient". Fortunately there are scientists on both sides who say "this needs to be explained and tested (empirically as well as with models"

Re:Anthropomorphic

[Abcd1234]

some (many) pro-agw people have been saying for a couple of years that man-made co2 has caused temps to increase but the lack of solar activity has negated the increase so we don't see an increase in measured temps.

Pity that statement is, itself, simply false. This was the warmest decade on record, period. Furthermore, most of the warmest years occurred in the last ten years. Can you cherry-pick you results to find outliers in the 90s, so as to make the current decade look not so bad? Sure. But that's tantamount to lying, plain and simple.

Re:Anthropomorphic

[Alef]

some (many) pro-agw people have been saying for a couple of years that man-made co2 has caused temps to increase but the lack of solar activity has negated the increase so we don't see an increase in measured temps.

But we are seeing an increase in temperature.

People who want agw to be true say "yeah, that sounds good".

I don't think anyone in their right mind wants AGW to be happening.

Okay, who broke the Sun?

[TheRaven64]

I don't know, you'd think a massive ball of fusion fire wouldn't need warning signs, but apparently some joker still managed to break it. For future reference, the Sun does not contain any user-servicable parts. Please try to remember this, or you will invalidate the warranty.

Re:Okay, who broke the Sun?

[TubeSteak]

I don't know, you'd think a massive ball of fusion fire wouldn't need warning signs, but apparently some joker still managed to break it.

And to think that Consumer Reports told me the 3 billion year warranty was a scam.
It was only $5 a month!

Re:Okay, who broke the Sun?

[ducomputergeek]

My money is on the oil cartel. They had to silence the competition of energy from the sun.

2012

[mederbil]

I see what's going on here. The Mayan were right!

I think you're off by a bit

[Daetrin]

On the one hand, outside the kind of geeky population represented by slashdot, I really doubt a lot of people know about the 11 year cycle. On the other hand, I've seen othee articles about the recent abnormally low period, and the subect also seems to come up frequently on the recurring global warming debate that seems to crop up in every third article. (Which isn't to say that more information about the subject isn't wanted of course.)

Re:I think you're off by a bit

[Mashiki]

We had an extreme low solar output about 400 years ago too, and no one has a clue what caused that. Except most of the world was an ice cube at the time. Now for those of us here in Ontario, we're in a mini-heatwave. But the rest of the country? Below average, last I heard even the easties were hoping for spring to start, they're still getting snow.

Conspiracy!

[ultranova]

The explanation is simple: the Sun is actually getting hotter, but the climatologists, in their conspiracy to frame things like the Earth was getting warmer due to greenhouse gasses, have forged all records to make it seem like the Sun was at low activity instead. That way the warming climate is blamed on human activity.

I will consider all replies and downmods to this post as further evidence of the Anthropogenic Global Warming Conspiracy. If you disagree with me, you're obvilously a paid chill or a poor, deluded fool. Or maybe you're just an evil ecoterrorist who wants to destroy our economy despite knowing better.

Go on, conspirators! Give me your best shot!

Re:Conspiracy!

[MacDork]

You're wasting your breath dave. He's a coward and ultranova is trolling. Don't let it bother you. Here's some ammo for you next time (^_^)

• The missing carbon
• Graph showing ice age with 12 times more CO2 than today.
• Polar bears
• Ethanol
• Ethanol again
• Climate cultist whack job from "Whale wars" believes quote We need to radically and intelligently reduce human populations to fewer than one billion.
• NASA's chief on global warming.
• The IPCC get their their asses handed to them in front of Congress in 1997. A personal favorite is this quote:

  The observed warming since the late 19th Century has only been 0.5 degrees Celsius, or less than one-third of the predicted value. Critics argued, as I did before this committee, that there would have to be a dramatic reduction in the forecast of future warming in order to reconcile the facts and the hypotheses.

  By 1995, in its second full assessment of climate change, the IPCC admitted the validity of the critics' position: `When increases in greenhouse gases only are taken into account, most climate models produce a greater mean warming than has been observed to date, unless a lower climate sensitivity to the greenhouse effect is used. There is growing evidences that increases in sulfate aerosols are partially counteracting the warming due to increases in greenhouse gases.'

  Let me translate this statement. It means either it is not going to warm up as much as we said it would or something is hiding the warming. I predict that every attempt will be made to demonstrate the latter before admitting that the former is true.

My links are getting old it seems. I have a folder full of them, but a lot seems to have been eradicated by the cult of climate change. Feel free to use this stuff in your next big flame war, but I think you'll find that arguing with these idiots is pointless. Your best bet is to put together a well reasoned, informative essay... then wait for a related story and top post. You may be marked troll, but it doesn't matter. People like myself who don't agree with /.s group think tend to read at troll +6 anyway. In fact, I would have never seen your response if you had not been marked troll above... anyhow, we'll mod you up if you're hit with -1 disagree mod.

The release cycle has changed

[Anonymous Coward]

because Sun was acquired by Oracle.

Re:Anonymous Coward

[binarylarry]

Actually, I think this might just be Captain Larry Ellison closing the deal with the Sun.

Sun misbehaves, humans angry

[amn108]

The Sun has better and more important things to do than to adhere to our primitive line of thought.

The following analogy comes to mind:

http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/the_search.png

Easy to fix

[Anonymous Coward]

Odd, I just met a an eccentric young man with a bow tie, tweed jacket and braces. He owned a small wooden blue box (about the size of a beach hut) and he said that this was a harbinger of doom and that the sun would go out if he didn't do something about it. He dashed off with a pretty young female in tow....but it's pretty cold and overcast now, so maybe the end is nigh!

Re:Easy to fix

[painandgreed]

>braces

What?

Braces are the proper term (ie British, eg Boots & Braces of Skinhead culture) for suspenders, or at least the type that don't clip onto your pants but button. I suspect that is what the OP is saying.

Solar cycles have always varied

[Alrescha]

Over the past few hundred years, the solar cycle has regularly varied from as short as 9 years to as long as 14*. The tone of the summary (and the S.A. article) make this sound as if it is a new thing.

* http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_solar_cycles

A.

Preggers?

[Ogive17]

If the sun missed it's last "cycle", maybe one of the "probes" used to "explore" forgot to use adequate "shielding" and now the sun is pregnant.

Re:Preggers?

[Dunbal]

That would certainly add a whole different line of thought as to how stars are born. I guess we'll have to wait for the offspring to see who the likely parent was. I'm looking at YOU, Jupiter...

Re: Plants are the cause

[clarkkent09]

Don't you know that plants have been using the Sun's energy for millions of years, no wonder there is nothing left! The solution is simple: burn the forests.

And then it really got odd

[dmomo]

When James Gosling left.

It's Global Warming

[MikeV]

Darn, someone beat me to the punchline. So. Did anyone check to see if it's still plugged in?

Re:It's Global Warming

[zephvark]

Oh fer gosh sakes. It doesn't need to be plugged in. It's solar-powered.

Re: Plants are the cause

[Shikaku]

No, the sun isn't having its cycle because it's pregnant. DUH.

(Also am I the only one who thought Sun as in the company?)

Livingston and Penn tell an interesting tale

[SockPuppet_9_5]

If you want a solar story that adds a bit more mystery to the rehash of the current solar tale in the linked article, google up Livingston and Penn about the observations that the sunspot frequency is diminishing. In the past, the solar flux would match up to the sunspot number closely. Beginning some twenty some odd years ago, this century long curve matching parted ways. To sum up the mystery, in ten years time, solar cycles will continue. It's just there won't be any more sunspots. (a little hyperbole, but not as much as you think)

Effects on the weather

[Retron]

One of my hobbies is meteorology and as I'm in the UK there's no shortage of discussion about the weather!

Over on the various weather forums we've been discussing the solar minimum for the past couple of years, as in the UK at least there's a strong correlation between climatic cold spells and low sunspot activity (the Little Ice Age a few hundred years ago coincided with the Maunder minimum, for example). There was another minimum in the early 1800s, again coinciding with a colder period in the UK climate. It was during this time that Charles Dickens popularised the idea of a White Christmas, something which hasn't occured in 40 years here (30 miles east of London).

The effects are pretty immediate in climating terms, with an onset of years rather than decades. Although yes, the Sun's becoming more active there's been a lot of discussion as to whether the low solar activity was responsible for the coldest winter in 17 years in England (and longer than that in Scotland).

The Sun's effect on the climate is probably beyond any numerical weather prediction models at the moment but it'd be fascinating to see what the effects would be if we were to experience a prolonged period of much lower solar activity than normal!

Two Techniques

[Roger W Moore]

Off the top of my head I can think of two ways to put a firm upper and lower boundary on the sun's age:

• Upper bound from the ratio of U235 and U238. In supernovae these are produced in roughly equal quantities and each has a half life measured in billions of years. Currently the Uranium on Earth is about 99.3% U-238 and 0.7% U-235 so, using the different half-lives, you can calculate the age of the supernovae which preceded the solar systems formation as about 6 billion years ago so the sun must be younger than this.
• Lower bound from the age of the Earth itself. Again radio dating techniques used on rocks put the age of the planet as about 4.5 billion years so the sun must be older than this.

Combine this with simulations about how long it would take an Earth sized mass to form an cool and you can probably come up with reasonably accurate value for the age of the sun. Of course this is just off the top of my head - there may be better and more accurate techniques which geologists and astophysicists have developed.

Re:Two Techniques

[WalksOnDirt]

Upper bound from the ratio of U235 and U238. In supernovae these are produced in roughly equal quantities and each has a half life measured in billions of years.

How do you know that U235 and U238 are produced in roughly equal abundance? This is not generally true of isotopes of other elements. I'm a little doubtful that the production rates can be derived accurately enough from theory to produce a useful age limit.

The amount of helium in the Sun provides a limit on the total energy it has radiated, assuming we're right about how fusion works. Combine that with the observed total radiation of the Sun and you can get what I think is a better crude limit on the Sun's age. You can do better by dating certain meteorites, which appear to have been created at about the same time as the Sun.

Wrong

[Roger W Moore]

Native Americans have long known the sun to be on an (average) FIFTEEN (15) year cycle.

They are demonstrably wrong. The data is unequivocal that the cycle has been 11 years in length for the past several hundred years. Look at the plot in this article. There is no way that this is in any way consistent with a 15 years cycle. There may be other, longer cycles which the sun goes though - certainly there are multiple cycles for Earth's ice ages - but there is no evidence whatsoever to support a 15 year cycle.

de Vries Cycle?

[dammy]

We are currently over do for the de Vries (Suess) 205-210 year cycle. Hopefully it will just be a Dalton Minimum...

Re: Plants are the cause

[Anonymous Coward]

I thought The Sun, as in the newspaper.

Oblig. Irrelevant Mayan Reference

[Torodung]

Wait. Which b'ak'tun are we in again? Time to invent an enormous stone time machine and bug out, folks. LOL.

--
Toro

The reason.

[Cr0vv]

The reason why the Sun's cycle is lasting longer than expected has been known by the astronomers and astrophysicists for many years, it's just that there is a news blackout on the subject. Have you also noticed that we have had record breaking weather around the World now for several years? Now, there is a gag order on reporting the weather records being broken. How about the Volcanoes, have you noticed the increase? I'm not just talking about Eyjafjallajoekull in Iceland, there 2 now active in Ecuador right now alone. How about the sensational (unexplained) sky swirl in Norway? Odd, don't you think? What's up with the Sink holes in the Eastern U.S. and how about the melting glaciers and pole ice? These and many more unusual Earth events are happening but the public doesn't really get to find out, as the USGS, U.S.Navy or NASA control your access to the information. Please, don't bother with the IOCC status quo pablum they've been pushing for years. Do you think that C.C. is gonna explain the Norway? The Volcanoes now? Take that out of the equation. I've been telling this story since '08, it is a highly magnetic small brown dwarf in the solar system with it's South pole pointed at the Sun for the last few years sucking out the magnetron particles and softening the Sun's normal cycle. Soon it will break free of the ecliptic, and Slashdot will be no more. Survivable though. subscribe to my newsletter to get the details. Chris Thomas.

Re: Plants are the cause

[TheRaven64]

Also am I the only one who thought Sun as in the company?

Given that the Sun logo appears along side the story, I'd imagine that at least one Slashdot editor had the same thought...