The Sun's Odd Behavior 285
gyrogeerloose writes "Most of us know about the sun's eleven-year activity cycle. However, relatively few other than scientists (and amateur radio operators) are aware that the current solar minimum has lasted much longer than expected. The last solar cycle, Cycle 24, bottomed out in 2008, and Cycle 25 should be well on its way towards maximum by now, but the sun has remained unusually quiescent with very few sunspots. While solar physicists agree that this is odd, the explanation remains elusive."
Global warming is the cause (Score:5, Funny)
This is clear to everyone except the Denialists.
Anthropomorphic (Score:5, Funny)
All these solar power devices are using the sun up.
Okay, who broke the Sun? (Score:5, Funny)
2012 (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Global warming is the cause (Score:1, Funny)
Re:Global warming is the cause (Score:5, Funny)
No it's worse than that.
ITS GALACTIC WARMING!
We're doomed, the end is nigh!
Conspiracy! (Score:4, Funny)
The explanation is simple: the Sun is actually getting hotter, but the climatologists, in their conspiracy to frame things like the Earth was getting warmer due to greenhouse gasses, have forged all records to make it seem like the Sun was at low activity instead. That way the warming climate is blamed on human activity.
I will consider all replies and downmods to this post as further evidence of the Anthropogenic Global Warming Conspiracy. If you disagree with me, you're obvilously a paid chill or a poor, deluded fool. Or maybe you're just an evil ecoterrorist who wants to destroy our economy despite knowing better.
Go on, conspirators! Give me your best shot!
The release cycle has changed (Score:5, Funny)
because Sun was acquired by Oracle.
Re:Anonymous Coward (Score:5, Funny)
Actually, I think this might just be Captain Larry Ellison closing the deal with the Sun.
Sun misbehaves, humans angry (Score:3, Funny)
The Sun has better and more important things to do than to adhere to our primitive line of thought.
The following analogy comes to mind:
http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/the_search.png [xkcd.com]
Easy to fix (Score:3, Funny)
Odd, I just met a an eccentric young man with a bow tie, tweed jacket and braces. He owned a small wooden blue box (about the size of a beach hut) and he said that this was a harbinger of doom and that the sun would go out if he didn't do something about it. He dashed off with a pretty young female in tow....but it's pretty cold and overcast now, so maybe the end is nigh!
Re:Global warming is the cause (Score:5, Funny)
Worse yet, it's Anthrogenic Galactic Warming. It's all the fault of Western Civilization.
*pounds on bongo drum in protest*
Re:Okay, who broke the Sun? (Score:5, Funny)
I don't know, you'd think a massive ball of fusion fire wouldn't need warning signs, but apparently some joker still managed to break it.
And to think that Consumer Reports told me the 3 billion year warranty was a scam.
It was only $5 a month!
Preggers? (Score:5, Funny)
Re: Plants are the cause (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Okay, who broke the Sun? (Score:3, Funny)
My money is on the oil cartel. They had to silence the competition of energy from the sun.
And then it really got odd (Score:3, Funny)
When James Gosling left.
Vishnu Rocket (Score:1, Funny)
The Sun is being outsourced which means longer hold times and incomprehensible activity in response to the question being asked.
It's Global Warming (Score:3, Funny)
Darn, someone beat me to the punchline. So. Did anyone check to see if it's still plugged in?
Re: Plants are the cause (Score:4, Funny)
No, the sun isn't having its cycle because it's pregnant. DUH.
(Also am I the only one who thought Sun as in the company?)
Re:Enough data? (Score:4, Funny)
Or maybe there some longer cycle of...cycles ;) With the Sun now manifesting a shift of this ubercycle, which will give "short" cycle of different lenght.
Epicycles! Ptolemy was right, just not about the planets.
Re:Enough data? (Score:4, Funny)
It's cycles all the way...up?
Re:Global warming is the cause (Score:3, Funny)
The aliens realized we could hack their systems using TCP/IP, so instead they are just going to slowly boil us off the planet, then reduce the temperature and take all the resources after we die.
Re:Enough data? (Score:1, Funny)
And turtles all the way down
Re:It's Global Warming (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Enough data? (Score:5, Funny)
The journals literally end mid-sentence with the author describing how it's "suddenly warm", after having lost animals, the city, his family and finally his life, in a process taking years.
Sheesh how slow did this guy write?
Re:Preggers? (Score:3, Funny)
That would certainly add a whole different line of thought as to how stars are born. I guess we'll have to wait for the offspring to see who the likely parent was. I'm looking at YOU, Jupiter...
Re:Enough data? (Score:3, Funny)
I've got it. If we could only place some sort of "rig" on the sun, with a kind of "pipe"...we could pump solar material to Earth for further study.
I know what you're saying. The Sun's really, really hot. We could pump the solar plasma to a place that was already used to warmth. Like, say the Gulf coast of the US.
Someone make me the president of something.
Re:Enough data? (Score:3, Funny)
So then you end up having a leak or a big bad explosion, so that the "rig" "sinks"? Then you spend over a month trying to solve the problem while the Sun leaks all over the world?
No thanks. The oil leak in the Gulf is bad enough. I don't to see what happens when we hand you the Sun and a really big pipe.
Re:Enough data? (Score:3, Funny)
Someone call the Nobel committee and tell them that the deal's off, and the teamsters who were planning to start work on Monday to tell them that Christmas is going to suck again this year. Kids need to learn that.
You're a hard man, doing hard things, the_bard. I respect you for making this decision. Could you break it to 'lil Barak Obama though? I just keep thinking about how his eyes lit up when I told him my plan... and I don't have the heart.
Oblig. Irrelevant Mayan Reference (Score:3, Funny)
Wait. Which b'ak'tun [wikipedia.org] are we in again? Time to invent an enormous stone time machine and bug out, folks. LOL.
--
Toro
The reason. (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Enough data? (Score:3, Funny)
It goes all the way to 11?
Re: Plants are the cause (Score:3, Funny)
Also am I the only one who thought Sun as in the company?
Given that the Sun logo appears along side the story, I'd imagine that at least one Slashdot editor had the same thought...