NASA Data Suggests Solar Magnetic Field About To Flip 127
Freddybear writes "According to measurements from NASA solar observatories, the sun's magnetic field is about to reverse polarity. The event is predicted to occur within the next three to four months and will have effects throughout the solar system. These magnetic reversals happen regularly about every eleven years as part of the solar cycle."
You know what this means. (Score:5, Funny)
I'll be in my bunk-er.
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Sigh. OK, OK, I'll do it again, but this is the last time.
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From TFA, this happens every 11 years. So if you are under the age of 11, you can be scared. If you are over the age of 11, this should be a "been there done that" moment.
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But there actually was a bit of panic over the last one. People claiming that because the rise in satellite communications was vastly higher than last time, the internet was "new", fly by wire planes would fail, etc.
Oh no (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Oh no (Score:4, Funny)
Just turn your fridge upside down
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Or just the recipes.
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You have to do both, so you can still read the recipes...
And replacing recipes with suction cups...I don't know where to begin.
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No, no, you just have to hang them on the back of the fridge. They'll be a bit hard to get to there but, just think, 11 years from now when you switch them back, you'll have all sorts of rediscovered recipes to try.
Re:Oh no (Score:5, Funny)
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Sun has PMS (Score:3, Funny)
Doom and gloom (Score:4, Insightful)
Waiting for news reports to be published that leave out the part that this is normal and part of the aprox eleven year solar cycle.
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Many people will believe it to be impossible that it is natural.
I do not believe that the WSO telescope facility is a natural formation. I think it was intelligently designed. You may now prove me wrong.
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Yawn (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Yawn (Score:5, Funny)
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queue apocolypse theories in 3... 2... 1... (Score:2)
mark!
If this is happening in 3-4 months, how many of those days will we get "documentaries" on how this might spell our doom?
Seriously,. if this happens every 11 years, it's hardly noteworthy...
That means I've lived through 3 of them...
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The Sun is sucking up sharks and spitting them back at us! Next week on SyFy: Sharkspotnado!
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Not Sharkspotnado! (Score:4, Funny)
Coronal Shark Ejection!
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Meglaspot!
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No...
SharkFlare! It's sharks It's solar flares! Oh the huge manatee!
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No...
SharkFlare! It's sharks It's solar flares! Oh the huge manatee!
For some reason, I immediately put that to B-52 music, with Kate blaring out the words.
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SunSharks or maybe SolarSharks (Score:2)
SunSharks or maybe SolarSharks
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SunSharks or maybe SolarSharks
Candygram.
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I just wish that the fact that this is regularly wasn't mentioned, so we could see just how many idjits started talking about how this is a sign of "a new cosmic awakening", or some other BS like that.
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If this is happening in 3-4 months, how many of those days will we get "documentaries" on how this might spell our doom?
Dang, if only this happened last December, at the end/beginning of the Mayan Calendar cycle. The media would've had an even bigger field day.
Add one more. (Score:2)
Death, Taxes and the Sun's magnetic reversal cycle.
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Not to mention Stew. When the first man crawled out of the slime and went to make his home on land, what he had for dinner that night was stew.
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Primordial stew?
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Huh, I heard the great benefactor Stu was the guy in charge? My mistake.
Thanks for including the "but it's normal" note (Score:2)
Otherwise just imagine the panic: non-TFA reading geeks everywhere emerging blinking into the light like an invading zombie army. Could be the end of civilization.
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Oh, no. Not again.
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Replace "bowl of petunias" with "the sun", and you get become a PhD student.
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What makes you think they'll let a little fact like that get in the way of their doomsaying? I'm sure they'll be able to come up with something:
...
This one happened faster than previous ones
This one was slower than others
This one was stronger
It was weaker
It's going to happen over the holidays so it has biblical implications
When combined with global warming it will cause untold catastrophes
Monopole? (Score:1)
From TFA:
"The sun's north pole has already changed sign, while the south pole is racing to catch up,"
Can someone explain what is actually going on?
Re:Monopole? (Score:5, Insightful)
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I'm not sure, though it doesn't seem strange to me. A magnet doesn't have to have its poles 180 degrees away from each other (think a horseshoe magnet).
But "racing to catch up"...!!?!!
Damn Northerners! They've stolen a march on our poor Southern horseshoes!!
Caint never trust them dad burn Yankee magnets!
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That means that somewhere in the middle things are really screwy. You'd probably have to ask Stephen Hawking to know what's really going on in there.
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It means the solar sharknadeo caused a coronal monopole ejaculation inducing a carrington event class money shot here on Earth! It maybe a good idea to retreat to your under-volcano secret lair for the next 3-4 months if your not into bubuki.
TLDR? 4 minute video. (Score:5, Informative)
Here's a 4 minute video on the topic:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=34gNgaME86Y [youtube.com]
I find it interesting that this cycle is a bit longer than normal this time.
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Wait, don't you have a 20 second video?
It takes only a minute to read the summary and TFA.
You sir are purveyor of false economy!
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"TLDR" ?? :)
This recent 1-h presentation from Helen Mason at the Royal Institute is extremely informative
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vbI6TDHCfe4 [youtube.com]
From the article:
"Changes to the field's polarity ripple all the way out to the Voyager probes, on the doorstep of interstellar space."
Expect new announcements about Voyager 1 reaching interstellar space in the next 3 to 4 months :P
Countdown for the SyFy disaster flick (Score:3)
Starting now...[assuming it hasn't been done yet]
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"Ghost Shark: it's a shark that's a ghost. Need anything else?" SyFy, hinting that you're aware you're making disgracefully shitty entertainment doesn't mean it's not disgracefully shitty. In fact, it just makes it worse.
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This is my problem with their movies lately. Before you laughed at how bad they are. Now SyFy seems to want to join in and laugh at themselves; almost as if they're absolving themselves of making such crappy movies. It doesn't take much to make good movies. Look at all of those Chill network originals. I've seen some very entertaining small pics and Chill is a minor network.
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Misread that... (Score:5, Funny)
And thought, man they really are spying on everything.
No you didn't misread it Re:Misread that... (Score:1)
For a second I thought the title read, "NSA Data Suggests Solar Magnetic Field About To Flip"
And thought, man they really are spying on everything.
You probably aren't wrong.
Re:Misread that... (Score:5, Funny)
Well they can't have the sun changing sides too. Imagine what would happen if the sun turned against us. We'd get all Snowd 'en.
Survivalist Nutjobs rejoice! (Score:2)
Headed for the bunker with your bugout bag and your rifle.
Yeppers, I remember "cheaper than dirt" selling all kinds of crap for the Y2K apocalypse, and then there was the coming Rapture, and then the Mayan apocalypse.
I'm sure there were a few more end of the world scenarios I missed, but seriously, the end of the world seems to happen about every 2 years.
Could it be PlanetX/Niburu? (Score:1)
Used 2 feel it was "conspiracy theorist" stuff till CNN http://news.blogs.cnn.com/2011/02/15/scientists-telescope-hunt-massive-hidden-object-in-space/ [cnn.com]
The last time... (Score:2)
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The last time the magnetic field flipped (Feb 2001), Brendan Fraser starred in Monkeybone. What colossal box office flop awaits us this time around?
Monkeybone II starring Shia LaBeouf, obviously..
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Monkeybone On Ice
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Totally unrelated. What do you mean by "slated" anyway. Does it qualify If it will happen in 1000 years?
Social Media (Score:5, Funny)
I wonder what role social media is having [xkcd.com] on the timeline for this event?
Surprising frequency (Score:5, Interesting)
Given the predicted 8 billion year lifespan of the sun, 11 years is a blip. If you equated it to a human 80-year lifespan, the magnetic reversal would happen every 3.47 seconds. It's almost like a heartbeat at that rate.
About Time! (Score:5, Funny)
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<3 same here.
Feb. 2001 called, it wants its Armageddon back (Score:2)
For those of you too young to remember, it happened before [nasa.gov] and it will happen again.
About to Reverse Polarity (Score:2)
Oh my God!
Ancient Aliens (Score:1)
Is it possible, as some Ancient Astronaut Theorists suggest.....
Voyager experiments (Score:2, Interesting)
Could this be an opportunity for Voayager to finally measure the Sun's magnetosphere / edge of the solar system in more detail. The sun is not a perfect sphere I'm guessing, so the change should be recordable onboard Voyager if NASA gets lucky.
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I CAN'T BELIEVE OBAMA WOULD DO THIS TO US (Score:2, Funny)
20 END (kidding)
SyFy channel (Score:1)
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Because you forgot to include sharks. Everything has to have sharks in it now.
Musical tone (Score:1)
It appears the sun's magnetic field is playing a G at 37 octaves below middle C. *
* Based on 22.2 year mean cycle time. It appears to vary a bit, and it's playing a bit sharp.
Magnetic monopole? (Score:1)
So, both the physical S and N ends of the sun are magnetic S? Where is the N magnetic pole?
Big damn monopole.
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and the global warming nuts always come out in full force every time there is a hot day or week
the last week has been pretty cool in NYC. i haven't turned on my AC in over a week. too cold to drink iced coffee.
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weather != climate
Or were you just trolling?
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Well the warming has been stalled for about 17 years at arround 0.3, last July was only 0.17 warmer. The current solar cycle 24 has been pretty anemic, and now we find out the max is half over, so things should start cooling off for the next eleven or so years! My magic eight ball says the iguanas are going to be falling out of the trees in Florida pretty soon.