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Sun May Disrupt Spacecraft and Satellites In Coming Decades
dtjohnson writes "A newly published study (abstract) predicts that solar storms are going to become increasingly disruptive to satellites and communications in the coming decades as the sun cycles towards a minimum of activity. 'The work, published in Geophysical Research Letters, predicts that once the Sun shifts toward an era of lower solar activity, more hazardous radiation will reach Earth. The team says the Sun is currently at a grand solar maximum. This phase began in the 1920s — and has lasted throughout the space age....The evidence seems to indicate that although there are fewer solar storms once the Sun leaves its grand maximum, they are more powerful, faster and therefore carry more particles.'"
Just like Earth, a nice electromagnetic layer around spacecraft will do the trick.
didn't know larry elison had so much clout.
tl;dr
The sun is fucking awesome!
Now that they've been bought out by Oracle, evil deeds are afoot.
It's all of those global warming denier's fault too...
I knew Oracle buying Sun would be a bad thing, but seriously, why would they want to screw up our communication system?
Do you Gentoo!?
First the Java mess, and now this... :(
Larry Ellison really is a galactic asshole.
so I guess it also means fewer but more spectacular aurora borealis.
something out of our control affects something in our control.
The Sun can't even vary the Earths _temperature_ as much as mere human beings. If the title was "Man May Disrupt Spacecraft and Satellites In Coming Decades" it would be far more believable.
...yellow number five, yellow number five, yellow number five...
We really should have a "-1, Incoherent Babbling" mod option.
"People who think they know everything are very annoying to those of us who do."-Mark Twain
It may or could effect it. Wow those are some strong statements. I may jump of a cliff today too. China could launch a nuclear attack on the US before anything in the article happens.
HAHAH hey guys has anyone made a comparison to sun microsystems and oracle yet?!?! there's an original joke in there somewhere! LOL
morons.
Stolen from The Onion.
Wrong sun.
If Oracle had bought the sun we would be sitting in complete darkness, unless we paid for a 2 year service contract.
Per eye.
Obligatory.
Boy... That Larry Ellison....
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
The slight cooling effect will likely be overwhelmed by CO2 warming happening at the same time.
In the past few years we have seen more and more hits of our communication systems because of flare-ups from the Sun. Heck, just last year we had a pretty major television sattelite "Galaxy-11" knocked out and left for dead because of a solar flare (they have since been able to regain control of it after declaring it as space-trash and getting it ready to burn it up in the atomosphere). So much of our communications systems are tied to sattelites and long-range RF communication systems that are vunerable to these flare up that this will become more and more of a problem as time goes on...
Upon what do you base your assertion?
Show me the math. Show me a computer that starts at 1900 with known solar activity, atmospheric and sea surface temperature observations, and CO2 levels, then accurately tracks observations through 2011, and I will believe you. If a model can't yield results that we've already observed, the model is wrong and cannot be trusted to yield correct predictions.
Everybody gets what the majority deserves.
The climate change deniers would certainly like there to be increased solar activity, so clearly this information has to be the product of a oil company PR department.
We can't possibly have increased solar activity, but we can have increased interference with satellites caused by carbon emissions from power plants, cars, boats and airplanes. It must be all those stray carbon atoms that are causing problems rather than the sun.
I suppose the CO2 from Earth could be reaching out to the Sun and causing it to interfere with communications, but it seems far more probable that all this is caused by Republicans creating more and more CO2.
After all, aren't we counting on the Sun to provide for our energy needs into the future? It was good enough for Man before we started burning fossil fuels, so it should be good enough for us in the future as well.
The sun has absolutely no effect on Global Warming. This is one of the Global Warming tenets. Just google all the articles about this. Only man can effect Global Warming. Volcanoes, sunspots, comet strikes, and atomic Godzilla attacks will have a miniscule effect compared to one SUV.
Who would win this election: Andrew Weiner vs Andrew Weiner's weiner.
That wouldn't terribly useful unless you could also moderate articles.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
The punchline to the joke, "How many Microsoft engineers does it take to change a lightbulb?" comes to mind...
None. They just declare darkness the new standard...
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
So if stars have a window in which space travel is possible for life on planets in the goldilocks zone, and that window can close cutting those planets off from space travel (or severely restrict it), how does this effect the Drake Equation for being able to find other intelligent life in the universe? Life would need to advance at a rate such that it can exploit space effectively at the right time or become planet-locked.
Oh, say does that Star-Spangled Banner entwine / The myrtle of Venus with Bacchus's vine?
So glad we still have Loran for when Glonass Galileo and Navstar get sunburn....
Oh wait.. budget cuts. Bummer.
Did anyone else think, "Wow, those folks at Oracle are really taking the patent wars seriously!" before reading the summary?
It was prophesied to happen.
"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be."
It is obvious that we need to launch a multinational military expedition to subdue the Sun and bring it under control for the safety of our satellites and spacecraft.
Of course, for the protection of our troops, this operation will have to be carried out at night.
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Of course the Sun affects the climate on the Earth. The global warming tenet you're talking about is that the Sun has not changed its output enough over the past half century plus to account for the changes we're seeing.
Here is a peer reviewed paper that says if the Sun's activity level returned to a new grand minimum like the Maunder minimum it would reduce the projected temperature rise in 2100 by no more than 0.3C. I think that's a reasonable basis for the assertion.
Since the paper is paywalled you can see a summary of it here.
Uhuh, something that hasn't ever happened yet will be a major problem in the future. Hide in fear, everyone.
Like we'd ever let space radiation take out all of civilization. If it started to become a problem -- especially gradually over-decades if at all -- welcome to science. See a problem, work to solve it, solve it eventually. And with all of the money that would go in to solving that particular problem, I imagine it'd be solved within 2 years, which would mean that it wouldn't ever grow to be a consumer-level problem in the first place.
What, did you expect us to solve a potential problem in advance of the problem even appearing? Of course not.
So here's my rewrite of the story:
"The future may present a problem in some way for past technology. We'll deal with it by using newer technology."
Thanks for the .F.U.D..
And in the absence of ABSOLUTE, UNARGUABLE proof that this is the case, it would be foolish of us to be prepared, of course. Sort of like how we should keep decimating the environment until we are ABSOLUTELY sure we're fucking it up beyond repair, amirite?
When "being prepared" means "changing the way the entire global economy works" and "the government forcing everyone to deeply alter much their lives" and "transfer hundreds of billions of dollars to generalissimos who blame Westerners for their own tribal civil wars", yeah. Absolute, inarguable proof is demanded.
If a computer model can't achieve observed results with an observed dataset, the model is WRONG. No amount of self-loathing white-mans-burden bullshit or profiteering on carbon-credit exchanges will change that.
Are you right? No. You are not.
Everybody gets what the majority deserves.