Tag Archives | sun spots

Massive Solar Storm Hits Earth

By majestic on January 25, 2012 in News 4

Rerouting airplanes isn’t a big deal, but could there be dangers from the radiation? Doug Cameron reports for the Wall Street Journal:

Delta Air Lines Inc. said Tuesday that it was rerouting some transpolar flights between Asia and the U.S. to avoid the impact of the largest solar storm in almost a decade.

The Atlanta-based carrier said some flights to Detroit from Hong Kong, Shanghai and Seoul took a more southerly routing on overnight flights, though a spokesman said planes flew faster to keep schedules intact. Tuesday departures from the U.S. were expected to follow similar routes.

A rare solar flare erupted late Sunday night resulting in a solar radiation storm today, according to NASA. It’s the strongest such storm since September 2005, according to NOAA’s Space Weather Prediction Center.

Airlines occasionally reroute transpolar flights as a precautionary measure during big solar storms, with radiation levels heightened…

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New Little Ice Age In Store Next Decade?

By JacobSloan on June 22, 2011 in News 15

The Telegraph says we may enter a short mini-Ice Age in the next decade due to low solar activity. Consider it Mother Nature giving us a temporary reprieve from global warming so that we have time to set things right:

Sunspot activity, which follows an 11-year cycle, is due to peak in 2013 after which it will start to wane slightly. But astronomers think the next upswing will be less intensive than normal, or could fail to happen at all. That could affect weather on Earth because low solar activity has been linked to low global temperatures in the past.

Three studies, presented at a meeting of the American Astronomical Society’s solar physics division, all point towards declining sunspot activity into the next decade.

Between 1645 and 1715 almost no sunspots were observed, a solar period which came to be called the Maunder Minimum. During those decades Europe suffered frequent unusually harsh winters, and the time was later termed the Little Ice Age.

… Read the rest

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Solar Maximum Starts in 2011

By majestic on December 29, 2010 in News 8

solar_flare The fearmongers wishing for something, anything, to happen in 2012 have seized on the next peak in the cyclical activity experienced by our sun. AFP reports that an upswing starts next year, but the climax will probably not be until 2013, rather than December 21, 2012:

The coming year will be an important one for space weather as the Sun pulls out of a trough of low activity and heads into a long-awaited and possibly destructive period of turbulence.

Many people may be surprised to learn that the Sun, rather than burn with faultless consistency, goes through moments of calm and tempest.

But two centuries of observing sunspots — dark, relatively cool marks on the solar face linked to mighty magnetic forces — have revealed that our star follows a roughly 11-year cycle of behaviour.

The latest cycle began in 1996 and for reasons which are unclear has taken longer than expected to end.

… Read the rest

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Entire Hemisphere of the Sun Erupts

By majestic on December 14, 2010 in News 8

Whoa – this is really starting to sound like some of the apocalyptic predictions about the end of the world in 2012! Just announced by NASA:

On August 1, 2010, an entire hemisphere of the sun erupted. Filaments of magnetism snapped and exploded, shock waves raced across the stellar surface, billion-ton clouds of hot gas billowed into space. Astronomers knew they had witnessed something big.

Locations of key events are labeled in this extreme ultraviolet image of the sun, obtained by the Solar Dynamics Observatory during the Great Eruption of August 1st. White lines trace the sun’s magnetic field. Credit:NASA / K Schrijver & A. Title.

It was so big, it may have shattered old ideas about solar activity.

“The August 1st event really opened our eyes,” says Karel Schrijver of Lockheed Martin’s Solar and Astrophysics Lab in Palo Alto, CA. “We see that solar storms can be global events, playing out on scales we scarcely imagined before.”

For the past three months, Schrijver has been working with fellow Lockheed-Martin solar physicist Alan Title to understand what happened during the “Great Eruption.” They had plenty of data: The event was recorded in unprecedented detail by NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory and twin STEREO spacecraft.

… Read the rest

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Massive Solar Flare To Paralyze Earth In 2013

By majestic on September 23, 2010 in News 12

So was Lawrence Joseph right when he warned of a potentially catastrophic solar flare in the disinformation film 2012: Science or Superstition? This story from the Daily Mail lends his theory some credence, albeit a year later than he predicted:

A massive solar flare could cause global chaos in 2013, causing blackouts and wrecking satellite communications, a conference heard yesterday.

On August 1st, almost the entire Earth-facing side of the sun erupted in a tumult of activity. There was a C3-class solar flare, a solar tsunami, multiple filaments of magnetism lifting off the stellar surface, large-scale shaking of the solar corona, radio bursts, a coronal mass ejection and more. These images taken by the STEREO Ahead satellite from 3:47 to 15:47 UT on August 2nd show the movement of the CME cloud, on the right of the disc, as it expands toward Earth. Credit: NASA/STEREO

On August 1, 2010, almost the entire Earth-facing side of the sun erupted in a tumult of activity. There was a C3-class solar flare, a solar tsunami, multiple filaments of magnetism lifting off the stellar surface, large-scale shaking of the solar corona, radio bursts, a coronal mass ejection and more. These images taken by the STEREO Ahead satellite from 3:47 to 15:47 UT on August 2nd show the movement of the CME cloud, on the right of the disc, as it expands toward Earth. Credit: NASA/STEREO

Nasa has warned that a peak in the sun’s magnetic energy cycle and the number of sun spots or flares around 2013 could generate huge radiation levels.… Read the rest

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Here Comes The Sun(spots)

By phunkychic666 on March 3, 2010 in News 3

solar_flare Thanks to Alex Ansary for posting this to his facebook. Tom Bruner writes on AmericanThinker.com:

February, 2010, was the first month since 2007 with sunspots every day according to Spaceweather.com for February 27. A quick check of February 28 confirms the streak. So far there have been only 2 spot-free days in 2010. By comparison there were 260 spot-free days in 2009, and there have been 772 spot-free days since 2004. What this means is that one of the quietest periods of solar activity in recent history may be coming to an end.

The relevance of this is that sunspot activity has been proposed by many, such as Geerts and Linacre, as a possible driver of Earth’s climate patterns, including global warming and cooling cycles. As with most climate theory, the science has not been settled on the link between sunspots and Earth’s climate.

Most, but not all according to some.

… Read the rest

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Coast to Coast AM – Solar Cycles & Civilizations

By phunkychic666 on January 13, 2010 in News 0

Engineer and scientist Maurice Cotterell discussed his research into sun spots and solar cycles, and how they affect history, evolution, and the rise and fall of civilizations. The Chinese first observed sunspots 3,000 years ago, and were aware of their 11-year cycle, he said. Additionally, there are sun cycles lasting 187 years, and 18,000 years, Cotterell explained. Periods with higher sunspot activity lead to increased fertility but also disorders such as schizophrenia, whereas during the solar minimum there can be mini-ice ages, he detailed.

He theorized that creatures evolved through DNA mutations brought about by solar wind radiation…

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