Sunspot Activity On the Sun Is Seriously Exceeding Official Predictions (sciencealert.com) 64
"Weather predictions here on Earth are more accurate than they've ever been," writes ScienceAlert.
"Trying to predict the behavior of our wild and wacky Sun is a little more tricky." Case in point: according to official predictions, the current cycle of solar activity should be mild. But the gap between the prediction and what's actually happening is pretty significant — and it's getting wider. Sunspot counts, used as a measure for solar activity, are way higher than the predicted values calculated by the NOAA, NASA, and the International Space Environmental Service.
In fact, sunspot counts have been consistently higher than predicted levels since September 2020. This could mean that, in contrast to predictions, the Sun is in the swing of an unusually strong activity cycle.... [T]he number of sunspots for the last 18 months has been consistently higher than predictions. At time of writing, the Sun has 61 sunspots, and we're still over three years from solar maximum.
Here's what makes that even more significant. In 2020 a team of scientists (led by solar physicist Scott McIntosh of the U.S. National Center for Atmospheric Research) predicted that, based on long-term solar cycle trends, this solar cycle was likely to be stronger — and perhaps one of the strongest ever recorded.
They'd also said in 2020 that scientists "lacked a fundamental understanding" of the mechanism behind sun spot cycles, and argued that if this sun cycle proves them correct, "we will have evidence that our framework for understanding the Sun's internal magnetic machine is on the right path."
Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader schwit1 for sharing this article
"Trying to predict the behavior of our wild and wacky Sun is a little more tricky." Case in point: according to official predictions, the current cycle of solar activity should be mild. But the gap between the prediction and what's actually happening is pretty significant — and it's getting wider. Sunspot counts, used as a measure for solar activity, are way higher than the predicted values calculated by the NOAA, NASA, and the International Space Environmental Service.
In fact, sunspot counts have been consistently higher than predicted levels since September 2020. This could mean that, in contrast to predictions, the Sun is in the swing of an unusually strong activity cycle.... [T]he number of sunspots for the last 18 months has been consistently higher than predictions. At time of writing, the Sun has 61 sunspots, and we're still over three years from solar maximum.
Here's what makes that even more significant. In 2020 a team of scientists (led by solar physicist Scott McIntosh of the U.S. National Center for Atmospheric Research) predicted that, based on long-term solar cycle trends, this solar cycle was likely to be stronger — and perhaps one of the strongest ever recorded.
They'd also said in 2020 that scientists "lacked a fundamental understanding" of the mechanism behind sun spot cycles, and argued that if this sun cycle proves them correct, "we will have evidence that our framework for understanding the Sun's internal magnetic machine is on the right path."
Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader schwit1 for sharing this article
The year of the jackpot (Score:3)
I read the story years ago
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Oh, yeah it was by RA Heinlein
Solar warming (Score:5, Funny)
I'm sure some whackadoodles out there will say that we've gone so far with heating up our own planet that now even the Sun gets a richotet.
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I really hope you were trying for "ricochet", since otherwise I am completely clueless....
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Yeah, I meant "ricochet". Fat fingers + little time to type. Sorry. :-P
Sunspot capture (Score:5, Funny)
I'm sure some whackadoodles out there will say that we've gone so far with heating up our own planet that now even the Sun gets a richotet.
The solution will be sunspot capture technology.
We can pump the sunspots underground for long-term storage, where heat and pressure will eventually merge them with the molten core and be long-term stable.
The biggest technological hurdle is capturing them in the first place. We need to fund a lot more research in this area.
Gobal warming did not cause it (Score:2)
That would be a stupid suggestion.
Everyone knows that it is all the solar energy that we have been taking from the Sun. It's is being cooled down, so more dark spots.
Not content with destroying the Earth, we attack the Sun itself!
Climate change (Score:3, Funny)
The Sun's behavior is just another consequence of rampant global warming caused by right wing extremists here on earth.
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Carrington event probability? (Score:4, Interesting)
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Another event of that magnitude could very well fix global warming. Sure, our civilization will crumble, but we won't be polluting the world with all our fried computer technology.
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Our high tech would be fried and we'd have to go back to using coal.
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I live in the UK and actually said something similar to someone a few weeks ago. "Heatwave in March? Mate, global warming may be screwing up the rest of the world but here, in the UK, it works in our favour."
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I hope you were joking, seeing as the consequences in the Indian Continent are rather different.
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It was a joke, yes, although with a very localised grain of truth - global warming did make our weather a little bit better, at least for now...
Re: Climate change - we are screwing up the sun! (Score:2)
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You think the average UK cares about what is really happening half way around the world? Please. It's incredibly hard to be concerned about problems happening half a world away.
Heck, if India decides to nuke Pakistan, even the fallout won't be affecting most of the world. It's a horrible thing but it's so distant to the vast majority of us that it's hard to really care about it beyond the moment.
Hence, global warming is GOOD for some communities. People living in Colorado don't really give a shit if Florida
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Hence, global warming is GOOD for some communities. People living in Colorado don't really give a shit if Florida goes under water.
Considering the "Florida Man" stories in the news, I don't know that anyone in the US gives a shit if Florida is underwater...
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Re: Climate change - we are screwing up the sun! (Score:3)
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Re: Climate change - we are screwing up the sun! (Score:2)
Consider (Score:2)
> Every AC compressor and motor generates heat.
Motors are pretty efficient (typically above 90% for modern motors), and compressors are primarily moving heat around.
It's not negligible, but then again, it's not as bad as it seems when you just think about how warm compressors get, for instance. That heat was already present. It's just somewhere else now. Which is kind of the whole point of A/C.
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Most new big motors are above 90% efficient. But the small motors in residential appliances may well be below 80%.
The typical A/C vapor-compression cycle might be used to move heat from one place to another, but they do not do so without significant losses, otherwise you wouldn't need much motor.
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The UK is on an island. They are in a better position to resist immigration then most of Europe, Asia and Africa. It's only politics that lets anyone in. It would be fairly easy to flood the tunnel and setup artillery to destroy any crossing vessels.
Your immigrants will largely get stuck in mainland Europe, pretty much exactly how real-world Syrians did.
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This was presumably before the snow in March caused by weakened Atlantic air currents allowing a current from the Arctic to push down into Europe?
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More sunspots means that less Russian gas will need to be burned for heating in the next few years. So this helps us.
Funny you should mention that. This story [bbc.com] is along the same lines, though more so. In short, stop buying any Russian oil and gas and watch Putin's military come to a halt.
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There's no reason to believe the Russian military depends on imports from the West to function (relevant Onion article [theonion.com]). Yes, it'll cause economic damage, but Putin does not care. If he did this entire war would not have happened in the first place.
Meanwhile, there's plenty of reasons [acs.org] to believe the EU will be fucked without Russian oil and gas. The effect of that will reach the US too in the form of increased prices unless we stop exporting our oil and gas, which means fucking over the EU even more.
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There's no reason to believe the Russian military depends on imports from the West to function
Tank manufacturing has already stopped. [unian.net]
Bosch stops providing Russia with components required to build trucks. [carscoops.com]
So: no new tanks, no new trucks... I guess they can still make small arms. I'm not even sure they even have good sights for those, since most Russian soldiers in Ukraine seem to be using iron sights.
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We already sanction imports by the Russian military industry. Sanctioning oil and gas in addition doesn't change that because Russia is the exporter of oil and gas and the Euros they earned can't be used for military purposes anyways.
As for the sources you cited, the first is a Ukrainian source. Not only are they a party to the conflict and not trustworthy, you can't expect them to know what's going on deep within Russia either. And even it is true, it's not obvious what parts are supposedly missing and how
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Russia has on the order of 10,000 tanks in reserve
They have ten thousand tank corpses in reserve. If Russia has three thousand operational tanks, I'll be surprised.
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Give me a break, my comment gets me a "troll" moderation, really. /.
So much for humor on
Next time I will preface my posting with "WARNING the following is meant to be funny".
Solar Activity (Score:2)
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uh huh, we've had this level of activity in cycles for how many years? answer is lots on geological timescales, calm your tits.
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Considering 'on geological timescales' we've had about 4 microseconds of actual electronics in orbit, that's a rather useless statement :D
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Sure, but human lives and livelihoods depending upon satellites and solid state electronics is a very, very recent development. To a medieval person, a massive geomagnetic storm meant pretty lights in the sky. To a modern person it could mean the collapse of the economy. Imagine the impact if a solar storm took out just GPS.
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Imagine the impact if a solar storm took out just GPS.
Well for one thing I'll get more phone calls asking me to find someones destination on maps (tm). I learned to travel by using a map, planning a route and looking for landmarks. My phone just tells me to turn after I've passed the junction most of the time.
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Our satellites and GPS survived just fine going through heavier periods of solar activity for decades.
You're hilarious bringing up GPS, Adults my age didn't have it and we got around just fine. Imagine engaging your brain to use plain ol' map, observation of road signs and addresses, and common sense. A weapon might need GPS, human does not.
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Our satellites and GPS survived just fine going through heavier periods of solar activity for decades.
The satellites themselves might be ok, but not their signals. And we don't have solid data for anything like the Carrington Event happening today.
You're hilarious bringing up GPS, Adults my age didn't have it and we got around just fine. Imagine engaging your brain to use plain ol' map, observation of road signs and addresses, and common sense.
It doesn't matter how "common sense" it is to be able to do that. The fact is, it's a skill most of the younger generation doesn't have and doesn't need to obtain until this actually happens, which means it'll cause problems when it does.
Ships and aircraft use GPS now too. Technically they can do without, but when you have crews who only remember how to do that fr
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If the satellites are fine then GPS is fine, disruption for hours is possible but that's all.
Most people drive known routes. So some very few people losing GPS might get lost and have to ask for directions home or have to pay attention to road signs, or wait for atmospheric ionization to die down? Not a big issue really.
Merely big geomagnetic storms haven't taken out most the power grid though regions have had problems for some hours. Nor have aircraft and ships gotten lost from them... if you're worrie
Re: Solar Activity (Score:2)
Exaggerated (Score:3)
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Not all that wild. As I recall they were based on an insight and a new model of the sun's activity - as a series of TWO dynamos at a time, with a significant-strength lifetime of two solar cycles so they overlapped. (Think a series of adults and children, with the adult being the major player of the current solar cycle's output then dying out while the child grew up to be the next cycle's ad
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Yeah, I've heard that prediction for pretty much every single solar cycle since I was in college. Along with a statement that the Maunder minimum means another "little ice age" (quick summary: no evidence for that). You can ignore it.
Not all that wild. As I recall they were based on an insight and a new model of the sun's activity - as a series of TWO dynamos at a time, with a significant-strength lifetime of two solar cycles so they overlapped.
Yes, pretty wacko. There indeed was a new model that made that prediction, from a mathematics professor in England, but there was pretty much zero evidence for the model; it was entirely speculative, and as far as I can tell no actual solar physicists credit it.
Next solar cy
Here's the article link (Score:4, Informative)
It's Got to be Climate Change (Score:3)
Humanity has only been observing the Sun with meaningful, retrievable data in the last 5000 years. We may notice trends, but the Sun has been around for billions of years. Perhaps some trends just take 10,000 years or more and we're just noticing them with the right tools.
Re:It's Got to be Climate Change (Score:4, Informative)
Within 5 billion years from now it'll really change dramatically with a supernova.
No. Just, no.
The Sun is not anywhere near massive enough to die as a Type II supernova, and since we don't have any stellar companions, chances are quite low that the Sun could become a Type Ia supernova after it ends up as a white dwarf.
Let's see the global warming deniers explain this! (Score:3, Insightful)
The sun is almost halfway through it's life on the main sequence. We've only got ~5.5E+09 years until the it starts fusing helium into carbon in earnest.
This proves it's already starting!
We need to significantly reduce carbon output before that happens, or it will be too late!
Sunspot Activity on the Sun is a good place to be (Score:2)
Is it possible to backcast sunspot cycles? (Score:2)
That is, to figure out what the sunspot cycle looked at when the Carrington event (or even the slightly smaller, more recent one that blacked out Quebec) happened. Is there any correlation between the overall character of the cycle and the strength of the events it contains, or is is essentially random?
Sunspot activity on the sun (Score:1)
Beginning of the End (Score:2)
Seriously? It's bloody obvious what the cause is, those 'scientists' are just too stubborn and blinkered to accept the truth.
"The first known interstellar object to visit our solar system, 1I/2017 U1 ‘Oumuamua, was discovered Oct. 19, 2017 by the University of Hawaii’s Pan-STARRS1 telescope. While originally classified as a comet, observations revealed no signs of cometary activity after it slingshotted past the Sun on Sept. 9, 2017 at a blistering speed of 196,000 miles per hour (87.3 kilometer
The sun is mad (Score:1)
Sunspots on the Moon on the other side... (Score:2)
... are completely different story.