Thermosphere Contraction Puzzles Scientists

The thermosphere layer of earth's atmosphere begins 80 to 90 kilometers above the surface and extends several hundred kilometers into the sky; it is the home to numerous satellites and the International Space Station. It is known that the thermosphere occasionally cools and contracts, but a recent study of satellite orbital decay (due to light atmospheric drag) found that the contraction during 2008 and 2009 was significantly more severe than expected, leaving researchers at a loss for how to explain it. From Space.com: "This type of collapse is not rare, but its magnitude shocked scientists. 'This is the biggest contraction of the thermosphere in at least 43 years,' said John Emmert of the Naval Research Lab, lead author of a paper announcing the finding in the June 19 issue of the journal Geophysical Research Letters. 'It's a Space Age record.' The collapse occurred during a period of relative solar inactivity — called a solar minimum from 2008 to 2009. These minimums are known to cool and contract the thermosphere, however, the recent collapse was two to three times greater than low solar activity could explain."

Everybody run for your lives!

[Karganeth]

The sky is falling in... literally!

Some One Liners

[Reilaos]

"Don't worry, it's cool."

"Don't worry, I suffer from a bit of shrinkage, too."

Not temperature - density

[Joce640k]

CO2 is denser than air so naturally the atmosphere compacts under gravity as the density increases.

WTF?

[gbutler69]

The sky IS falling. Oh, Chicken Little, how we all should've listened!

actually it's

[phantomfive]

Actually it's likely related to global warming, since CO2 emits light at a different wavelength than it absorbs it, it sometimes causes the thermosphere (and other layers) to cool and contract by the time the light gets to the outer layers. There are climate models that predict this. The heat is absorbed at low altitudes and not emitted at high altitudes.

Actually I just made that up, but it sounded good, didn't it? Right? I'm sure we can blame it on pollution somehow.

Re:actually it's

[TheSHAD0W]

Evil. Very evil.

You have a lucrative future ahead of you in climatology.

Re:Great

[Anonymous Coward]

doors, do they let people in, or do they let people out? Which is it?

windows, do they let light in, or do they let light out? We can't win!

This was discussed in those emails

[Anonymous Coward]

It's due to the lack of USB support in linux, the flaws in GPL, global warming, Barack Obama's personal war, and the terrible new changes to slashdot.

Re:This was discussed in those emails

[maxwell demon]

I understand: They migrated the thermosphere control servers to Linux. However the thermosphere control device is on USB, and there are no appropriate drivers. Those drivers are missing because of the flaws in GPL. This wouldn't have been a problem if the device would not have entered a special high temperature mode, because the standard low temperature mode is well supported by Linux drivers. This high temperature mode was of course entered because of global warming. Moreover, a backup server still running Windows, which could have been used to drive the thermosphere control device, was destroyed in Barack Obamas personal war. And it wasn't put up again because the people responsible for it were too busy complaining about the terrible new changes to Slashdot.

Re:Oh, go fuck a goat.

[WrongSizeGlass]

Just... go fuck a goat, you pessimistic bastard. What we don't need is people who are going to sit around and bitch about how we're all inevitably doomed. Those people (and you specifically) aren't a part of any solution, so yes - go fuck a goat.

(pulls up a chair, dons a colander for a hat, straps on the old high school football shoulder pads and starts fretting)

How on earth am I supposed to fuck a goat when I'm so worried about the inevitable demise of this giant merry-go-round that I'm wearing a coffee pot for a cup?

Coincidence?

[kaoshin]

It is an interesting to me that the HAARP project [wikipedia.org] was brought online a year before these severe contractions of the thermosphere. Although I'm sure the conspiracy theories are over the top, it would probably be dumb to disregard the fact that there are no other explanations right now as to what is happening to the atmosphere, but during this time period the military just happened to conduct an experiment against it.

Re:Very easy to explain..

[Barrinmw]

Don't you remember the Race Select Screen? Humans come with +5 Adaptability.

Get to the hospital

[White Flame]

when the contractions are 5 minutes apart

Re:Great

[DinDaddy]

So you're saying we've been phrasing the question wrong.

Why doesn't the food know? Because we've tricked it!

Same reason wooden boats float. Until you load them up enough that the water can see over the edge and notice all the non-floating things you have in there, it pushes back. Once it's seen that though, it will vengefully rush in and sink the boat.

Re:Coincidence?

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, I am wondering if this is due to the increasing gravitational effects of the microscopic black hole that was released by the LHC. Eventually it will consume the earth, but it only makes sense we would see the sky falling first...