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Strange Doings on the Sun

online.wsj.com

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Re: Strange Doings on the Sun

#21

Post by slsah »

jlgreco wrote: post #5
dreid3 wrote: post #2

Ho-ly shit, the comments. It's almost like it was linked from Drudge or Fox News.

From the comments: "No mention of the four comets currently in the Solar System. I'm no genius, but don't you think four electromagnetic balls of energy might have an effect on the Sun's magnetic field." (In case anyone here isn't aware, comets are basically big balls of ice, not "electromagnetic balls of energy" ) This comment makes me think that there is remaining ground to be covered in the "online commenting" fie…

I thought that was sarcasm. I went to wsj to see the context but couldn't find the comment.

Anyway, here are pictures of the aforementioned comets: http://www.universetoday.com/105834/weekend-comet-bonanza/#i...

Re: Strange Doings on the Sun

#22

Post by pocketstar »

>"Sunspots—often broader in diameter than Earth—mark areas of intense magnetic force that brew disruptive solar storms." >"...diameter than Earth..." Diameter larger than earth? Did they stop editing the wall street journal?

Re: Strange Doings on the Sun

#23

Post by ced »

For more context, I recommend looking at the two graphs here:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunspot#Variation

In particular, the Maunder minimum was a period of very low solar activity in the 17th century which contributed to the Little Ice Age. The drop in temperature impacted agricultural yields around the globe. [1]

That said, my professor would say that it's too early to infer much from this cycle's low sunspot number. The solar dynamo is very unpredictable in general, and quite possibly chaotic. Next cycle could be above average and that wouldn't shock anybody in solar physics.

[1] For instance: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ming_Dynasty#Economic_breakdow...

Re: Strange Doings on the Sun

#24

Post by sliverstorm »

InclinedPlane wrote: post #18
sliverstorm wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even if GPS stopped working, given some time we could work around it. There'd be some issues in the short term, but GPS is used because it is easier than inertial navigation systems, (thankfully) not because it's the only choice.

It's not just easier, GPS is vastly more reliable and accurate than almost any other method of navigation. So much so that it's starting to be relied on in many industries. For example, airplanes are starting to move away from a radar based method of air traffic control to a GPS based system. Every airplane will simply continuously transmit its GPS coordinates as part of its transponder message. From this you can cre…

Thanks, radar air traffic control is another good example. The world would not end without GPS, it would just make things harder :)

Re: Strange Doings on the Sun

#25

Post by DustinCalim »

I'm sorry but roughly 200 years of data is not nearly enough to begin to predict any sort of cycles the 4.5 billion year old Sun has.

The article mentions 11 year cycles between polar changes... since it hasn't happened this year, this article is based around 19 data points... That's the last 19 data points of the available 409,090,909 11-year increments...

Re: Strange Doings on the Sun

#26

Post by memracom »

Zenst wrote: post #3

I do wonder having recently read about a comet with multiple tails that this is related. http://www.nasa.gov/press/2013/november/nasas-hubble-sees-as... Though the record of sun sunspots is not a long record and with that this could very well be normal only outside the sample range we currently have and goes against all patterns currently cleaned. Also in a probably unrelated pattern, the northern hemisphere had fewe…

And along with "fewer than normal" the northern hemisphere also had the most powerful hurricane ever known "Haiyan".

Re: Strange Doings on the Sun

#27

Post by _delirium »

anigbrowl wrote: post #16
nmcveity wrote: post #11

I visited Mt Wilson on the weekend and took the tour there. One part of the tour took us inside the 150ft solar tower operated by UCLA. I was surprised to see that they recorded sunspot activity by sketching diagrams by hand. And they put them on the web. If you want to see "puzzling" lack of sunspot activity, here it is: http://obs.astro.ucla.edu/cur_drw.html

I hope this is some masochistic exercise forced on young astronomers to make them appreciate what their forbears had to do before they're let loose on the computers. I'm also puzzled as to why the date is logged as 11 December, since it's the 11th of November.

It looks like they've been doing it this way since 1917: ftp://howard.astro.ucla.edu/pub/obs/drawings/

Some information on the process: http://obs.astro.ucla.edu/150_draw.html

That doesn't in itself explain why they wouldn't be generating these diagrams automatically nowadays. Perhaps nobody's written a sunspot-finding computer vision algorithm that consistently produces the results they want, in a format vaguely compatible with the traditional drawings?

Re: Strange Doings on the Sun

#28

Post by phaemon »

DustinCalim wrote: post #25

I'm sorry but roughly 200 years of data is not nearly enough to begin to predict any sort of cycles the 4.5 billion year old Sun has. The article mentions 11 year cycles between polar changes... since it hasn't happened this year, this article is based around 19 data points... That's the last 19 data points of the available 409,090,909 11-year increments...

Science doesn't work like that. We've only observed a tiny proportion of the Moon's orbits around the Earth, but we can still predict an eclipse of the Sun and we know that it's not going to crash into the Earth tomorrow.

Why not learn a bit about the subject? Stars really are fascinating!

Re: Strange Doings on the Sun

#29

Post by 300bps »

phaemon wrote: post #28
DustinCalim wrote: post #25

I'm sorry but roughly 200 years of data is not nearly enough to begin to predict any sort of cycles the 4.5 billion year old Sun has. The article mentions 11 year cycles between polar changes... since it hasn't happened this year, this article is based around 19 data points... That's the last 19 data points of the available 409,090,909 11-year increments...

Science doesn't work like that. We've only observed a tiny proportion of the Moon's orbits around the Earth, but we can still predict an eclipse of the Sun and we know that it's not going to crash into the Earth tomorrow. Why not learn a bit about the subject? Stars really are fascinating!

I think your example is not a good one and the premise you meant to have it support is flawed.

Calculating the orbit of an object in space is well understood and several orders of magnitude less complicated than the relatively poorly understood processes that occur in the sun.

As the person you replied to said, it is hubris to think that after a few hundred years of studying a 4 billion year old dynamic object that we can make such precise predictions about it. The fact that scientists seem to be baffled by the sun's current behavior should make this point obvious.

Re: Strange Doings on the Sun

#30

Post by GFischer »

anigbrowl wrote: post #16
nmcveity wrote: post #11

I visited Mt Wilson on the weekend and took the tour there. One part of the tour took us inside the 150ft solar tower operated by UCLA. I was surprised to see that they recorded sunspot activity by sketching diagrams by hand. And they put them on the web. If you want to see "puzzling" lack of sunspot activity, here it is: http://obs.astro.ucla.edu/cur_drw.html

I hope this is some masochistic exercise forced on young astronomers to make them appreciate what their forbears had to do before they're let loose on the computers. I'm also puzzled as to why the date is logged as 11 December, since it's the 11th of November.

Edit: I found this interesting piece which details how Steve Padilla has been doing the drawings for 40 years!

http://www.latimes.com/local/columnone/la-me-c1-mt-wilson-su...

He says: he likes the tradition, this convergence of science and art.

"The value," he says, "is not so much in the individual achievement but in maintaining the daily record."

However, the telescope's annual budget of $250,000, cobbled together with grants from NASA and the National Science Foundation, runs out in the spring, and Ulrich says odds of getting more money from NASA are long.

Edit - previous speculation I wrote: Hmmm.. maybe Steve Padilla wrote it as 12-11-2013 (like we write it in South America) instead of 11-12-2013 like in the U.S. ?

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