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Space Science

Second Pole To The Right, Straight On 'til Morning 14

Posted by timothy from the asbestos-shoes dept.
billn writes "NASA article about the Sun's south pole going walkabout. Some nice imagery from SOHO, as well as some neat animations about the heliospheric sheet."
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Second Pole To The Right, Straight On 'til Morning More

Second Pole To The Right, Straight On 'til Morning

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  • Damn you Joachim! (Score:3, Interesting)

    by shadowbearer ( 554144 ) on Tuesday April 22, 2003 @09:18PM (#5786243) Homepage Journal
    I was in the middle of making up a story submission for this one. Argh!

    This is actually quite interesting. It means that the internal dynamo within our parent star is not understood quite as well as we thought.

    I wonder, when we've studied this more, what we'll learn about high intensity magnetic fields, and how it will contribute to fusion research.

    Let's hope a lot :-)

    SB

    • Re:Damn you Joachim! (Score:3, Interesting)

      by billn ( 5184 )
      I find it interesting, especially from a 'weather' context. I've always been a big fan of the more elegant science fiction constructs: sail ships. Different writers have posed different concepts, from using a physical sail to harness the outbound particle wave (Star Trek tipped their hat to this in a couple of DS9 episodes), or the more practical/possible use of shaped fields to interact with the magnetic field (see Michael Flynn's 'Rogue Star/Fire Star/Lode Star' series, a highly recommended read. For what

    • Re:Damn you Joachim! (Score:3, Informative)

      by barakn ( 641218 )
      the internal dynamo within our parent star is not understood quite as well as we thought

      Huh? Actually scientists have always considered stellar and planetary dynamos to be very enigmatic. No one has ever claimed they knew them "well." The story isn't about the dynamo, it's about how the heliosphere's shape changes in response to magnetic fields on the surface. As for the double north pole, the article states "it's a fairly normal side-effect of the solar cycle."

      • "Actually scientists have always considered stellar and planetary dynamos to be very enigmatic"

        True. But there have been a lot of discoveries like this in the last decade or so that make "current" (OMG, pun) models obsolete. That's why the computer models (our second best test of the many theories) are evolving so fast.

        "The story isn't about the dynamo, it's about how the heliosphere's shape changes in response to magnetic fields on the surface. As for the double north pole, the article states "it's a fai

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