Sunspots Return 276
We're emerging from the longest, deepest sunspot drought since 1913 (we discussed its depths here) with the appearance of a robust group of sunspots over the weekend. Recently we discussed a possible explanation for the prolonged minimum. The Fox News article quotes observer Michael Buxton of Ocean Beach, Calif.: "This is the best sunspot I've seen in two years." jamie found a NASA site where you can generate a movie of the recent sunspot's movement — try selecting the first image type and bumping the resolution to 1024. The magnetic field lines are clearly visible.
wow. (Score:5, Funny)
"This is the best sunspot I've seen in two years."
Re:wow. (Score:5, Funny)
Don't we all, man, don't we all...
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Actually I did it while floating and standing in the water. But now I'm tired, so I really need to get laid.
Good night from the beach! ^^
Re:wow. (Score:4, Insightful)
Maybe I'm just odd compared to most guys but I rather enjoy the foreplay and cuddling. The blast of hormones is just, err, "icing on the cake". ;)
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"This is the best sunspot I've seen in two years."
... MAN does this guy need to get laid.
For all you know he could be one of those bad-ass astronomers they make movies about and he could have been sitting at the 'scope looking at the spot while getting a blow job from a hot chick like in Swordfish.
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For all you know he could be one of those bad-ass astronomers they make movies about and he could have been sitting at the 'scope looking at the spot while getting a blow job from a hot chick like in Swordfish.
Always found that amusing. In reality somebody with the skills to crack that firewall (or encryption key - whatever. haven't seen that movie in ages) would probably be the geekiest looking guy in existence. That doesn't fit with societal views of the archetypal badass though.
It's kinda like in horror movies. Any movie involving an exorcism or something that requires the presence of a priest who's gonna get the job done must always portray their priest as the oddball priest who swears, smokes, drinks, ba
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Actually, the male rape is less offensive to me than the technical nonsense in the movie. That film only has two saving graces IMO.
CQ DX (Score:5, Insightful)
CQ DX here we come! Time to hang wire and pound brass!
73, w7com
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73, KJ4BRU
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Four elements on 15m, seven elements on 10m and two elements on 12m up at 85 feet -- plus 1500 Watts. It's about time I put a few more new ones in the log somewhere above 20!
I can hardly wait till CQWW this fall if conditions are this good or better. (Of course, I'm still hoping for a good season on 80 and 160 this winter, too!)
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Quarter wave vertical on 20m, with a loading coil I can add for 40m. 50W (for licensing reasons) from my 30-year-old Trio TS-520. Window-rattling reports all over Europe. You don't need a big expensive setup to get out there.
Now, all I need to do is get my CW up to 25wpm...
73s, 2M0YEQ
Re:CQ DX (Score:4, Interesting)
DX from the other side of the earth on 10 meters at 1 AM? I remember those days. Now if only we could find a way to get the LIDS to learn how to troll the Internet, why we might actually have a civilized conversation on the air!
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I am sure glad to see ole' Sol is waking up again. I was surprised to make as many contacts as I did on field day, with just a simply wire loop thrown up in the trees.
--KE4PJW
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Nope. With a few exceptions, US Amateurs are not allowed to send one-way transmissions. Most everything we do, we have to do at least in pairs. Sometimes in groups. Why, sometimes we even have contests to see who can do the most in a day. That can get tiring, I can tell ya!
What I'd like to know is... (Score:3, Insightful)
who tagged this NSFW. Seriously.
It's nice to see the new solar cycle is flaring up. I miss those nice auroras we could this during the last solar peak. Haven't seen one in about 3 years now. Some were so bright that you could see them in the city, very early in the evening.(at 56ÂN Magnetic Latitude).
Re:What I'd like to know is... (Score:5, Funny)
Ever wonder why your parents told you not to look directly at the sun?
IT'S NAKED
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Ever wonder why your parents told you not to look directly at the sun?
IT'S NAKED
Totally true. Being a rebellious kid, I did look directly at the sun, and it was not only naked, it was HOT! So hot that I started playing with myself while looking directly at it. I must have done that for hours, and you know what? They were right about masturbation making you go blind too!
Is it just me ? (Score:3, Interesting)
Is it just me and where I live or have last summer and winter been pretty warm while this current summer seems cooler with the return of the sun's spot ? ;-)))
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It is you. Where I live, Northern Alberta, Canada, this past winter had been bitterly cold, with a fair amount of snow on the ground until mid may, and this summer has been very cold and dreary.
You can trust that I was cursing David Suzuki and all other global warming opportunists while I was walking to work in -45 degrees.
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I don't like it one bit. Our moisture is supposed to come from melting snow in the mountains...not torrential downpours ruining cars, roofs and vegetation with hail and flooding roads because the ground is too dry and hard to absorb all that at once.
Re:Is it just me ? (Score:5, Informative)
Because local climate suddenly equates to global mean temperature? Huh... go figure...
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Because local climate suddenly equates to global mean temperature? Huh... go figure...
Um... Because solar weather affects global weather.
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It's just you - here in the Pacific Northwet, it's been exactly the opposite.
Well, now we'll know. (Score:5, Interesting)
Maybe now we'll find out who's right.
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Will it really matter? (Score:4, Insightful)
Because I betcha that if Congress gets Cap and Trade in place, throw in some Kyoto claims, that in a few years if we see a cooling trend beyond our current one, they will lay claim to proof they were right.
In other words, the salesmen won. No matter the out come they will claim to have proven themselves. In the end all we get will be more embedded taxes.
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If the temp doesn't drop, then Obama will blaim it on Bush, just like everything else.
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To the best of my knowledge, nobody is predicting a long-term cooling trend based on any activity promoted by those in favor of reducing and managing carbon dioxide emissions. The intent of those efforts (whether or not they succeed) is to slow down or halt the long term warming trend.
Re:Well, now we'll know. (Score:5, Funny)
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You guys with your wacky qualitative science.
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Re:Well, now we'll know. (Score:4, Informative)
I'll see your YouTube video, and raise you one:
video [youtube.com]
video [youtube.com]
And a whole bunch of articles:
article [typepad.com]
article [wordpress.com]
article [bbc.co.uk]
article [examiner.com]
article [mlive.com]
article [wordpress.com]
Re:Well, now we'll know. (Score:4, Insightful)
So, what, the last 50 years of steady warming, during which multiple sunspot cycles occurred, isn't enough for you? Or are you just a big fan of cherry-picking data to support your pet conclusions?
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Um, I'm thinking GP might have it other-way-around. Sunspots are caused by violent electromagnetic activity on the sun; more active = hotter, or at least that is what I had heard.
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And, once again, it doesn't make sense, as the global temperature should then correlate with the sunspot cycles, and in the last 50 years, it hasn't.
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Re:Well, now we'll know. (Score:5, Funny)
There is a very strong negative correlation between sunspot activity and temperature on Earth.
Aha! So global warming is causing the sunspots to disappear!
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Could you back this up with some data. If anything, the inverse is true. The last 50 years have seen a large increase in the number of sunspots per solar cycle.
Re:Well, now we'll know. (Score:5, Interesting)
There are some interesting data available on Earth's albedo (reflectivity): http://earth.myfastforum.org/sutra1069.php [myfastforum.org] Check out the linked sources, in particular.
Summary: there is some evidence that Earth's albedo has decreased by as much as 2% (absolute, almost 10% relative) in the past twenty years. A decrease in albedo means less visible light is being reflected by the planet, implying that more is being absorbed, which would tend to increase planetary heat content.)
A 2.0% variation in albedo is huge: over twice the effect of all anthropogenic greenhouse gases combined (6.8 W/m**2 vs about 5 W/m**2). However, because much of the change is due to changes in cloud cover, one must also account for the changes in infrared absorption from different kinds of clouds, which makes a head-to-head comparison tricky. However, while the effect of different types of cloud cover can reduce the effect of albedo variations, the residual is still as large or larger than current estimates of human greenhouse gas contributions to climate forcing.
Final grain of salt: albedo is a physically meaningful term, unlike "global average temperature", but it is still very tricky to measure, and therefore these results should be taken with a grain of salt. However, the magnitude of the effect is such that it is difficult--but not impossible--to imagine it not having a pretty major influence on climate.
Cloud cover maybe correlated with cosmic ray flux, which may be correlated with sunspot activity.
Based on the data we have, it appears Earth's albedo has been anomalously low in the past decade or more, and may now be popping back up to something closer to the long term average (0.315 as opposed to as low as 0.305 in the past decade). If that is the case, then we can expect to see a pronounced drop in "global average temperature" in the next few years.
If that happens, then climate forcing due to albedo variation is going to start looking pretty plausible as a significant cause of the high "global average temperatures" seen in the past decade.
Re:Well, now we'll know. (Score:5, Informative)
I saw the tag but haven't seen this explicitly mentioned yet: one theory is that lack of sunspots causes Earth to warm up. (There is a very strong negative correlation between sunspot activity and temperature on Earth.
Nope. People have been looking for correlations between sunspots and weather for years, but never found much. If there's a correlation, it's weak. http://www.crh.noaa.gov/fsd/astro/sunspots.php [noaa.gov]
To the extent that there's any correlation, however, it tends to the the opposite of what you said-- positive correlation between sunspots and temperature, not negative. The "Maunder Minimum" period of very few or no sunspots occurred about the same time as the "Little Ice Age" of cold temperatures. (But note that a single period of low temperatures ocurring during a period of low sunspots, however extended, does not mean statistically significance).
If that correlation were indeed true, then the recent solar minimum would have been correlated with low temperatures, and hence would have been masking some of the effect of global warming-- in other words, that greenhouse-effect warming is actually occurring to a greater extent than the data shows.
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People are talking about warming occurring for just a few years, and that is completely meaningless against the long-term trends. A few years mean nothing. But even if that were not so, the major determining factor is the LENGTH of the solar cycles, not the height. And we have had some long cycles.
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PLEASE READ!! (Score:2)
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When you reply to comments point out your mistake with "On the contrary. It is anything but weak. It is a firmly established correlation. Please see the links I posted above. ", you lose the ability to claim it as an oops moment. Not to mention that it also puts you in the camp of "shoots from the hip first, reads sources later".
Global Warming (Score:2, Funny)
The increase in temperature of planet Earth caused by Global Warming has changed the ambient temperature in our Solar System ever so slightly. This has caused irreparable damage the the Sun's delicate jet stream. The Cap and Trade bill will be too late to prevent Supernova.
It's actually not much of a sunspot group. (Score:5, Informative)
Go check it out at http://www.solarcycle24.com/ [solarcycle24.com]
This guy's everything about the sun that one can track. In particular, he has an image of the sun on the upper left hand corner that shows how pathetic this sunspot group.
I wouldn't say the sunspot drought is over, until there is sustained progress.
Re:It's actually not much of a sunspot group. (Score:4, Interesting)
Man saved Earth? (Score:5, Interesting)
So maybe we're supposed to be in another little ice age, but all the greenhouse gases warmed the planet and saved us?
O____O
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Assuming you're right we may have accidentally "saved" our own skins, along with a number of other species, but we haven't "saved" the Earth at all. We've impacted the progression of climate and evolution, sure, but the Earth was here for billions of years before us and will be here for billions of years after we're extinct (or off this rock, or evolved into something more exciting if you're feeling optimistic).
We have plenty of power to s
Re:Man saved Earth? (Score:4, Insightful)
Personally I prefer ice age fauna myself, I think sabertooth tigers and and Wooly Mammoths are really cool. Also the sea levels were so low, there was a huge landmass called Beringia where Bearing Sea is now, and the east coast of USA extended 500 miles beyond the current shoreline.
But however interesting it may be, a full ice age would be a total catastrophe for human civilization, probably 95% of humans would be wiped out.
It would be cool though, if mankind suddenly got hold of super technology (maybe from Outsiders or Puppeteers) and migrated to Ringworld or something, and Earth reverted to an ice age...
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IIRC, the last time sunspots were at a minimum like this, earth was in the little ice age
No; during the little ice age there was ~50 years of almost no sunspots; we've only had ~2. There was a solar minimum earlier this century deeper than this one (unless this one goes on for a while yet).
Global warming (Score:3, Funny)
Obviously it's man-made global (solar?) warming that is causing this increased sunspot activity...
Sunspots Return (Score:2)
That's what happens when you stop using Clearasil!
2012 may not be "2012" then (Score:3, Funny)
No implications for the reliability of the IPCC (Score:5, Interesting)
Since there will of course be a lot of nonsense about this having implications for the reliability of the IPCC's statements on climate change and so on, it is worth posting the following:
We have direct measurements of incoming and outgoing solar radiation. We have satellites in orbit that detect incoming as well as outgoing radiation of all wavelengths. From these direct measurements we know that the recent change in outgoing radiation is greater than the changes in incoming radiation. We know that the change is in the region of the spectrum where CO2 and other greenhouse gasses absorb radiation the most. We also know from isotopic analysis that a majority of the increase in CO2 concentration is fossil in origin ( fossil fuels are virtually depleted in Carbon 14 since it decays radioactively over periods of several thousand years ), thus excluding the possibility that what we see is a feedback effect from changes in solar activity.
Thus we more or less know that the sun is not to blame, no matter how poorly we may understand its sunspots, cycles and whatnot. The change in radiation balance is due to neither a direct solar effect nor the type of feedbacks that occur during ice age termination. If either of the two was the case then the isotopic studies would have detected it since the CO2 in oceans and plants have comparable C14 concentrations as the atmosphere. Instead what we see is an increased concentration of fossil carbon in the atmosphere, and together with it a reduction in outgoing infra-red radiation consistent with the absorption spectra of the greenhouse gases we emit.
I've seen this movie, it doesn't end well. (Score:2)
10/19/09, the end is nigh!
Re:Oh sure... (Score:5, Insightful)
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With the notable exception of 24h clocks.
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Which is why American kooks are twice as smart as European kooks... because they're right twice as often.
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Depends on how broken it is.
Nuke it from orbit. It's the only way to be sure.
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Holy smokes!
All the dedicated Fox Viewers have mod points today!
Ha ha! The Slashdot editors have an awesome sense of humor. --Kind of like giving chili peppers and bubble gum to the house pets, except not cruel.
-FL
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Well, Fantastic Chump, allow me to explain a simple little thing for you. Among the media, there ARE NO 'good' guys. The best of them are whoring themselves out, and/or have a secret agenda.
I happen to like the Wikileaks site. They may be the best example today of impartial reporting. But, even those people are attention whores with an agenda.
It doesn't matter that I happen to agree with this reporter, or that reporter - or even that I agree with this media outlet, or that. They are all whores, trying
Re:Oh sure... (Score:4, Funny)
Sun? Didn't they go out of business or something?
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If you have to censor some from speaking out about science for fear of the scrutiny maybe your science isn't really science at all. Anyone who questions the validity of a theory should be heard. I know that there will be those who will try to mock you but the science is the truth in and of itself, not a side effect of your belief in the science.
Re:Oh sure... (Score:5, Insightful)
Anyone who questions the validity of a theory should be heard.
Anyone who offers valid criticisms of your theory with data to back them up should be heard. Saying anyone who questions a theory should be heard might sound nice in theory, but in reality it means you have a bunch of people throwing out unsubstantiated garbage in order to muddy the waters and further their own agendas, which are rarely motivated by scientific concerns.
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Anyone who offers valid criticisms of your theory with data to back them up should be heard.
Tell that to Pons and Fleischmann.
They might get a Nobel yet.
Re:Oh sure... (Score:4, Interesting)
Anyone who offers valid criticisms of your theory with data to back them up should be heard.
Tell that to Pons and Fleischmann.
They might get a Nobel yet.
Probably not.
If cold fusion turns out to be, as it looks, a combination of erroneous measurements and wishful thinking, then they will be ignored and eventually forgotten.
On the other hand, if cold fusion turns out to have been a real effect after all, then somebody should hunt them down and shoot them, because by their actions, they made it look like bad measurements, chicanery, and hype, and thus made sure nobody would take it seriously. If there really was something there, their actions set science back significantly.
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Anyone who questions the validity of a theory should be heard.
Anyone who offers valid criticisms of your theory with data to back them up should be heard..
I'll have to agree with eln. There's somebody out there who's going to be questioning anything you can think of. There just isn't time to pay attention to everybody, no matter how wacky.
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If you have to censor some from speaking out about science for fear of the scrutiny maybe your science isn't really science at all. Anyone who questions the validity of a theory should be heard. I know that there will be those who will try to mock you but the science is the truth in and of itself, not a side effect of your belief in the science.
This basically sums up the postmodern approach to science. When all truth is relative, then science itself has no basis for an exalted place in the hierarchy of rationality. With nothing to "prove" itself except itself, science becomes a rolling definition of "what works for me, today." From there, it's a small step to seeing science as a means, not an end... and specifically: a means of enacting social change.
Presto. :/
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I'm not sure get your meaning. My observation is that people believe what reinforces there existing beliefs. Regarding a finding which goes against their beliefs, they are willing to take that one in a million chance and - like Jim Carey in "Dumb and Dumber" - say, "So your saying there's a chance?" OTOH, if something they believe has a one in a hundred chance of being wrong, they will stand behind it firmly as irrefutable proof.
All that said, I really don't think people have changed very much since we clim
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Oh sure...
Like ANY opinion Anonymous Cowards have about the so-called "Fox News" would be worth listening to.
;)
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Anonymous Coward: ready to doubt that shiny yellow thing is really the "sun", for no reason other than Fox News said it was.
Yeah, everything Fox says is automatically false.
Re:"The magnetic field lines are clearly visible. (Score:5, Insightful)
Very strange, as magnetic field lines are entirely imaginary.
I guess you've never played with magnets and iron filings?
Re:"The magnetic field lines are clearly visible. (Score:5, Interesting)
*end sarcasm*
The comment that they are imaginary does suggest that the plasma (or something) on the sun somehow concentrates the field much the way iron filings concentrate them. Once you have filings it concentrates the field and you get more filings attached to the end thus creating lines. Similar must occur on the sun or the lines would not be visible.
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Isn't plasma a decent conductor? The electrons moving pretty much as they please?
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Indeed, what is the reason behind the field lines, by current theory?
Re:"The magnetic field lines are clearly visible. (Score:5, Insightful)
No, they're quite real. Being immaterial aspects of electro-magnetism,
they are, however, normally invisible. Here, however, you can see the
superhot plasma flowing along them, much as you can get iron filings
on a piece of paper to do with an ordinary magnet.
Re:"The magnetic field lines are clearly visible. (Score:5, Insightful)
A cone doesn't have a finite number of preferred paths down from the top. But if you pour water on the top, the water will run downhill and form a number of discrete streams. That does mean that there are 'lines of gravity'.
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That they are discrete, perhaps, is a misconception. You won't hear me claiming they're discrete.
A continuous field contains infinitely many paths from high to low potential, all of which are "lines". A representative few are used to approximate the field when we're drawing it, which leads to the misunderstanding about them being discrete.
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By that logic, a riverbed only makes a line when it has water flowing in it.
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Um, if it helps you to understand it that way, sure, magnetic field lines are indeed imaginary.
Now, you just need to remember that electric field lines are real, since they make a 90 degree angle [wikipedia.org] with magnetic field lines.
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Um, no.
Re:"The magnetic field lines are clearly visible. (Score:5, Informative)
No, the magnetic field is real but invisible. Magnetic field lines, on the other hand, are simply a mechanism for representing (e.g., on paper) magnetic field orientation and strength. The lines themselves are not real. (Compare with, for example, a topographical map. The height of the earth's surface is real, but the lines on a topographical map are a representation of height; they're not real.)
Re:"The magnetic field lines are clearly visible. (Score:5, Informative)
Magnetic field lines are not really like the lines on a topographic map. The lines of a magnetic field represent paths from high potential to low potential, rather than delineations of equal-potential regions.
It's more like a river. The river flows perpendicular to the lines on the topographic map, from high to low, and its "line" is quite real, while the lines on the topographic map are not. Thus it is an unfair comparison to say magnetic field lines are "imaginary" in the same sense that contour lines on a map are. You cannot physically demonstrate the contour lines on a map, whereas you can demonstrate (with water or iron filings, as the case may be) a path from high potential to low potential.
IOW, inasmuch as there is a very real path that a drop of water will take when placed at any specific point on a 3-D surface, there is also a very real path that an electron will follow from a specific starting point in a 3-D electromagnetic field.
The lines themselves are imaginary, but they are real paths. Of course, there are infinitely many of the paths, densely packed, and so we pick only a few representative paths and call them the "magnetic field lines".
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Not true at all. My local lake physically demonstrates a gravitational equipotential line, which are, at that scale, the same as contour height lines.
Magnetic field "lines" are fairly similar to fluid flow lines, except with fluid flow lines, you're generally representing the fluid flow using exemplar paths -- so, the lines illustrated are actually fluid particle paths. (You don't generally talk about fluid flow in the context of a potential but no fluid.) Magnetic field lines, on the other hand, are repres
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Unless you're going to flood the entire planet, you'll have a hard time illustrating the lines on Mount Everest. I'll admit that contour lines are sometimes demonstrable, but not as easily as the paths perpendicular to them.
Besides which, if the contour line that delineates the lake's boundary is a "real" line because there's water on one side of it, that basically argues for the fact that the field lines are just as "real" since they are similarly demonstrable using charged/magnetic particles. Difference b
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Magnetic field lines are not really like the lines on a topographic map. The lines of a magnetic field represent paths from high potential to low potential, rather than delineations of equal-potential regions.
You are talking about electric field. Magnetic field do not have a scalar potential to be talking about "high" and "low" from (which is related to the gradient of the potential). The vector potential of a magnetic field is very difficult to find common analogies with.
Re:"The magnetic field lines are clearly visible. (Score:4, Insightful)
My density is fairly close to that of water, just like everyone else. I do have a degree in physics, though, if that helps.
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I almost had a degree in art but dropped out. My density is closer to methylene iodide.
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Just as a continuous line contains infinitely many points, a continuous field in 3-D space can contain infinitely many lines. Just sayin'.
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That is one way to think about it but that isn't entirely correct. A line is a discrete mathematical construct. A field is a continuous function but a "line" is not. Think about it this way: let's say you have a piece of paper and some "string". You place several piece of string on the paper. There is "space" in between the pieces of string. You then proceed to add pieces of string in between the others. You can continue to do this ad infinitum (assuming smaller and smaller pieces of string) but they will n