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The Sun's 'Quiet Period' Explained
Arvisp writes with this excerpt from the BBC:
"Solar physicists may have discovered why the Sun recently experienced a prolonged period of weak activity. The most recent so-called 'solar minimum' occurred in December 2008. Its drawn-out nature extended the total length of the last solar cycle — the repeating cycle of the Sun's activity — to 12.6 years, making it the longest in almost 200 years. The new research suggests that the longer-than-expected period of weak activity may have been linked to changes in the way a hot soup of charged particles called plasma circulated in the Sun."
it was worried about Larry Ellison too...
What you saying? This is not caused by global warming?
You want solar maximum? No soup for you !
Divide a cake by zero. Is it still a cake?
This is slashdot, not preschool. You can use your big-boy words with us.
A slashdotter who didn't build his own computer is like a Jedi who didn't build his own lightsaber.
ahem like Intel :P
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Oh my gawd! Solar cooling! Won't someone thinking of the children! This is obviously the work of man and industry. According to all known publications on global warming, any deviation from historic trends means man is completely behind the deviation.
We should immediately start nuking the sun to spur increased solar activity.
I sincerely hope moderators understand tongue in cheek humor.
What's this nonsense about inactivity? The most recent java update I can find is July 7, 2010. What's that? You mean there's more than one sun?
The teachers will crack any minute, purple monkey dishwasher.
It is because Oracle was buying them. Things usually quiet down until the merger is complete.
Sheesh!
We're all going to die and you're making jokes? We're facing the biggest mass extinction event since dinosaurs discovered gasolene... AND YOU'RE JOKING ABOUT IT?
MODERATORS -- MOD THE NON BELIEVER DOWN!
Of course this 'solar minimum' had absolutely NO effect on Earth, at all. Average global temperature changes are still only man-made phenomena.
Oracle's massive activity can't be explained.
Generally after I've spent a night spewing out hot liquids and gasses, I need a day or two to sleep it off. I can imagine plasma makes for an even worse hangover.
The fact is that global warming is caused by the earth not letting go of the heat it collects from the sun. Thus it seems obvious that this solar activity is caused by the earth stealing too much heat and actually cooling the sun measurably. Soon it'll be a cold husk all due to the fossil-fuel burning SUVs that people insist on driving.
You have destroyed the solar system BP, I hope you are happy!
[/sarcasm]
I had just put this town to Oracle's takeover of The Sun. Guess that's why I'm not an astronomer.
Carousel is a lie!
'... may have been linked to changes in the way a hot soup of charged particles called plasma circulated in the Sun.
So why did the "hot soup of charged particles called plasma" change in the way that they circulated?
Great minds think alike; fools seldom differ.
Probably Photino birds wreaking havoc with the sun.
Actually, there was talk of that back in the 1970s. I don't remember if there was any serious science behind it or not. It could have just been a general cultural concern because of all of the fears of a Nuclear Winter.
- doug
The headline, and the first few paragraphs make it sound like this is a solved problem: theories were proposed, experiments were done, results were verified and a conclusion was concluded.
Instead, what actually happened is completely murky. There is no mention of which satellites were used to gather data, or which organization collected it, or how data was used to support the conclusions. It seems that some people ran some computer simulations where they could replicate the current cycle by changing some parameters of the solar conveyor belt. But that's a guess, because the article says nothing. And to really make the article useless, there's the obligatory counter-point from a random scientist who says something completely different, again without any explanation of why.
Journalists ought to learn that science reporting is not like Entertainment or even Politics reporting. It doesn't really matter who said what, but only why they say and how they came to the conclusions. I'm not holding my breath though.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
may have been linked to changes in the way a hot soup of charged particles called plasma circulated in the Sun
Um, yeah, and the recent heat wave in the western part of the U.S. may have been linked to changes in the way a hot soup of particles called atoms circulated in the atmosphere...
Seriously. /. needs to stop voting dreck into the stream and start doing real story selection and summary editing. Because the value added per editorial second is dropping like a rock.
whenever some private interests need an excuse for something they are doing, a 'cycle' is invented. thanks to 'think thank's and private 'research institution's. thats privatization of science, and thought process for ya.
Read radical news here
How long will it take until the Sun enters the "quiet period" again? How "loud" will it be until then?
Yes, it's sarcasm. Deal with it!
The exact same team predicted a huge solar cycle 24 in 2006.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2006/03/060307084500.htm
"The scientists gained additional confidence in the forecast by showing that the newly developed model could simulate the strength of the past eight solar cycles with more than 98 percent accuracy."
In the 70s it wasn't clear which effect was winning, cooling due to aerosal particles (soot) in the atmosphere or warming due to carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases. It turns out that warming was winning which became clear in the late 70s and 80s. There was no consensus at any time saying that global cooling would be a problem long term. However, this debate did get mixed together with the discovery of the orbital cycles which cause the ice ages which predict another one thousands of years from now . So you got some popular science articles warning about global cooling and a new ice age.
Regardless of the quality of your material, be prepared to be a frequent guest on F0X News.
Table-ized A.I.
Finally some evidence to prove my new theory I will soon propose: Global Cooling.
You're late to the party. They changed it to be "climate change" some time ago so no matter if the globe "cools" or "warms", some people can equally claim the sky is falling and push through their unrelated political agendas.
The sun is 4.6 BILLION years old and we are concerned with a couple of years difference in the Solar Cycle? How many of our empirical evidence cycles have we measured in this sort of accuracy? The whole cycle measures within 2.3e-8% of its lifespan and we are surprised that we haven't got the accuracy narrowed down? What other natural phenomenon have we measured to this accuracy cause I would really like to see the ruler that was used...
Grow up. Trolling doesn't add to the discussion. just because you're a scientifically illerate fool who puts your politics before science doesn't mean
A) that AGW doesn't exist
B) that scientists don't know how the sun works and haven't already accounted for it's energy variations
C) that people who disagree with you are doing so for political reasons
D) that anyone has ever tried to blame everything on global warming
E) that weather is climate and climate is weather
F) that your back yard is representative of the real world
Hint: at the bottom of that solar minimum we were STILL WARMING, though we did detetct a slowing of the warming trend that can be directly connected to the lowering activity. a slowing, not a cessation of warming, not a reversal.
It's a good thing that the sun has no effect on Global Warming, as specifically commented on by the GW supporters, or else they would have had to explain the sunspot problems before now. Because of these great scientists, everyone now knows that the sun has no effect on the temperature of the Earth.
Who would win this election: Andrew Weiner vs Andrew Weiner's weiner.
Finally some evidence to prove my new theory I will soon propose: Global Cooling.
You're going to have to wait a few thousand millenia though before people will believe you. You're just a little ahead of your time.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
"Why" is the question that children repeatedly ask until adults get bored. All science can do is move one step at a time, answering one set of questions so that the next set of "why"s are visible.
Ultimately you get back to "god did it" or "everything exploded from nothing". Neither of which are enlightening.
Deleted
That's an odd reason to change the name, seeing as how the globe has only kept getting warmer.
You know, how our Carbon emissions are actually weakening the sun. Because we know humans have more impact on the environment that a hot glowing ball of gas in the sky.
arent you the easy to fool moron then ...
...
there cycles being in nature does NOT mean that 'private research institutions' can suddenly start inventing numerous 'cycles' just in a decade, whereas there have been only a set amount of cycles invented since the start of scientific revolution.
iiiirrronically, these sudden discovery outbreaks coincide with the start of talk about how reckles industries hurt the planet
Read radical news here
There was also concern that widespread use of supersonic transport would add to the problem and force global cooling.
Solar physicists may have discovered why the Sun recently experienced a prolonged period of weak activity.
Conclusion: It's gonna blow! EVERYBODY RUN!
it's really more of a hot ragout, so there you go, the fancy words we actually use.
You can't handle the truth.
Phew! For a second there I thought you were about to announce you'd beaten me to *my* new theory that I will soon propose: Global Worming.
The Quirkz Handbook of Self-Improvement for People Who Are Already Pretty Okay
...is not the worst thing that can happen. Particularly when we are talking astrophysics.
I prefer the option where it IS "our" fault compared to one where the cause of trouble is completely out of our hands.
Cause if we can break it, we can probably fix it to. Not easily, but there is a chance.
Fixing something caused by the Sun... well... not this civilization.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
No, the change was because people mistaking localized effects for proof that the globe wasn't warming. Some spots might see lower average temperatures due to changes in cloud cover, rain fall, etc. while the overall global temperature is still higher.
For all the people that think that global warming is some conspiracy, publish a reproducible proof in a journal that shows it. You will win a nobel prize and a lifetime of funding.
I am not in anyway affiliated with Max Cannon
that this had something to do with an IPO?
They changed it to be "climate change" some time ago so no matter if the globe "cools" or "warms", some people can equally claim the sky is falling and push through their unrelated political agendas.
It's nice to hear from Slashdot's "partisan dumbass" constituency, but that has nothing to do with the history of the term.
"Global warming" was first used, AFAIK, by Wally Broecker in 1975, but for most of the 1970s and 1980s, most papers on the subject didn't use the term. "Climate change" was sometimes used, and note that the "CC" in the abbreviation IPCC (founded in 1988) refers to "climate change".
"Global warming" entered the public vocabulary mostly in 1988 after James Hansen's testimony to Congress. Scientists continued to talk about "climate change" among themselves, but increasingly used "global warming" when speaking to the public, as that's what was being used in newspapers.
After increased concern about thermohaline circulation collapse (which can cause localized cooling in response to overall warming), public confusion between weather and climate (a cold winter doesn't mean the globe isn't warming), and realization that the public was ignoring important non-temperature impacts (such as precipitation changes), scientists reverted back to "climate change" when speaking to the public. But, again, amongst themselves they have pretty much always used the term "climate change".
Oracle.
Karma fed to this user will be promptly burnt. Be warned; be wary.
...and order Sex on the Beach.
So, what you're saying is...
Cracking jokes on slashdot is an indicator of balls of steel and/or bulletproof karma?
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
The quiet period is legally required prior to the sun's planned IPO
Maybe that's because every single "bad" weather event is publicized by the media, politicians, so-called "scientists" as proof of global warming.
Note that the vast majority of that "warming" is at higher latitudes where the instrument record is sparse and the temperatures are interpolated over great distances. Unless you think assigning a value for an area via a thermometer that is 1200 km away is "robust". To put that in perspective, that's like saying "I can tell you the temperature in Philadelphia by using a thermometer in Chicago". Or, for those on the other side of the pond, "I can tell you the temperature in Stockholm by using a thermometer in Paris".
As the CRU emails have shown, when you have a small group of reviewers who can effectively dictate what is and is not published, there is little chance of a contrarian, yet robust, paper from ever seeing the light of day. One could choose to self-publish, but then those same gate-keepers cry "It's not in a peer-reviewed journal!".
Recent increases in electricity generated by solar power.
Prolonged Solar minimum.
Is nobody else seeing the Correlation here? Solar panels are stripping the sun of it's plasma-soup.
Its funny how anything that debunks GW is labeled troll....
Oh great, cue another global warming flamefest...
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
What I want to know is when its time to key up the 10 meter rig
I guess I should get me some anti-corrosive, self-lubricating underwear for may steely balls then.
Or should that be underware?
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
You can't win a Nobel prize with research that threatens carbon trading.
Also, many of us are still waiting for some of the studies referenced by the IPCC to be reproduced in a transparent manner via the Scientific Method.