The Star. (Page 3) duncan124: Cold weather ahead?? "The sun is almost completely blank. The main driver of all weather and climate, the entity which occupies 99.86% of all of the mass in our solar system, the great ball of fire in the sky has gone quiet again.... ...research studies in just the past couple of decades have found a complicated relationship between solar activity, cosmic rays, and clouds on Earth. This research suggests that in times of low solar activity where solar winds are typically weak; more cosmic rays reach the Earth’s atmosphere which, in turn, has been found to lead to an increase in certain types of clouds that can act to cool the Earth. " http://vencoreweather.com/2015/04/30/845-am-the-sun-is-now-virtually-blank-during-the-weakest-solar-cycle-in-more-than-a-century/ duncan124: The repeated patterns in the suns weather has now generated quite a few new pages. http://www.solarwatcher.net predicts that planetary alignment related to the sun may cause an earthquake or volcanic eruption on May 14/15th. As the areas the prediction indicates have already had a volcanic eruption and bad weather maybe it will miss next week. But, as the more staid Spaceweather.com is pointing out, the same features on the Sun indicated by Solarwatch are now connected to the ' co-rotating ' solar weather effecting Earth as they and it have coincided before. duncan124: The suns radiance seems to have diminished in this 1975-2005 graph. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fileolar-cycle-data.png duncan124: " The Quiet Sun " is also a scientific name " for the remaining ‘quiet Sun’, which is a generic term for regions too bright to be coronal holes," And coronal holes are known to, "For approximately 7 yr around the minimum of every solar cycle, coronal holes persist as large northern and southern polar caps," duncan124: The Sun directly effects Saturns moon. http://www.astrowatch.net/2015/04/when-sun-goes-quiet-titan-gets-gassy.html duncan124: The Sun caused the mini-iceage... http://news.sciencemag.org/physics/2011/05/did-quiet-sun-cause-little-ice-age-after-all ...the sun did not cause the mini-iceage... http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn23865-suns-quiet-spell-not-the-start-of-a-mini-ice-age.html#.VVBmzanZWRk "The coldest period of the Little Ice Age, between 1645 and 1715, has been linked to a deep dip in solar storms known as the Maunder Minimum. "....and the time is associated with the discovery of many comets! http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2009/05/090504-sun-global-cooling.html duncan124: The hard surface of the sun is called the Photosphere and it is the part which emits the light we see. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photosphere -Claims that the atmosphere is the source of the light but logic and experience show that is not the case and that all material obeys the law of Solid, Liquid or Gas. Corwin: The Photosphere is the part which emits the light... it is not claimed to be the source of it. The "source" of the light is deep within the Sun where nuclear fusion takes place. According to something called the photon diffusion time-scale, it takes about 170,000 years for light from the core to reach the surface and escape from the Photosphere. duncan124: Fission and Fusion http://www.diffen.com/difference/Nuclear_Fission_vs_Nuclear_Fusion I actually think they have reversed these two names because in all the fuss about nuclear reactors here in the UK I remember them as being called Fusion reactors. The idea about the Photosphere was that it is described as part of the atmosphere and by implication is a plasma which reacts to the reactions in the core and emits light. Corwin: Fission is splitting an atom... Fusion is combining two atoms together. In stars, Hydrogen fuses together to make Helium, and sheds an electron in the process. The photons that stars emit begin as Gamma rays in the core, then "migrate" to the surface. By the time they escape, the stars emit photons that range all across the electromagnetic spectrum (if my understanding is correct, that is ). duncan124: " Solid, Liquid or Gas " The ground on Earth is solid. But the soil and even the rocks contain large amounts of air. In a similar way the 'atmosphere' on the sun could be very close to the solid ground. Corwin: Not so. The outer layers of the Sun aren't solid, liquid, or gas... it's plasma, which is the fourth state of matter. Certainly not solid. duncan124: The 'square' hole heads back to the centre of the disk again! http://spaceweather.com/images2015/14may15/coronalhole_sdo_blank.jpg?PHPSESSID=8s6o12aglndmi5v392smqmn5n6 duncan124: Solen.infos graph shows the sun to be weakening over time. Of course that does not mean an ice age for certain-- even if such a thing ever existed - but some sort of changes for sure. Corwin: Oh, our Sun will die alright... it just won't happen for another 5 billion years. And that graph doesn't show the Sun weakening... it just shows solar flare activity not peaking as highly during it's 11 year cycles. Corwin: Yes... and when polar fields are weakest, there is less solar flare activity. It shows nothing suggesting that the Sun is cooling down. In fact the Sun is very slowly getting hotter... but that is counteracted here on Earth by the fact that the Earth is slowly moving further from the Sun. duncan124: "The Sun's polar magnetic fields are directly related to solar cycle variability. The strength of the polar fields at the start (minimum) of a cycle determine the subsequent amplitude of that cycle. In addition, the polar field reversals at cycle maximum alter the propagation of galactic cosmic rays throughout the heliosphere in fundamental ways. We describe a surface magnetic flux transport model that advects the magnetic flux emerging in active regions (sunspots) using detailed observations of the near-surface flows that transport the magnetic elements."Lisa Upton, David H. Hathaway,4 Nov 2013. Cornell University Library, http://arxiv.org/abs/1311.0844 en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_flare | Science Chat Room 2 People Chatting Similar Conversations |