The sun's magnetic field is about to flip
1–10 of 185 posts
Re: The sun's magnetic field is about to flip
#2> One side effect of the magnetic field shift is slight but primarily beneficial: It can help shield Earth from galactic cosmic rays — high-energy subatomic particles that travel at near light speed and can damage spacecraft and harm orbiting astronauts who are outside Earth's protective atmosphere.
Buried three sentences from the end of the article, after a wall of ads and filler (I'm impatient).
Re: The sun's magnetic field is about to flip
#3Interestingly this happens every 11 years and also their is a longer cycle called the Hale cycle which is double the length at 22 years. It flips from a mostly dipole where the poles match the orientation of earth to a reverse and much more irregular magenetic orientation. I didn't see anything about how this really affects Earth directly other than what I knew previously about sun spots make Coronal Mass Ejections sometimes towards Earth. Think we had a few things happen recently due to those but nothing too crazy.
Re: The sun's magnetic field is about to flip
#4(it's gradual and takes five years, not like a day)
Re: The sun's magnetic field is about to flip
#5I'm having trouble parsing tfa; does this mean the sun is at "solar maximum" now, and does this also mean we may be in for some more frequent and intense auroras?
Re: The sun's magnetic field is about to flip
#6(it's gradual and takes five years, not like a day)
But that doesn't earn you a lot of clicks...
Re: The sun's magnetic field is about to flip
#7> One side effect of the magnetic field shift is slight but primarily beneficial: It can help shield Earth from galactic cosmic rays — high-energy subatomic particles that travel at near light speed and can damage spacecraft and harm orbiting astronauts who are outside Earth's protective atmosphere. Buried three sentences from the end of the article, after a wall of ads and filler (I'm impatient).
Thanks
Re: The sun's magnetic field is about to flip
#8I'm having trouble parsing tfa; does this mean the sun is at "solar maximum" now, and does this also mean we may be in for some more frequent and intense auroras?
Re: The sun's magnetic field is about to flip
#9I'm having trouble parsing tfa; does this mean the sun is at "solar maximum" now, and does this also mean we may be in for some more frequent and intense auroras?
You can see the sunspot cycle progression here, looks like solar maximum will last a year or two:
Re: The sun's magnetic field is about to flip
#10[flagged]