Reversing Magnetic Poles Observed in Another Star 49
Babu 'God' Hoover tips us to news out of the University of Hawaii Institute for Astronomy that for the first time, a magnetic pole reversal has been observed in a star other than our own. Tau Bootis, while similar to the Sun, also has a planet more than six times larger than Jupiter orbiting at only a twentieth of the distance between Earth and the Sun. Scientists hope to use this discovery to learn more about the magnetic dynamics in the Sun, which can affect our telecommunications, among other things.
Re:How did they find out? (Score:3, Interesting)
This is not optimal, but is the unfortunate result of extremism within the anti-rational camp (including religious fundamentalists of all the major religions) that cause the other camp (rational scientists) to also become extreme - huddling together to present consistency of thought and theory to rebuff the insanity driving the extreme nature of the opposing camp. Closer to reality is that astrophysics and most modern physics today have some extremely serious problems with making all the data that has been collected and verified fit together. By all, I'm mean to include data from quantum size scales with light-year scales and near-zero energy with very high energy, femto-seconds to years. Most data works amazingly well, while other data consistently does not match.
So, in order to present a consistent theory that is not assailable by luddites and those that would use seemingly believable arguments and descriptions of Universal truths for their own ends, many scientists understandably have developed an anti-scientific bent that provides consistency and certainty in their scientific story. A consistent story drives funding. It drives papers. It drives tenure. It drives careers, lectures, salaries, and status. It keeps the system going for scietists to keep doing academic science, which *is* a good thing. This is just how academia works, even when what is really needed in scientific exploration and, mostly, physics today is more unabashed non consistency and non conformism to established physics laws to deal with various inconsistent and conflicting data.
Not very surprising. (Score:3, Interesting)
By not fully predicable I refer to that the flows that occurs are similar to the weather we experience here on Earth. The weather can be predicted with an acceptable accuracy over a week, but longer than that is hard. However the timeframe for magnetic fields are different, so they are predictable over a longer period of time.
Anyway - this means that the flows inside a star can change pattern, or that the electrical currents induced can change (not always the same thing) and they in turn will cause the magnetic field to change. Changes involves flares, sunspots and magnetic field disturbances - even as far as changing the polarity. So if our sun does that it's not surprising that another star with similar properties also exhibits the same behavior.
More interesting stellar objects to study would be red stars like the Betelgeuze star or giant blue stars like Rigel. Since they are much larger they can offer different results. Same goes for white dwarfs. Some stars are very strong in their radiation and can provide a great deal of information from a distance, but not everything. There may still be surprises waiting for us!
Re:Hooraayyyy (Score:3, Interesting)
This isn't to say that it is indeed possible that there are other factors not related to our activity as causes of global warming. I am saying it seems that a lot of those who don't believe we have a significant effect on the planet tend to be the ones that don't want to either act in order to possibly mitigate the impact, or find it completely plausible that we could terraform some other world, but there's NO way we're responsible fucking up the Earth!