The Sun's 'Quiet Period' Explained 167
Arvisp writes with this excerpt from the BBC:
"Solar physicists may have discovered why the Sun recently experienced a prolonged period of weak activity. The most recent so-called 'solar minimum' occurred in December 2008. Its drawn-out nature extended the total length of the last solar cycle — the repeating cycle of the Sun's activity — to 12.6 years, making it the longest in almost 200 years. The new research suggests that the longer-than-expected period of weak activity may have been linked to changes in the way a hot soup of charged particles called plasma circulated in the Sun."
Oblig: (Score:3, Funny)
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Shouldn't that be "No plasma for you!"?
hot soup? (Score:5, Informative)
This is slashdot, not preschool. You can use your big-boy words with us.
Re:hot soup? (Score:5, Funny)
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Maturity is a relative term, after all. ;)
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Blame the BBC, that quote was lifted verbatim from the fine article.
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If you're having corneal mass ejections how can you see?
Do you perhaps mean coronal mass ejections?
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This is slashdot, not preschool. You can use your big-boy words with us.
And apparently, this "hot soup" is delivered via a "conveyor belt".
ok, ok, here it is (Score:2)
it's really more of a hot ragout, so there you go, the fancy words we actually use.
Re:hot soup? (Score:4, Funny)
No, I think it's better to use car analogies instead of big words here.
Sorry, my car-ma ran over your dogma.
Inactivity? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Inactivity? (Score:5, Funny)
That big glowing ball in the sky is now called "the Oracle." Get with the times!
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No, it's the fusion lamp in the room with the blue ceiling. Get with the times!
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That big glowing ball in the sky is now called "the Oracle." Get with the times!
So that's why we suddenly get a proof that P != NP?
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Funny how things go full circle. Once (some of) our ancestors consulted the Oracle [wikipedia.org] and worshipped the Sun [wikipedia.org]. Now we ... gee, I dunno.
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I believe they are referring to OpenSolaris.
The last release was 2009.06 - which was well over a year ago now.
Seems normal to me. (Score:5, Funny)
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I thought I could relate until you said hangover. It's typically the local Mexican food truck that gets me spewing hot liquids and gases. It's a good kind of hurt though (I guess anyways. For some reason I keep ending up there 2-3 times per week). Damned Al Pastor Tortas . . .
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The above is exactly why I keep asking for a "TMI" moderator category.
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I can imagine plasma makes for an even worse hangover.
right. and that's why people are moving away from plasma and toward lcd.
oh. wait.
Huh... (Score:2)
Just Pushes Back The Question (Score:5, Insightful)
'... may have been linked to changes in the way a hot soup of charged particles called plasma circulated in the Sun.
So why did the "hot soup of charged particles called plasma" change in the way that they circulated?
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To score on 2012? Turns out the clock was running a little fast after all those millenia...
(seriously - it would be interesting if the observed solar cycle is, more or less, a result of interfence of few underlying ones; for starters, the Sun is a bit flattened, so propagation times of various disturbances might very well differ depending on direction; and if they interact... )
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From wikipedia [wikipedia.org]
All we *ever* do is push back the question (Score:2)
"Why" is the question that children repeatedly ask until adults get bored. All science can do is move one step at a time, answering one set of questions so that the next set of "why"s are visible.
Ultimately you get back to "god did it" or "everything exploded from nothing". Neither of which are enlightening.
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"everything exploded from nothing"
Dude, you need to watch more science tv, scientists are working on that as we speak. That "everything from nothing" problem affects a lot more than just the origins of the universe - it basically breaks physics, so theoretical physicists are desperate to figure out the solution. So far, the best explanation seems to be string theory, and that there are a lot more than just the one universe and the four dimensions. It's gaining ground because it seems to fix the standard model - that was actually what it
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it basically breaks physics, so theoretical physicists are desperate to figure out the solution.
This is exactly it.
Paraphrasing to make it fit, from Footfall...
"Everything exploded from nothing? Doesn't that violate the laws of physics?" / "I'm sure the universe is doing everything right. We just don't understand it yet."
Photino Birds (Score:2)
This is why I hate most science reporting (Score:5, Insightful)
The headline, and the first few paragraphs make it sound like this is a solved problem: theories were proposed, experiments were done, results were verified and a conclusion was concluded.
Instead, what actually happened is completely murky. There is no mention of which satellites were used to gather data, or which organization collected it, or how data was used to support the conclusions. It seems that some people ran some computer simulations where they could replicate the current cycle by changing some parameters of the solar conveyor belt. But that's a guess, because the article says nothing. And to really make the article useless, there's the obligatory counter-point from a random scientist who says something completely different, again without any explanation of why.
Journalists ought to learn that science reporting is not like Entertainment or even Politics reporting. It doesn't really matter who said what, but only why they say and how they came to the conclusions. I'm not holding my breath though.
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The headline, and the first few paragraphs make it sound like this is a solved problem: theories were proposed, experiments were done, results were verified and a conclusion was concluded.
Well, it's kind of hard to do experiments on the Sun. This is one of the problems with the idea that a lot of people seem to have, usually based on half-remembered lessons from high school "science" class, that there's thing called "the scientific method." There isn't; there are a whole bunch of scientific methods, all more or less related but difffering from field to field. Observational sciences such as astronomy must by the nature of the field use different methods from experimental sciences such as,
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No shit it's hard to do experiments on the sun. That's why there are laboratories that replicate specific parts of the sun's physics, satellites that collect data and things like the Ice cube experiment. Even astronomy isn't done completely in the dark with no experiments.
May...suggests.... could be... Those are called weasel words for a reason. In this case, they are weasel words because they cover the complete absence of any evidence for the conclusion. The weasel words do not cover that fact. Furthermore
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You forgot to mention how there also was a bit of a counter-point.
Did GP even read TFA? (uhm, yeah, silly me...)
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Well, it's kind of hard to do experiments on the Sun.
NASA [wikipedia.org] and The ESA [wikipedia.org] wish to disagree with you. Well, okay, in your defense those weren't particularly 'easy' by any definition of the word. The point, however, is that we've been experimenting on the sun (or, at least using observed data to experiment with our models) for awhile now.
Re:This is why I hate most science reporting (Score:4, Insightful)
The GP is confusing observation, which is the first component of the scientific method, with experimentation, which is a technique for initiating the repetition of the conditions to allow for more observations.
The Sun currently cannot be experimented on, but to say you cannot perform observations, measure those observations, or repeat those observations and measurements, is patently absurd and shows a fundamental lack of understanding of the very core of all science.
If it cannot be observed, it cannot be science. Period. There is no other option. If it cannot be measured, it cannot be science. Period. If it never repeats and cannot be made to repeat it cannot be science. Period. An experiment is nothing more than forcing the repetition of the conditions to allow for another observation and measurement. It's not at all necessary for science.
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... This is one of the problems with the idea that a lot of people seem to have, usually based on half-remembered lessons from high school "science" class, that there's thing called "the scientific method." There isn't; there are a whole bunch of scientific methods, all more or less related but difffering from field to field. Observational sciences such as astronomy must by the nature of the field use different methods from experimental sciences such as, say, microbiology. ...
Differing, yes. The fields where experimentation is possible we can have confidence in the results. Experiments are done and theories are put to the test. The fields were experimentation is difficult or impossible we are stuck with having theories that happen to fit what facts we have. Sometimes, not even that. Sometimes, it is a theory because it "feels" right because it is abstracted several times from anything resembling a fact. That is a good thing as long as we understand that tomorrow it could
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Re:This is why I hate most science reporting (Score:4, Insightful)
There isn't; there are a whole bunch of scientific methods, all more or less related but difffering from field to field.
There is only one scientific method: observe, measure, repeat. All those "different" scientific methods are simply different techniques used to follow each of those steps. The steps themselves never change.
For example, it may be currently impossible to perform experiments on the Sun. That does not mean the scientific method does not apply. The scientific method says nothing about performing experiments - it says make an observation, measure what you observed, and repeat the observation. You can do this by simply watching the sun through a telescope. Patterns emerge, and there are reasons for those patterns. You develop theories that should allow you to predict what will happen next - the closer your theory is to correct, the more accurate your predictions will reflect your observations. This is the scientific method being used to further our understanding of the universe. It's how we know so damned much about it, and how we know there is a whole lot more that we don't know about it.
This is how all science works. Experimental scientists have the luxury of repeating their observations at will, which scientists who cannot perform experiments on their subjects don't have the luxury of doing, but that in no way means one group is using a fundamentally different scientific method. Reality couldn't be further from the truth.
Re:This is why I hate most science reporting (Score:5, Insightful)
Journalists don't have a clue. Which is why from law to science reporting is garbage. From why fruit flies die so quickly, to anything in relation to climate or weather, to why bad guy X got 5yrs in jail for insert crime here. From a lawish point of view let me add this, every once and awhile I spend time in court being a witness for this, or that, or something else. There's always some reporter, from some news agency there if it's anything big. I will tell you now, if I wasn't in the court myself, I'd have no clue that the article I was reading had any relation to the case, if my name wasn't in there somewhere.
That's how far removed reporting is from reality these days.
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"these days"?
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"these days"?
Yes, these days. That would be 20 years or so. There was a point back in the 80's when what was reported actually reflected the events in hand. Things got better after the 70's, and hit shit again in the 90's.
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You look at the past through rose colored glasses. In the past there was even no real way to verify most of the news at all (which probably affects how "reliable" it felt). Solid reporting has never been so easily accessible as it is today (many prople of course don't care / ignore it, but it's there)
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Well no, it's actually easier to figure out how and where reporting went to crap. Here's my challenge to you, goto your local library and go look up cases from the late 70's through the 90's. Then go read the news articles, or watch the archived TV broadcasts and see what happens. You'll notice a very subtle n style correction in the media.
I'd actually argue that reporting has gotten worse as media today lives in the "report hard, die fast" era. Where if you don't have the story regardless of circumstan
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Journalists ought to learn that science reporting is not like Entertainment or even Politics reporting. It doesn't really matter who said what, but only why they say and how they came to the conclusions. I'm not holding my breath though.
Well, the summary is worse than the article in those respects. For something like the BBC, the audience cares less about the methods and more about the conclusions. That said, it doesn't excuse reporting of incorrect conclusions.
Re:This is why I hate most science reporting (Score:5, Informative)
Plasma flowing poleward at the solar surface and returning equatorward near the base of the convection zone, called the meridional circulation, constitutes the Sun's conveyor-belt. Just as the Earth's great oceanic conveyor-belt carries thermal signatures that determine El Nino events, the Sun's conveyor-belt determines timing, amplitude and shape of a solar cycle in flux-transport type dynamos. In cycle 23, the Sun's surface poleward meridional flow extended all the way to the pole, while in cycle 22 it switched to equatorward near 60. Simulations from a flux-transport dynamo model including these observed differences in meridional circulation show that the transport of dynamo-generated magnetic flux via the longer conveyor-belt, with slower return-flow in cycle 23 compared to that in cycle 22, may have caused the longer duration of cycle 23.
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I totally agree with you, this is too insubstantial even for science reporting.
The article is at adsabs, but it's on subscription only:
http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2010GeoRL..3714107D [harvard.edu]
Maybe someone with a subscription to "Geophysical Research Letters" could voice an opinion?
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May have been linked (Score:3, Insightful)
may have been linked to changes in the way a hot soup of charged particles called plasma circulated in the Sun
Um, yeah, and the recent heat wave in the western part of the U.S. may have been linked to changes in the way a hot soup of particles called atoms circulated in the atmosphere...
Seriously. /. needs to stop voting dreck into the stream and start doing real story selection and summary editing. Because the value added per editorial second is dropping like a rock.
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Don't you mean, dropping like it's a hot bowl of soup?
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Solar physicists have also threatened to melt every city on earth with liquid hot "plasma" unless we give them... one million dollars!
Did anybody else think when reading the headline (Score:2)
that this had something to do with an IPO?
One Word Explanation. (Score:2)
Correlation (Score:2)
Recent increases in electricity generated by solar power.
Prolonged Solar minimum.
Is nobody else seeing the Correlation here? Solar panels are stripping the sun of it's plasma-soup.
radio implications (Score:2)
Re:Solar Cooling! Man is at it again! (Score:5, Funny)
You: We should nuke the sun from orbit!
Moderator: The nuke won't make it into orbit, it's too hot.
You: Let's go at night, then.
Moderator: Oh yeah, of course!
Re:Solar Cooling! Man is at it again! (Score:4, Funny)
You: We should nuke the sun from orbit!
Moderator: The nuke won't make it into orbit, it's too hot.
You: Let's go at night, then.
Moderator: Oh yeah, of course!
Slashdot: Aren't the nukes technically already in orbit?
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Yes, they do understand it. They understand it so well you don't need to repeat again the same old joke that inevitably appears here every time there's an article about the sun.
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I sincerely hope moderators understand tongue in cheek humor.
Since your "humor" is based on a nasty strawman caricature, you deserve all the downmods you get. Saying something blatantly stupid and insulting and then retreating behind "but I was joking!" is a classic bit of troll cowardice.
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Class ignorance.
Sometimes the best humor is humor which makes light of strawmen.
Probably best to simply say, "Whoosh!", in your case. Dry humor is not for everyone.
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While your comment adds no end of profundity to the discussion, I'm sure.
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That's likely the root of the problem. Even a hint of truism brings ire and censorship rather than a spotlight for humor. Coincidentally, its probably censorship from the same people who like to complain about censorship on slashdot.
Re:Solar Cooling! Man is at it again! (Score:4, Informative)
Trying for "funny" is dangerous to your karma. If you succeed, people get a good laugh but your karma's the same. If you fail, you're going to be modded troll, flamebait, overrated, or offtopic and your karma will suffer. Even if your joke just isn't funny.
The moral? Shy away from humor unless you don't care about karma or you're sure you joke will make somebody spew coffee out of their nose. And sorry, but your joke just didn't cut it.
Two slashdotters walk into a bar... (Score:2)
...and order Sex on the Beach.
So, what you're saying is...
Cracking jokes on slashdot is an indicator of balls of steel and/or bulletproof karma?
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Most likely the "redundant" comes from variations of this joke appearing every time there's an article about any sort of temperature change in any place other than the earth.
A joke may be funny or not the first time you hear it but it's never funny after you hear it several times.
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Meh, we're due in like, 20 million years or something anyway.
Might as well be now on the galactic time scale. On the universal time scale it pretty much already started.
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That's right. The sun's solar minimum is not caused by global warming, nor is the hottest decade on record caused by the sun's solar minimum. Pass it on to any idiots you know who keep saying "It's just the sun!"
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"There is a blight more serious than Global Warming, it is cyclical and is happening now. Run for the hills. Beware the political campaign signs."
Right. The entire world is waking up to the horrible fact that there will be no more episodes of 'Lost'.
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Yeah, the sunspots themselves are cooler, but total solar irradiance is lower during a solar minimum, and higher during solar maximum [wikipedia.org]. So while I am not saying for a fact that you don't know what the hell you're talking about and are stupid for still thinking it's just the sun... Wait that's exactly what I'm saying.
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What you say? Climate change has only been going on for the last 12 years of the last solar cycle and was directly discussed in the article?
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"What you say?
Who are you, an ex-Zero Wing [wikipedia.org] translator?
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That is the thing about astroPhysics, that I really like. Any problems that occur isn't our fault. Here on Earth because everything is so tightly interconnected every problem can somehow be blamed on human intervention, and I am not denying that. But it is nice to have things that isn't our fault.
Taking blame for something... (Score:4, Insightful)
...is not the worst thing that can happen. Particularly when we are talking astrophysics.
I prefer the option where it IS "our" fault compared to one where the cause of trouble is completely out of our hands.
Cause if we can break it, we can probably fix it to. Not easily, but there is a chance.
Fixing something caused by the Sun... well... not this civilization.
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Even burning hydrogen isn't all that efficient. Sun should research fusion. But I bet we'll get it going first.
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Actually, there was talk of that back in the 1970s. I don't remember if there was any serious science behind it or not. It could have just been a general cultural concern because of all of the fears of a Nuclear Winter.
- doug
Re:Finally... (Score:5, Informative)
In the 70s it wasn't clear which effect was winning, cooling due to aerosal particles (soot) in the atmosphere or warming due to carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases. It turns out that warming was winning which became clear in the late 70s and 80s. There was no consensus at any time saying that global cooling would be a problem long term. However, this debate did get mixed together with the discovery of the orbital cycles which cause the ice ages which predict another one thousands of years from now . So you got some popular science articles warning about global cooling and a new ice age.
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Finally some evidence to prove my new theory I will soon propose: Global Cooling.
You're going to have to wait a few thousand millenia though before people will believe you. You're just a little ahead of your time.
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Re:Finally... (Score:4, Insightful)
No, the change was because people mistaking localized effects for proof that the globe wasn't warming. Some spots might see lower average temperatures due to changes in cloud cover, rain fall, etc. while the overall global temperature is still higher.
For all the people that think that global warming is some conspiracy, publish a reproducible proof in a journal that shows it. You will win a nobel prize and a lifetime of funding.
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Oh yeah, those 'cycles' that science comes up with, what a crock, like the so-called 'water cycle' that evil 'private research institutions' acknowledge. Everybody knows that rain just materializes in the sky rather than condensing from evaporated surface water.{/sarcasm}
I mean really, are so you so dumb and so blindly focused on attacking 'private interests' (of all things) that the best you can come up wit
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a 'cycle' is invented.
Yes because there are no cycles at all in nature.
Hello? Just because we can't explain something fully doesn't mean we can't spot repetitive behavior. These observations have value, if only to serve as the starting point for an explanation by someone smarter than us at some point in the future.
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there cycles being in nature does NOT mean that 'private research institutions' can suddenly start inventing numerous 'cycles' just in a decade, whereas there have been only a set amount of cycles invented since the start of scientific revolution.
Because as we all know, the pace of scientific and technological advancement is perfectly constant.
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You clearly have absolutely no idea what you are talking about.
I don't know of a single scientific idea that has been "set" for any significant length of time, let alone set since the start of scientific revolution. Even those stalwart cornerstones of physics, the Laws of Thermodynamics, have changed over the last 160 years.
The idea that we know all the "cycles" that exist and haven't been discovering new ones is not just ignorant, it's idiotic. Seriously, read a book about science sometime. I don't care
Re:Cycle my ass ... (Score:5, Informative)
Give me a break. The solar activity cycle has been documented and studied since the early '60's (if not prior). We use it to design appropriately rad-hardened components in the spacecraft industry. We analyze required mission lifetimes and chart solar activity for the projected lifespan of the spacecraft as variations in solar activity affect everything from solar cell degradation to magnetic drag induced on your spacecraft. Hell, I can eve give you a citation. Go find yourself a copy of Fundamentals of Space Systems ed. II by Vincent L. Pisacane. Crack it open to Chapter II: The Space Environment. Read pages 50 through 60. It's all laid out in the basics there. If you want more detailed info. go crack into a journal of astrophysics sometime....
So put away the hatred of science and go back to doing whatever it is you do.
Of course, if you were being sarcastic and/or satirical, I completely failed to pick up on it due to a lack of sarcasm tags around your post.
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Give me a break. The solar activity cycle has been documented and studied since the early '60's (if not prior).
Furthermore, we can measure the activity a lot better now than we ever could in the past, which allows our understanding of those cycles to grow and expand.
The GP is incredibly ignorant.
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Well, I'll agree with you that most seasonal holidays have been pretty much commercialized. endjoke.
But what are the seasons, if not natural cycles? Was it a corporate plot of the first humans in order to maximize crop yields?
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Obviously Winter was invented by a secret cabal including the top scientists of Sears, Target, Walmart, Burlington Coat Factory, and Coca-Cola (those santa pics pre-date winter by at least a decade!) in order to sell cold weather clothing.
I can't believe all you sheep have been so blind for so long.
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How long will it take until the Sun enters the "quiet period" again? How "loud" will it be until then?
My sources indicate it may, in fact, go to 11.
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Do you mean just a "quite period"? Or a quiet period as long as this one?
If it's the former, there will be another minimum in 11 years. If you want the latter you'll probably have to wait another 100 years or so.
Interestingly enough, while this minimum is about as big as one a hundred years ago, the Dalton minimum 200 years ago was significantly longer.
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Are you being critical of the research? TFA talks about a study of the completed solar cycle 23. We're currently IN Solar Cycle 24, which the article you reference predicts will peak in 2012. They may be right. Of course we'll never know, since the Mayan calendar clearly shows the end of the world in 2012, but that's another story. Or is it?!?
Re:are we really surprised? (Score:5, Informative)
The sun is 4.6 BILLION years old and we are concerned with a couple of years difference in the Solar Cycle? How many of our empirical evidence cycles have we measured in this sort of accuracy? The whole cycle measures within 2.3e-8% of its lifespan and we are surprised that we haven't got the accuracy narrowed down? What other natural phenomenon have we measured to this accuracy cause I would really like to see the ruler that was used...
What got your panties in a twist? Just because something might vary over 4.8 Billion years has nothing to do with the fact that based on our current set of measurements this period was a bit longer. Hell, it doesn't matter if we measured only ONE other cycle, we could STILL make the observation "Hey, this cycle is longer than the last one".
However since you did ask. Sunspots were what we first used as a 'ruler'. Discovered in 800 BC, drawn later, and eventually the cycle was first showin in 1843 using data going back to 1755. We now know sunspot data (from historical observations not always available to the first discoverers of the cycle) going back to 1610.
And it's not like it's a 'slight' cycle either. These things vary by 150+ appearances per day during the peak, down to a dozen or fewer during the minimum.
Take a look at this picture: http://solarscience.msfc.nasa.gov/images/Zurich_Color_Small.jpg [nasa.gov]
You don't exactly have to be a statistical wizard to see a pattern in that data.
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I agree, but I deal with rainfall and watershed data. The engineers talk in 20, 50 and 100 year events and these are no where nailed down to any sort of accuracy. even the full 400 year measuring period is looking at is still 8.7e-7% of the lifespan of the sun we have looked at such a small window and drawn an assumption over that window. We are definitely going to be wrong. heck we cant even predict tomorrows weather accurately, let alone something we measuring at a distance, where we are still only theori
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yet another troll. as was pointed out above, this solar cycle was a minimum of activity (i.e. less solar energy incoming on earth) and during this same period, the temperature still went up. not that climate change is actually about such short spans of time, but your jumped to conclusion isn't even supported anecdotally by this evidence.