Sunspot Activity Continues To Drop 435
slreboy writes "The sunspot cycle is behaving a little like the stock market. Just when you think it has hit bottom, it goes even lower. The year 2008 was a bear. There were no sunspots observed on 266 of the year's 366 days (73 percent). To find a year with more blank suns, you have to go all the way back to 1913, which had 311 spotless days. Prompted by these numbers, some observers suggested that the solar cycle had hit bottom in 2008. Maybe not. Sunspot counts for 2009 have dropped even lower. As of March 31st, there were no sunspots on 78 of the year's 90 days (87 percent)..."
An Inconvenient Preemptive Strike (Score:5, Funny)
The answer, fellow scientists, is that we are stealing that energy from the Sun.
Yes, my charts and ramblings reveal that our greenhouse gases are trapping sunlight
Gentlemen, we must act now. There is no more time for debating and arguing. The sunspots are going away and without that, we may lose our natural magnetic storms and maybe even the precious Aurora Borealis. Our Northern Lights are in danger while you sit back here comfortably in your chairs. Today we are polluters in the hands of an angry environment tomorrow we may be dead. We have angered the environment and now we must face the wrath of the environment. Including, but not limited to, the loss of sunspots.
I don't know about you but when I was a kid, we celebrated sunspots with our parents. Upwards we gazed directly into the sun, fueling the optometry industry. Yes, sunspots create jobs and foster growth. Do you want to share sunspot gazing with your children and their children? I know I do.
But all is not lost. The environment is injured and may be weak enough for us to stop it before it kills us all. I propose a preemptive strike now while we still have time. We could sneak in special units disguised in ponchos and Birkenstock's with thermonuclear weapons that would devastate the environment and save us from certain death at its hands. China has already rendered the environment obsolete and it is our turn to follow suit. Gentlemen, the question today is not if we should deal a final blow to the environment but when.
I know your being funny, but for are other readers (Score:4, Informative)
I would like to point out that this law states:
"If A and B are each in thermal equilibrium with C, A is also in thermal equilibrium with B."
Important links:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zeroth_law_of_thermodynamics [wikipedia.org]
and this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entropy [wikipedia.org]
Re:I know your being funny, but for are other read (Score:5, Funny)
"You can't win, you can't break even, you can't leave the game,
'cause entropy will take it all 'though it seems a shame.
The second law, as we now know, is quite clear to state,
that entropy must increase and not dissipate.
Creationists always try to use the second law, to disprove evolution, but their theory has a flaw.
The second law is quite precise about where it applies,
only in a closed system must the entropy count rise.
The earth's not a closed system' it's powered by the sun,
so fuck the damn creationists, Doomsday get my gun!"
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
Actually, the (less strawman) classic argument from the second law of thermo is to apply the second law to the universe. Is the universe a closed system? If so, then second law implies eventual heat death. Therefore, we should select at least 1 choice of these options:
1. Universe is not a closed system (religious types would argue this to be true, with God as the external thing affecting it)
2. Universe is of finite age (creationist types tend to go this way, which physics eventually caught up with as big ba
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Re:An Inconvenient Preemptive Strike (Score:5, Funny)
We're not stealing the sun's energy.
They sun spots have realized we were watching them and it turns out they are shy. They are just on the other side of the sun now.
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We're not stealing the sun's energy.
Surely it deserves rewarding for the work it does? Even more evidence that IP laws need reform -- er, that it's Microsoft's fault -- er, that it's those damn lawyers (except for the ones on our side).
Re:An Inconvenient Preemptive Strike (Score:4, Interesting)
They sun spots have realized we were watching them and it turns out they are shy. They are just on the other side of the sun now.
Nope, we can monitor the other side of the sun, they are not there [stanford.edu] either.
This is done with Helioseismic Holography [spaceweather.com]. Though there is apparently a new method [stanford.edu] being developed.
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Re:An Inconvenient Preemptive Strike (Score:5, Funny)
I think it's called clear-a-sol
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Venus (Score:2)
Do we have the ability to measure and the records to compare Venus' annual temperature? Wouldn't it provide a stable base line to compare our own planet's temperature against? It's just a thought and I'm sure someone has tried it, but I've never heard it mentioned. Venus seems like it would be a great indicator of planetary warming due to solar variance.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
There isn't any current history of temperature trends on Venus.
However, there are of Mars, Jupiter, Triton, Neptune, and Pluto.
As the most mind-boggling coincidence EVAR, all five show global warming over the last 30 years that correlate with the rising temperature trends on Earth in that period.
And I suppose you have sources for this data you claim exists? You know, so we can all examine it?
Re:Venus (Score:5, Informative)
The article about Jupiter mentions nothing about a planet-wide increase in temperature. The Mars article mentions an increase in dust storm reducing albedo and therefore increasing light absorption. Still a far cry from the ggp's claim that 5 planets are all experiencing the same increase in temperature.
Re:Venus (Score:4, Informative)
ROFL, and how, pray tell, do those articles qualify as "30 years" of temperature data that "correlate with the rising temperature trends on Earth in that period." Oh, wait, they don't.
Hell, the Jupiter article isn't about planetary warming at all. And as for Mars, "Martian climate is primarily driven by dust and albedo and there is little empirical evidence that Mars is showing long term warming." (source [skepticalscience.com]).
See how I provided a citation for my quote? And how the article linked contains references for its claims? Neat, eh?
Re:Venus (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Venus (Score:5, Informative)
Direct satellite measurements of solar output for the last 30 years [noaa.gov].
Re:Venus (Score:5, Insightful)
Listen, I'm not going to argue the science but what drives me bonkers about both sides of the Global Warming debate is that it completely misses the point that affects us and our surroundings the most: pollution.
Heavy metals in the water, shitty particles in the air, poison in our food. I don't understand why we bicker about the temperature when it's undeniable how much trash we have injected in to our surroundings.
Is clean air, water, and food too much to ask? I'm not even talking about deforestation, over-fishing, and the deleterious affects of industrial agriculture.
We have a footprint, and a great big ugly one at that. We don't live responsibly. Global Warming is a big red herring and I sometimes wonder who benefits from us focusing on it.
Oh noes! Our star is dying (Score:5, Funny)
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From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunshine_(2007_film) [wikipedia.org]:
"The Sun has instead been "infected" with a Q-ball - a supersymmetric nucleus, left over from the Big Bang - that is disrupting the normal matter. The situation compells humanity to send a spacecraft to the Sun in 2050, the Icarus I, which carries a massive payload, an experimental nuclear bomb, intended to reignite the Sun."
The part that makes the story completely unbelievable??? Humanity working together to fix something.
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I advise that the astronauts be restricted to plastic cutlery, otherwise it could seriously ruin the potential for turning this whole idea into a decent sci-fi movie.
it's stuff like this (Score:5, Funny)
Re:it's stuff like this (Score:5, Funny)
I am old fashion kind of guy myself. Meaning, I want my air just like it the dinosaurs had it.. Thick and chocked full of that CO2....
Re:it's stuff like this (Score:5, Funny)
2012 (Score:2, Offtopic)
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I wonder.. (Score:3, Insightful)
Should we implement a green tax in order to help the sun get its spots back?
On the other hand maybe the sun has discoved clearasil..
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Actually, no it's discovered clearasol.
Thankyou, I'll be here all week!
Here we go... (Score:5, Insightful)
1) The Sun does effect global temperature
2) It's effects are pretty immediate
3) The Global Warming Trend does not follow the Sun activities close enough for it to be the cause of the trend.
4) The only thing we know of at this time that could be causing this global warming trend is CO2
5)We are talking about the release of trillions of tons of CO2 that has been buried for millions of years.
6) If we keep increasing will will make the planet uninhabitable by us.
7) We have workable solutions to this right now.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
But how can I tie this to a poticial ideology? I hate fact based science.
Re:Here we go... (Score:4, Funny)
Facts do have a liberal bias.
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Facts do have a liberal bias.
Nah, facts have a true old school reactionary conservative bias. We just don't have many of those now a days.
The truth is everyone understands that they want to take our our stuff to give to others. Conservatives just want enough power to defend themselves from that they, and to be truly sustainable so that they can ignore everyone else.
they also go down when gun ownership goes down (Score:2)
whodathunkit
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
whodathunkit
So basically we need to change the extent of gun ownership in either direction every day.
we need common sense gun laws (Score:2)
gun ownership is a right AND a responsibility
as such, it must be strictly limited and licensed and monitored
people understand this about car ownership, why they don't understand this about gun ownership is beyond me
its some sort of fucking quasireligious fanaticism with guns in this fucking country
its the second amendment, not the goddamn ten commandments
Common sense doesn't work well in some cases (Score:3, Insightful)
... like guns, or global warming.
In general, our common sense fails us badly whenever we're looking at rare events -- and in spite of what the evening news may make you believe, shootings are rare events. The solution is to look to science and statistics rather than common sense.
The correct approach to gun regulation is to examine the numbers and look at what kinds of gun control actually have beneficial effects on crime rates. Also, we need to analyze the incidence of crimes prevented by gun ownershi
So... (Score:3, Insightful)
P.S. the "shift" key down next to the "z" key makes big letters.
Re: (Score:2)
That's not an inconvenient truth, unless you believe that correlation equals causation.
Perhaps your little factoid is only true because guns are easier and cheaper to acquire illegally (than legally) in areas with higher gun violence?
Or perhaps it is because people who acquire guns legally are less likely to commit gun violence than people who acquire them illegally -- and legal or ill
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I have read many hypothesis presented for other causes, but I haven't read any that got through the peer review process with out being found false.
Re:Here we go... (Score:4, Insightful)
Yes. Now either disprove it, as GP did with the "sun causes global warming" theory, or provide another that also fits the evidence. You don't get to ignore a scientific theory just because you don't like the conclusion.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I thought the earth has actually been getting cooler since 2004. I also thought the earth constantly went through cycles of heating and cooling. What we do does affect the planet, by all means. How MUCH it is affecting is still very much up for debate.
Me, I like better fuel economy standards and tighter restrictions on discharges into lakes and streams, mainly because I breathe air and drink water. Unfortunately, the environment is now a tool for getting funding and to get that funding, you must agree w
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You should pay more for your history.
Re:Here we go... (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm sure that back in the 1600s, you had to agree that the earth was flat to get funding as well.
The best science that money can buy isn't always the best science.
Actually, no. If at any point in recorded history, you proposed that the earth was flat, the overwhelming majority of people thought you were a nutjob.
The idea that Columbus' opponents thought the earth was flat was made up by supporters' of Darwin in the 1800's to belittle their opposition (not all of which was religious).
Columbus' opposition said that if the diameter of the earth was what they calculated it to be (which it turns out was a reasonable approximation of the actual diameter of the earth), Columbus and his crewmen would run out of fresh water before they reached East Asia. Columbus, using his own calculations, said the earth isn't that big. It turns out that Columbus got lucky, because neither side was aware that there was another land mass between Europe and Asia (there is reason to believe that there were Europeans who did know, but that is speculation).
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Please provide reputable, verifiable evidence of the information in your post, preferably from multiple sources.
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Yeah, that's a bit more questionable, isn't it? There has been casually observable evidence for the Earth's roundness in certain places (shorelines, where one has an opportunity to see a ship vanish over the horizion hull first, rather than just get too small to s
Re:Here we go... (Score:4, Insightful)
I thought the earth has actually been getting cooler since 2004. I also thought the earth constantly went through cycles of heating and cooling. What we do does affect the planet, by all means. How MUCH it is affecting is still very much up for debate.
Don't confuse speed with position. While 2008 was the coldest year since 2000, it is still the ninth warmest year since 1880 [xinhuanet.com]. Global warming theories do not require a strictly increasing average global temperature over time.
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You might want to get that checked out...
Re:Here we go... (Score:5, Insightful)
2) Oceans operate on different time scales, no? So is "pretty immediate" geological time or something or a day or so?
3) Could be problems with this point based on 2. And by "trend" what are we talking about. There doesn't seem to be much of an upward trend lately. So if you are thinking the last couple of years have been on an upward trend, that's wrong. If you expand that timeline, we may still be on an upward trend.
4) "The only thing we know"
Given the lack of ability to put past weather information in a predictive model and get accurate results, I would say we don't know much at all.
My climate scientist friend I once spoke to almost 10 years ago now was more skeptical. Even if C02 does what you say, are there feedback loops that mitigate the warming? Cloud cover, stuff like that. We don't know.
6) You don't know 6 is true at all.
7) While I remain skeptical of global warming, I want to get off foreign oil in general. So may I propose a workable solution that many environmentalists don't like: nuclear power. Cut the red tape and streamline the process.
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7) While I remain skeptical of global warming, I want to get off foreign oil in general. So may I propose a workable solution that many environmentalists don't like: nuclear power. Cut the red tape and streamline the process.
Which is ironic, because it's one of the most environmentally friendly means to generate power we have. The waste is well contained, and if we built newer reactors we wouldn't have to worry about waste at all.
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Even if C02 does what you say, are there feedback loops that mitigate the warming? Cloud cover, stuff like that. We don't know.
Exactly... we don't know. We're modifying our atmosphere and we don't know what it will do. All the reputable science indicates it's either a little bad or VERY VERY bad.
Of course those who are making money from this will tell you it's all hokum... but the problem is that by the time we actually understand what all this CO2 (and others) is doing we will be about 50 years too late to do anything about it.
There are no "climate scientists" (Score:3, Insightful)
There are only weather forecasters. Climate science is not science, that would require testability and we don't have anything to test with. When weather forecasters start chucking millions of tonnes of sulphate aerosols (or whatever) into the atmosphere, then it will be science.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Um, studies, the creators of correlation, are a hugely important part of science. They can't show causation like experiments, but they can still be used to make predictions, just like theories resulting from experiments. Climate science is just as much a science as psychology, sociology, biology, and astronomy. (I'd like to see you do an experiment to figure out planetary motion)
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I think you were correct right up to 7. Most of the alternatives aren't as good as what we have right now. There is no realistic alternative to the car and all the alternatives to electricity generation are very expensive or unreliable. Space heating is also a serious problem.
Converting to a very low or zero carbon world would involve rebuilding just about every home, office block and factory as well as throwing away and remaking every car. That isn't going to happen any time soon. The expense would make th
Re:Here we go... (Score:4, Funny)
You are missing a whole bunch of ~'s
6- (Score:2)
Don't overstate the case. It would make the planet less live-able in certain areas (principally by being underwater) and make other areas much more live-able for humans. The problem is the dislocation (which would likely happen over multiple generations) not any threat to the species.
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6) If we keep increasing will will make the planet uninhabitable by us.
So, problem solved. Nobody left to burn fossil fuels. The planet's ecosystem recovers and the cockroaches, the proper inheritors of the planet continue on. Just like they did prior to the human infestation.
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1) correct
2) some, and some are delayed (trade winds, ocean currents, heat redistribution)
3) see 2 - then the correlation is incredibly high ( http://wattsupwiththat.com/2008/01/25/warming-trend-pdo-and-solar-correlate-better-than-co2/ [wattsupwiththat.com] )
4) absolutely no. on the contrary, the correlation for CO2 models and observed climate over the last decade are next to nil
5) Percentages of percentages
6) absolutely no
7) absolutely no
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6) If we keep increasing will will make the planet uninhabitable by us.
Even if we don't, the planet will become uninhabitable. And it will take about the same length of time on the order of hundreds of millions to a billion years. I wonder where hysterical crap like this comes from? It's like the "Iraq caused 911" nonsense that ran through the US a few years ago. Nobody said it or even seriously implied it. Yet somehow there was a bunch of people believing it.
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"The Carboniferous Period and the Ordovician Period were the only geological periods during the Paleozoic Era when global temperatures were as low as they are today. To the consternation of global warming proponents, the Late Ordovician Period was also an Ice Age while at the same time CO2 concentrations then w
Re: (Score:2)
1) The Sun does effect global temperature
2) It's effects are pretty immediate
3) The Global Warming Trend does not follow the Sun activities close enough for it to be the cause of the trend.
4) The only thing we know of at this time that could be causing this global warming trend is CO2
5)We are talking about the release of trillions of tons of CO2 that has been buried for millions of years.
6) If we keep increasing will will make the planet uninhabitable by us.
7) We have workable solutions to this right now.
3. is incorrect. While we may get the light in terms of minutes from its departure from our heavenly body, the energy released when it gets here is distributed and absorbed. Then it is up to a whole other set of processes to get it back out. It may go into heating the atmosphere. it may heat the oceans, it may provide energy to a plant for photosynthesis. So that energy may be radiated back out immediately, or may be deferred until night time, where it is released again. Or it can be part of a plant for mi
why (Score:3, Informative)
/rant
While it may not be time to panic, there are some other startling signs
At this point there's nothing really we can do, but it may need an explanation as to why it has hit such a low, and when the below-average maximum will occur (supposedly in 2012).
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Links?
The only study I am aware related to this has to do with light hitting the planet. In that study the light hitting the earth wasn't unchanged, just the light hitting the ground. This lead to the conclusion that both particulate matter and contrails were causing more light to be reflected. Actually slowing the effects of global warming, but not stopping it.
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Great timing (Score:5, Interesting)
I picked a good year to get licensed for ham radio. I sure get sick of hearing about how you can work Australia on a wet noodle during high Sunspot years. At least the low bands are reliable, but then again those bands require ginormous antennas. So as a consequence my house looks like some sort of martian communications test zone [qrz.com]. I think my neighbors fear me enough not to seriously ask what's going on.
Laws of energy conservation? (Score:2)
The pendulum swings both ways, and I think that Sol may swing back with a fury from this sub solar minimum to an above level solar maximum. We may wind up with the predicted power problems and possibly airline flights having to fly lower than usual to reduce dosages to their pax.
Then again, we don't really know our star very well and it is an older one, in the scope of things.
Plagiarism (Score:5, Informative)
Not only is the summary ripped from the linked article without quoting it, but the article is plagiarized in whole from ScienceDaily [sciencedaily.com]! I knew I'd seen it before this article, and this explains why. The blogger even hotlinked the image from science daily, wasting their bandwidth.
The linked article in the summary should be adjusted to the original ScienceDaily article and the entire summary should be quoted from it rather than attributed to slreboy.
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I'd even say that the submitter should be banned from submitting links.
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Global electrical grid failure to come (Score:2)
Not now the sun is quiet.
What this quiet time is doing is failing to pressure us into hardening the electrical grid against electromagnetic storm events. So in 5 or 10 years when we pull up out of this point we will all have electrical cars pulling power from desert and off shore wind farms over long lines. Then the electromagnetic storm will take out the continental electrical grid.
http://www.niburu.nl/index.php?articleID=20577 [niburu.nl]
http://richarddawkins.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=76911 [richarddawkins.net]
Fun times.
I've been a Ham radio operator for 51 years.. (Score:3, Interesting)
Bad news for Amateur Radio (Score:5, Informative)
I realize that HAM radio is a bit of an anachronism in the eyes of most slashdot readers, but it's still the most viable medium for emergency communications. Unfortunately, with sunspot activity being so low, HF communications become very limited. Whole bands of RF spectrum are almost unusable, because the E-layer of the ionosphere can no longer bounce higher frequencies of radio waves. 40m wavelength and lower tend to still be usable, 20m is come-and-go, and 17m and higher become sporadic or completely unusable.
I'm 31, I've been a HAM for 6 years. My cell phone often doesn't get coverage where I roam, and my power and internet and landline phone have been knocked out by storms and provider mistakes. Radio works when all else fails... ...but sometimes it works better than others!
the answer is obvious (Score:3, Funny)
The sun is outsourcing its sun spot activity to another star in a less economically developed solar system.
Clearly it's IBM's doing. (Score:2, Funny)
They are acting like a jilted lover after being turned down by Sun.
http://www.pcworld.com/article/162748/sun_blundered_by_turning_down_ibm.html [pcworld.com]
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Trolling aside, the sun doesn't follow the Gregorian calendar. Making statistics using the Gregorian calendar is therefore irrelevant at best.
Re:fun with statistics (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:fun with statistics (Score:5, Informative)
I think his point was that you should not compare a year's worth of data to 3 months' worth. They could simply take the last 365 days and compare it to the 365 before that and it would make a lot more sense.
The problem, of course, is all the -other- people already using calendar years with their data like it means something.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
"If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you; But if you really make them think, they'll hate you." - DM
That's probably the most profound thought I've read this year...
You must not have thought about it.
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Wrong.
We use the Calendar, and we use it together measurements, look for trends, make predictions, etc...
By your 'logic' Atomic vibrations don't follow our time keeping methods therefore any clock using them would be irrelevant.
Re:more fun with statistics (Score:5, Funny)
The boom-bust cycle that has plagued the economy for so long is clearly due to the Sun's influence. Our only hope of a stable economy is to destroy the Sun once and for all.
For too long we've been at the mercy of the whims of the Sun. Sure, we built that fancy iron core and produced a magnetic field to protect us from the harshest of the Sun's radiation, but the Sun still has almost total control over our precious climate. This situation is simply untenable. Millenia of effort and animal sacrifice have shown that the Sun simply cannot be negotiated with...our only chance is a massive nuclear strike.
Re:more fun with statistics (Score:5, Interesting)
You know, I've been wondering - doesn't Sun worship really make the most sense of pretty much any religion?
Unlike Jehova, I can actually prove that the sun is the source of all life on this planet, that it nourishes and sustains me and other living things, and that the world will end because of its actions.
We like to make fun of prehistoric religions, but sometimes I think they're actually pretty rational.
Re:more fun with statistics (Score:4, Insightful)
the sun is the source of all life on this planet
All life on this planet? [wikipedia.org]
Re:more fun with statistics (Score:5, Funny)
our only chance is a massive nuclear strike.
I'd say we are currently in the perfect position to nuke it from orbit!!
Re:more fun with statistics (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Maybe we're on the wrong side of the sun? (Score:5, Informative)
The sun rotates. [wikipedia.org] In the course of a month, we see it from all sides.
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Good point...after decades of studying sunspot activity, it's only natural for the Sun to get self-conscious about everyone staring at its blemishes all the time. It's only natural it would try and hide them by turning the other way.
Pimple cream (Score:2)
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Spaceweather has real-time "far side" images (Score:2)
Visit http://www.spaceweather.com/ [spaceweather.com] for a real time holographic view of the far side of the sun. They've been able to detect far-side sunspots for several years now. Full details and images are available, as well as a primer about the process; look on the left sidebar beneath the front-side daily photograph.
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We can't know how many sunspots there really are if we're only seeing only half the surface of our star, right?
We see more than half of the surface.
A technique called "helioseismic holography" [spaceweather.com] can detect sunspots on the far side of the sun. There is also a pair of spacecraft called STEREO [jhuapl.edu] which are in a solar orbit that lets them see parts of the sun that are not visible from earth.
Re:Like for like. (Score:5, Insightful)
One day doesn't form a statistically significant sample, 365 days do.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
There are several hundred years worth of data [wikipedia.org], showing a regular 11 year cycle. Even measurements plotted monthly map to that graph.
You seem to be displaying a form of anthropomorphism towards the sun. You can't just map the lifespan of a human to the lifespan of the sun and conclude that from your perceived frame of reference, a year is the equivalent of a fraction of a second or 'blip'.
Old != Static
Re:Like for like. (Score:5, Insightful)
Not so. We have two statistical samplings, one with n=90, one with n=365. Based on the sample sizes and some other info, we can establish a confidence interval. Yes, the interval will be larger for the 90-day sample... but just because we can't be 100% confident of the exact results doesn't mean it's statistically meaningless.
One other note -- historical data must be used to establish that there are not periodic cycles with a frequency of less than one year, which would make the 90-day sample set inaccurate.
Re:Like for like. (Score:4, Insightful)
It's simply an early trend, which may point towards further decreasing sunspot activity. I hope you're not seriously trying to tell us you believe there's no difference between a 90-day sample period and a 1-day sample period.
Also, from the article, please note that scientists are not completely brain-dead:
Pesnell believes sunspot counts should pick up again soon, "possibly by the end of the year," to be followed by a solar maximum of below-average intensity in 2012 or 2013. But like other forecasters, he knows he could be wrong. Bull or bear? Stay tuned for updates.
In other words, they're not simply extrapolating the entire year based on a 90-day cycle. Rather, they're looking at how this period fits into a larger trend.
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I think a confusing aspect about this whole thing is the idea of applying our basically arbitrary start and end dates for the year to what the sun is doing. Even if the sun operates on a cycle that basically does just happen to match up with a whole number of our earth years, the fact that we decided to start calling the present 2009 instead of 2008 doesn't mean much to the sun.
The sort of time cycles that we experience on a regular basis (day, week, month, year) aren't particularly relevant to the sun, and
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So look at the data ... (Score:2)
after all, there's over 300 years worth of data on sunspot counts:
http://sidc.oma.be/sunspot-data/ [sidc.oma.be]
Pick your own interval for analysis.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
You should hope you're wrong. The good thing about the global warming scare, true or false, is it gives the masses of dumb people some kind of tangible cost in the near future for their use of an unsustainable and unhealthy energy policy.
The backlash against "global warming" hype will have the opposite effect, it will make people say 'fuck it, I'm gonna drive an SUV and leave my AC at 68 degrees all day'.
Global warming is not the only (potential, if you buy into it) problem with our energy policy. Another