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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."
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.
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.
/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.
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