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The sun's magnetic field is about to flip

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Re: The sun's magnetic field is about to flip

#61

Post by 1oooqooq »

TheBlight wrote: post #51
c0brac0bra wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I recall back a few years reading some articles speaking about the sun entering in a Grand Solar Minimum cycle similar to the Maunder minimum, and that the result could be global cooling, etc. Not sure if there's been additional research or conjecture since then.

I'm convinced in a few hundred/thousand years scientists are going to be urging politicians to figure out how to pump more CO2 into the atmosphere due to cooling from cyclic perturbations of Earth's orbit. Too bad I won't be around to enjoy the irony.

or we will learn those studies were by the same caliber of people who did the food pyramid etc

Re: The sun's magnetic field is about to flip

#62

Post by vizzier »

gmiller123456 wrote: post #57
deepsun wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why, yes. It's really hard to find sun in fog, which is frequent at sea. And you really want it's location to be precise for navigation.

The Vikings supposedly had a "sunstone" (cordierite crystal) that could help find the Sun through clouds or fog. I did buy a piece and wasn't able to get any good results, but my life didn't depend on it.

By what mechanism was this intended to work? Any known fields would surely have stronger local effects outside of direct sunlight...

Re: The sun's magnetic field is about to flip

#63

Post by marcosdumay »

raylad wrote: post #24
nikso wrote: post #20

If you're open to exiting an novel theories on why this happens, check out Dr. Robitaille liquid sun: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qUZ0Obpihbc

Very interesting hypothesis. Anyone here with more expertise want to comment? The summary is that the sun is actually metallic hydrogen, which forms a lattice similar to layers of graphite. This both explains the black-body radiation of the sun and provides a mechanism to explain sunspots and the solar maximum and pole flip: sunspots are non-hydrogen elements that are excluded from the metallic hydrogen lattice and p…

Solar ejecta are almost completely composed of hydrogen. Just like any other part of the Sun's outer layers.

And God! What a convoluted theory full of ideas nobody can test.

Re: The sun's magnetic field is about to flip

#64

Post by addaon »

vizzier wrote: post #62
gmiller123456 wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Vikings supposedly had a "sunstone" (cordierite crystal) that could help find the Sun through clouds or fog. I did buy a piece and wasn't able to get any good results, but my life didn't depend on it.

By what mechanism was this intended to work? Any known fields would surely have stronger local effects outside of direct sunlight...

It’s a polarizing filter. The atmosphere polarizes sunlight based on the angle the light enters. You can find the position of the sun above the horizon as the point where light is least horizontally polarized (a horizontal filter has the least difference between brightness through the filter and around it), and potentially find the position of the sun itself by the highest rate of change of polarization angle. This works remarkably well even on overcast days — try it with polarized sunglasses.

Re: The sun's magnetic field is about to flip

#65

Post by dekhn »

vizzier wrote: post #62
gmiller123456 wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Vikings supposedly had a "sunstone" (cordierite crystal) that could help find the Sun through clouds or fog. I did buy a piece and wasn't able to get any good results, but my life didn't depend on it.

By what mechanism was this intended to work? Any known fields would surely have stronger local effects outside of direct sunlight...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunstone_(medieval)#Possibilit...

Re: The sun's magnetic field is about to flip

#66

Post by anilakar »

gleenn wrote: post #3

Interestingly 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 s…

Is it related to the 11 year sunspot cycle or just a coincidence?

Re: The sun's magnetic field is about to flip

#67

Post by precompute »

c0brac0bra wrote: post #32
temp0826 wrote: post #22

I think there is a more interesting (and longer scale) trend that is less talked about, that the last couple solar cycles have been overall less intense (less activity/spots at the maximums)- http://solen.info/solar/images/comparison_recent_cycles.png I wish that chart went further back to see if there is a greater cycle at play. At a glance it looks like this cycle is a slight rebound over the last.

I recall back a few years reading some articles speaking about the sun entering in a Grand Solar Minimum cycle similar to the Maunder minimum, and that the result could be global cooling, etc. Not sure if there's been additional research or conjecture since then.

The theory is that we're due for another ice age and that there's going to be a pole shift. Pumping CO2 into the atmosphere would then be the best thing to do to stave off this scenario.

Re: The sun's magnetic field is about to flip

#68

Post by teamonkey »

anilakar wrote: post #66
gleenn wrote: post #3

Interestingly 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 s…

Is it related to the 11 year sunspot cycle or just a coincidence?

Directly related

Re: The sun's magnetic field is about to flip

#69

Post by whaleofatw2022 »

cko wrote: post #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).

... interesting question though..

Is this related to why my part of the US has had UV notices lately?

Re: The sun's magnetic field is about to flip

#70

Post by wtetzner »

lukan wrote: post #52
dredmorbius wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, one always has to consider the first manned expedition to the Sun and how they'll navigate. Telling time of day would be the first problem as it's always high noon. And star sightings might prove challenging, at least at optical frequencies. (Am now thinking of an SF story set on the Sun in which navigation and timekeeping play critical roles....)

In that SF story, I would be far more interested in the tech, that allows human life (or anything we bring) to withstand that slightly bigger problem called heat and radiation.

And gravity.
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