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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."
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.
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.
You: We should nuke the sun from orbit!
Moderator: The nuke won't make it into orbit, it's too hot.
You: Let's go at night, then.
Moderator: Oh yeah, of course!
That's right. The sun's solar minimum is not caused by global warming, nor is the hottest decade on record caused by the sun's solar minimum. Pass it on to any idiots you know who keep saying "It's just the sun!"
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.
'... 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.
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.
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.
a 'cycle' is invented.
Yes because there are no cycles at all in nature.
Hello? Just because we can't explain something fully doesn't mean we can't spot repetitive behavior. These observations have value, if only to serve as the starting point for an explanation by someone smarter than us at some point in the future.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
How long will it take until the Sun enters the "quiet period" again? How "loud" will it be until then?
My sources indicate it may, in fact, go to 11.
/facepalm
Give me a break. The solar activity cycle has been documented and studied since the early '60's (if not prior). We use it to design appropriately rad-hardened components in the spacecraft industry. We analyze required mission lifetimes and chart solar activity for the projected lifespan of the spacecraft as variations in solar activity affect everything from solar cell degradation to magnetic drag induced on your spacecraft. Hell, I can eve give you a citation. Go find yourself a copy of Fundamentals of Space Systems ed. II by Vincent L. Pisacane. Crack it open to Chapter II: The Space Environment. Read pages 50 through 60. It's all laid out in the basics there. If you want more detailed info. go crack into a journal of astrophysics sometime....
So put away the hatred of science and go back to doing whatever it is you do.
Of course, if you were being sarcastic and/or satirical, I completely failed to pick up on it due to a lack of sarcasm tags around your post.
Motorcycles, Robots, Space Gossip and More!
You: We should nuke the sun from orbit!
Moderator: The nuke won't make it into orbit, it's too hot.
You: Let's go at night, then.
Moderator: Oh yeah, of course!
Slashdot: Aren't the nukes technically already in orbit?
Out of modpoints but really liked a post? 1BDkF6TtmmeZ3yqXbz9yhdYVqRYnwFoXDj
That is the thing about astroPhysics, that I really like. Any problems that occur isn't our fault. Here on Earth because everything is so tightly interconnected every problem can somehow be blamed on human intervention, and I am not denying that. But it is nice to have things that isn't our fault.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
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...
What got your panties in a twist? Just because something might vary over 4.8 Billion years has nothing to do with the fact that based on our current set of measurements this period was a bit longer. Hell, it doesn't matter if we measured only ONE other cycle, we could STILL make the observation "Hey, this cycle is longer than the last one".
However since you did ask. Sunspots were what we first used as a 'ruler'. Discovered in 800 BC, drawn later, and eventually the cycle was first showin in 1843 using data going back to 1755. We now know sunspot data (from historical observations not always available to the first discoverers of the cycle) going back to 1610.
And it's not like it's a 'slight' cycle either. These things vary by 150+ appearances per day during the peak, down to a dozen or fewer during the minimum.
Take a look at this picture: http://solarscience.msfc.nasa.gov/images/Zurich_Color_Small.jpg
You don't exactly have to be a statistical wizard to see a pattern in that data.
Out of modpoints but really liked a post? 1BDkF6TtmmeZ3yqXbz9yhdYVqRYnwFoXDj
That's an odd reason to change the name, seeing as how the globe has only kept getting warmer.
There was also concern that widespread use of supersonic transport would add to the problem and force global cooling.
Trying for "funny" is dangerous to your karma. If you succeed, people get a good laugh but your karma's the same. If you fail, you're going to be modded troll, flamebait, overrated, or offtopic and your karma will suffer. Even if your joke just isn't funny.
The moral? Shy away from humor unless you don't care about karma or you're sure you joke will make somebody spew coffee out of their nose. And sorry, but your joke just didn't cut it.
Free Martian Whores!
Yeah, the sunspots themselves are cooler, but total solar irradiance is lower during a solar minimum, and higher during solar maximum. So while I am not saying for a fact that you don't know what the hell you're talking about and are stupid for still thinking it's just the sun... Wait that's exactly what I'm saying.
"everything exploded from nothing"
Dude, you need to watch more science tv, scientists are working on that as we speak. That "everything from nothing" problem affects a lot more than just the origins of the universe - it basically breaks physics, so theoretical physicists are desperate to figure out the solution. So far, the best explanation seems to be string theory, and that there are a lot more than just the one universe and the four dimensions. It's gaining ground because it seems to fix the standard model - that was actually what it was originally intended to do. It just happens to provide a possible source for the Big Bang as well. Also, like every new leap in science seems to do, it raises a lot more questions than it answers.
"god did it"
Short of god coming down and saying "look it's me! I did it!" this is impossible to prove or disprove, so it's pretty pointless to even consider from a scientific standpoint. Science needs things that are observable, measurable, and repeatable. "God did it" allows for none of that.
Security is mostly a superstition... Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. - Helen Keller
...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
And, if you're in extreme denial, you can see evidence of a cycle yourself, if you've got the patience to take a look at the sun (filtered/projected) and note the spot number for ~20 years. There's data since 1750. Sunspots are correlated with auroras, so it's also within the reach of a human with no modern equipment to check the effects of sun activity.
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
yet another troll. as was pointed out above, this solar cycle was a minimum of activity (i.e. less solar energy incoming on earth) and during this same period, the temperature still went up. not that climate change is actually about such short spans of time, but your jumped to conclusion isn't even supported anecdotally by this evidence.
I am not in anyway affiliated with Max Cannon