Here Comes The Sun |
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10/2/09Cosmic Rays Hit Space Age High September 29, 2009: Planning a trip to Mars? Take plenty of shielding. According to sensors on NASA's ACE (Advanced Composition Explorer) spacecraft, galactic cosmic rays have just hit a Space Age high. "In 2009, cosmic ray intensities have increased 19% beyond anything we've seen in the past 50 years," says Richard Mewaldt of Caltech. "The increase is significant, and it could mean we need to re-think how much radiation shielding astronauts take with them on deep-space missions." 
Above: Energetic iron nuclei counted by the Cosmic Ray Isotope Spectrometer on NASA's ACE spacecraft reveal that cosmic ray levels have jumped 19% above the previous Space Age high. [larger image] The cause of the surge is solar minimum, a deep lull in solar activity that began around 2007 and continues today. Researchers have long known that cosmic rays go up when solar activity goes down. Right now solar activity is as weak as it has been in modern times, setting the stage for what Mewaldt calls "a perfect storm of cosmic rays."
7/7/09Sun's storms set to intensify ASTRONOMERS are claiming that Earth is witnessing the biggest and most powerful Sunspot ever seen and the sunspot is yet to peak in intensity. A sunspot is a magnetic storm on the surface of the sun and the area of the spot is colder than the normal surface.The normal surface is about 5000 degrees, the temperature of a sunspot is about 3000 degrees. The size of a sunspot varies, ranging from the size of the moon to 65 times larger than the size of earth and lasts for about a month then fades away. This newest sunspot is thought to be 60 to 80 times the size of Earth and has occurred on the side of the sun, which is in view of Australia. 5/9/09 not a sunspot?????MAGNETIC FROTH:The farside sunspot that unleashed a powerful CME on May 5th is finally rotating into view. Except it is not a sunspot. The blast site appears to be in a state of decay with only some patches of bright magnetic froth marking where a sunspot group might have been: According to NASA's STEREO-B spacecraft, which is stationed over the sun's eastern limb, another active region should emerge today. Will it be a genuine sunspot--or another corpse? Stay tuned 5/8/09 Big Solar Flare Portends Sun’s Return to Normal
The sun has a new spot, and it could signal the long-awaited beginning of the next solar cycle. Solar flares rise and fall on an 11-year cycle, and last year marked what scientists thought was the solar minimum. But through the beginning of 2009, the sun stayed unusually quiet. That changed yesterday, when a major sunspot appeared on the backside of the sun, where it was captured by NASA’s STEREO instrument. “This is the biggest event we’ve seen in a year or so,” said Michael Kaiser, research scientist with the heliophysics division at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center. “Does this mean we’re finished with the minimum or not? It’s hard to say. This could be it. It’s got us all excited.” People have been counting sunspots since Galileo first observed one in the early 17th century. Through the 28 cycles that have been well-documented, stretching from 1745 to today, the average cycle length has been 11 years, but shorter and longer cycles have been observed. (The polarity of solar storms also alternates, so technically, a full cycle is 22 years.) For unknown reasons, the current solar minimum has lasted longer than normal. “It’s been a long solar minimum, the longest and deepest one through the last hundred years, but not out of the extreme ordinary,” Kaiser said. Sunspot activity causes magnetic storminess around Earth and is correlated with the total amount of energy we receive from the sun. That connection caused some speculation in the media about the implications of the extended solar minimum on climate change, like yesterday’s FoxNews.com article, “Quiet Sun May Trigger Global Cooling.” If the new solar flare is indeed a sign of the resumption of the normal cycle, it should put all that to rest. Kaiser is sure this sunspot is part of the new cycle because it appeared at about 30 degrees of latitude. This is typical early in the solar cycle when sunspots appear closer to the poles. Toward the solar minimum they show up closer to the equator. To date, a few minor sunspots have shown up in the higher latitudes, but none with the intensity or size of the new spots. “We have seen a few events in the new cycle, but they’ve all been pretty timid compared to this one,” Kaiser said. “In angular size, this one wasn’t spectacularly big, but it was certainly pretty bright.” STEREO picked up the event around the backside of the sun, but it won’t come fully into view from Earth until May 8. Still, solar photographers are already pointing their telescopes at the sun, hoping to catch a glimpse of the new event.
March 26, 2009 Space storm alert: 90 seconds from catastrophe IT IS midnight on 22 September 2012 and the skies above Manhattan are filled with a flickering curtain of colourful light. Few New Yorkers have seen the aurora this far south but their fascination is short-lived. Within a few seconds, electric bulbs dim and flicker, then become unusually bright for a fleeting moment. Then all the lights in the state go out. Within 90 seconds, the entire eastern half of the US is without power
Jan. 22, 2008 The Suns Magnetic Secret Revealed "Powerful magnetic waves have been confirmed for the first time as major players in the process that makes the sun's atmosphere strangely hundreds of times hotter than its already superhot surface. The magnetic waves — called Alfven waves — can carry enough energy from the sun's active surface to heat its atmosphere, or corona. "The surface and corona are chock full of these things, and they're very energetic," said Bart de Pontieu, a physicist at the Lockheed Martin Solar and Astrophysics Laboratory in California. The sun contains powerful heating and magnetic forces which drive the temperature to tens of thousands of degrees at the surface — yet the quieter corona wreathing the sun reaches temperatures of millions of degrees. Scientists have speculated that Alfven waves act as energy conveyor belts to heat the sun's atmosphere, but lacked the observational evidence to prove their theories."
'Major discovery' from MIT primed to unleash solar revolution. Scientists mimic essence of plants' energy storage system. Until now, solar power has been a daytime-only energy source, because storing extra solar energy for later use is prohibitively expensive and grossly inefficient. With today's announcement, MIT researchers have hit upon a simple, inexpensive, highly efficient process for storing solar energy.
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