http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dI5j7pdZ-jg
Here's another..
http://www.mnn.com/earth-matters/space/stories/how-the-sun-flips-its-magnetic-field
As the field shifts, the "current sheet" — a surface that radiates billions of kilometers outward from the sun's equator — becomes very wavy, NASA officials said. Earth orbits the sun, dipping in and out of the waves of the current sheet. The transition from a wave to a dip can create stormy space weather around Earth, NASA officials said.
"The sun's polar magnetic fields weaken, go to zero, and then emerge again with the opposite polarity," Stanford solar physicist Phil Scherrer said in a statement. "This is a regular part of the solar cycle."
While the polarity shift can stir up some stormy weather, it also provides extra shielding from dangerous cosmic rays. These high-energy particles, which are accelerated by events like supernova explosions, zip through the universe at nearly the speed of light. They can harm satellites and astronauts in space, and the wrinkled current sheet better protects the planet from these particles.
The effects of the rippled sheet can also be felt throughout the solar system, far beyond Pluto and even touching the Voyager probes near the barrier of interstellar space.
"The sun's north pole has already changed sign, while the south pole is racing to catch up," Scherrer said. "Soon, however, both poles will be reversed, and the second half of solar max will be underway."
The current solar maximum is the weakest in 100 years, experts have said. Usually, at the height of a solar cycle, sunspot activity increases. These dark regions on the sun's surface can give birth to solar flares and ejections, but there have been fewer observed sunspots this year than in the maximums of previous cycles."
Have a nice day...
There is some evidence that low solar activity (which we have been having) leads to global cooling. Seeing this weak sunspot cycle over the last few years had me convinced that we weren't going to have global warming anytime soon and might in fact be facing a maunder minimum(A new ice age is just to scary to think about) The antarctic has the biggest icecap ever measured.
ReplyDeleteMeanwhile, to push the global warming scare, the media searched far and wide(ignoring thousands of record cold temperatures) until it found the heatwave crisis in Beijing. With temperatures in the mid-90's. Normal high for this time of year in Beijing is a chili 89-90. Uh OK.
Glad I live in Arizona... We could use some cooling off....
ReplyDeleteHave to read this later, but could appreciate the cool of here in Vegas. It's windy today and that helps, but I've had enough of summer and it's still two months or so of hair dryer in the face heat until it breaks.
DeleteSame here in Zona...
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