Absence of sunspots make scientists wonder

[G_j]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/06/21/AR2010062104114.html?g=0


Absence of sunspots make scientists wonder if they're seeing a calm before a storm of energy

<snip>

But for the past two years, the sunspots have mostly been missing. Their absence, the most prolonged in nearly 100 years, has taken even seasoned sun watchers by surprise. "This is solar behavior we haven't seen in living memory," says David Hathaway, a physicist at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala.

<snip>

Sunspots are windows into the sun's magnetic soul. They form where giant loops of magnetism, generated deep inside the sun, well up and burst through the surface, leading to a localized drop in temperature that we see as a dark patch. Any changes in sunspot numbers reflect changes inside the sun. "During this transition, the sun is giving us a real glimpse into its interior," says Hathaway.

When sunspot numbers drop at the end of each 11-year cycle, solar storms die down and all becomes much calmer. This "solar minimum" doesn't last long. Within a year, the spots and storms begin to build toward a new crescendo, the next solar maximum.

What's special about this latest dip is that the sun is having trouble starting the next solar cycle. The sun began to calm down in late 2007, so no one expected many sunspots in 2008. But computer models predicted that when the spots did return, they would do so in force. Hathaway was reported as thinking the next solar cycle would be a doozy: more sunspots, more solar storms and more energy blasted into space. Others predicted that it would be the most active solar cycle on record.


..more..

[Subdivisions]

1. We are approaching galactic alignment. 2012 is coming. n/t

[liberal N proud]

3. You beat me to it

:rofl:

[tridim]

4. The Sun doesn't know it's 2012 on Earth.

Then again, even on Earth "2012" is a completely arbitrary number.

It means exactly nothing.

[Subdivisions]

9. Der... n/t

[tridim]

11. There are 2012'ers on DU, just pre-empting them. nt

[Subdivisions]

12. Ah...I see. n/t

[bain_sidhe]

15. Yeah, but...

that doesn't change the lining up of the planets. They don't care what date it is, but they're still doing it, right? And the solar system is crossing the galactic plane or something as well, isn't it?

The date just happens to work out to 2012 in our system, but the actual physical effects would happen no matter what date we called it.

Except that NASA says none of that is true. There is no multi-planet alignment in 2012, the solar system will not be crossing the galactic plane. It's true, they do expect higher sunspot activity as part of the sun's 22 year cycle (11 years "on," 11 years "off"), but no more than has happened before.

http://www.nasa.gov/topics/earth/features/2012.html

::sigh:: Another perfectly good apocalyptic fantasy shot all to hell by the science nerds. x(

[EFerrari]

13. Are you talking about the Grand Conjunction or some other meet up?

lol

[Warpy]

2. Then again, we know so little about what's actually going on

below the photosphere that any prediction is a wild guess based on earlier patterns.

We could just as easily be seeing another Maunder Minimum, a sunspot free period that ushered in the Little Ice Age.

[Poll_Blind]

5. +1

PB

[librechik]

14. that's what my hubby thinks (shiver)

keeps pestering me to see if there's been any change from the minimum--guess not yet...

[KittyWampus]

17. wait- what? Now I google Maunder Minimum....

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. Astronomers before Eddy had also named the period after the solar astronomer Edward W. Maunder (1851–1928) who studied how sunspot latitudes changed with time.<2> The periods he examined included the second half of the 17th century. Edward Maunder published two papers in 1890 and 1894, and he cited earlier papers written by Gustav Spörer. The Maunder Minimum's duration was derived from Spörer's work. Like the Dalton Minimum and Spörer Minimum, the Maunder Minimum coincided with a period of lower-than-average global temperatures.
During one 30-year period within the Maunder Minimum, astronomers observed only about 50 sunspots, as opposed to a more typical 40,000–50,000 spots in modern times.

[Bill McBlueState]

6. your link's broken

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/06/21/AR2010062104114.html is the right link; yours looks like it's truncated.

Good story, though.

[G_j]

10. thank you... fixed

:hi:

[bemildred]

7. "Past performance is no guarantee of future results."

This cliche applies to non-financial matters too.

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

8. Magnets. How do they work?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UVxaYk3CBJk

[Old Troop]

16. Is this the next "the world is ending" crisis? Y2K, Pandemic Flu,

attack from the sun.