------ Original Message ------
Received: Wed, 22 Apr 2009 12:46:51 PM EDT
From: Randall Webmail <[log in to unmask]>
To: [log in to unmask], [log in to unmask]
Subject: [johnmacsgroup] It's awfully quiet up there ...
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8008473.stm
'Quiet Sun' baffling astronomers
By Pallab Ghosh
Science correspondent, BBC News
'Still Sun' baffling astronomers
The Sun is the dimmest it has been for nearly a century.
There are no sunspots, very few solar flares - and our nearest star is the
quietest it has been for a very long time.
The observations are baffling astronomers, who are due to study new pictures
of the Sun, taken from space, at the UK National Astronomy Meeting.
The Sun normally undergoes an 11-year cycle of activity. At its peak, it has
a tumultuous boiling atmosphere that spits out flares and planet-sized chunks
of super-hot gas. This is followed by a calmer period.
Last year, it was expected that it would have been hotting up after a quiet
spell. But instead it hit a 50-year low in solar wind pressure, a 55-year low
in radio emissions, and a 100-year low in sunspot activity.
According to Prof Louise Hara of University College London, it is unclear why
this is happening or when the Sun is likely to become more active again.
"There's no sign of us coming out of it yet," she told BBC News.
"At the moment, there are scientific papers coming out suggesting that we'll
be going into a normal period of activity soon.
"Others are suggesting we'll be going into another minimum period - this is a
big scientific debate at the moment."
Images from Soho taken in 2001 (left) and 2007 (right)
Sunspots could be seen by the Soho telescope in 2001 (l), but not this year
(r)
In the mid-17th Century, a quiet spell - known as the Maunder Minimum -
lasted 70 years, and led to a "mini ice age".
This has resulted in some people suggesting that a similar cooling might
offset the impact of climate change.
According to Prof Mike Lockwood of Southampton University, this view is too
simplistic.
"I wish the Sun was coming to our aid but, unfortunately, the data shows that
is not the case," he said.
Prof Lockwood was one of the first researchers to show that the Sun's
activity has been gradually decreasing since 1985, yet overall global
temperatures have continued to rise.
"If you look carefully at the observations, it's pretty clear that the
underlying level of the Sun peaked at about 1985 and what we are seeing is a
continuation of a downward trend (in solar activity) that's been going on for
a couple of decades.
"If the Sun's dimming were to have a cooling effect, we'd have seen it by
now."
'Middle ground'
Evidence from tree trunks and ice cores suggest that the Sun is calming down
after an unusually high point in its activity.
Professor Lockwood believes that as well as the Sun's 11-year cycle, there is
an underlying solar oscillation lasting hundreds of years.
He suggests that 1985 marked the "grand maximum" in this long-term cycle and
the Maunder Minimum marked its low point.
"We are re-entering the middle ground after a period which has seen the Sun
in its top 10% of activity," said Professor Lockwood.
"We would expect it to be more than 100 years before we get down to the
levels of the Maunder Minimum."
He added that the current slight dimming of the Sun was not going to reverse
the rise in global temperatures caused by the burning of fossil fuels.
"What we are seeing is consistent with a global temperature rise, not that
the Sun is coming to our aid."
Data from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) shows global
average temperatures have risen by about 0.7C since the beginning of the 20th
Century.
And the IPCC projects that the world will continue to warm, with temperatures
expected to rise between 1.8C and 4C by the end of the century.
No-one knows how the centuries-long waxing and waning of the Sun works.
However, astronomers now have space telescopes studying the Sun in detail.
According to Prof Richard Harrison of the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory,
Oxfordshire, this current quiet period gives astronomers a unique
opportunity.
"This is very exciting because as astronomers we've never seen anything like
this before in our lifetimes," he said.
"We have spacecraft up there to study the Sun in phenomenal detail. With
these telescopes we can study this minimum of activity in a way that we could
not have done so in the past."
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
*** FAIR USE NOTICE. This message contains copyrighted material
the use of which has not been specifically authorized by the
copyright owner. This Internet discussion group is making it
available without profit to group members who have expressed a
prior interest in receiving the included information in their
efforts to advance the understanding of literary, educational,
political, and economic issues, for non-profit research and
educational purposes only. I believe that this constitutes a
'fair use' of the copyrighted material as provided for in section
107 of the U.S. Copyright Law. If you wish to use this copyrighted
material for purposes of your own that go beyond 'fair use,' you
must obtain permission from the copyright owner.
|