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here comes the sun
2009-Jun-19, Friday 08:15 amThere's a haze all across the sky this morning, so I won't be taking any photos myself this morning. There aren't any sunspots to photograph anyway. Here, though, is an interesting graph that helps to explain the mystery of the long solar minimum that we're experiencing right now.
It shows a collection of data for the past decade or so. The yellow/red bands show the migration of solar jet streams as they move from the polar regions down to the equator. The black areas show locations of sunpot activity.
As the jet stream passes below about 22 degrees latitude (north and south), then sunspot activity intensifies around and above the jet stream. On the far right, you can see that we have had little jet stream activity below 22 degrees during the last few years, hence almost no sunspot activity.
This relationship is recently discovered. It begs the question, of course, of what is responsible for creating the solar jet stream. Scientists don't yet know the answer to that question. This new awareness regarding solar cycles, though, is very useful to help predict future sunspot trends.
In different news, bringing the sun "a little closer to home" is basically what scientists are doing as they try to create nuclear fusion. Fusion is the only thing that I see as a possibility of keeping traditional human industry from crashing as existing fuel sources are exhausted or found to be too costly in terms of side effects (global warming, pollution, etc.). I had been hopeful that ITER would be showing the way to industrial-grade fusion in just a few years. Those hopes are now dashed.
Cost overruns and technical problems are expected to delay the operation of this new facility. There is talk of scaling back the project.
It shows a collection of data for the past decade or so. The yellow/red bands show the migration of solar jet streams as they move from the polar regions down to the equator. The black areas show locations of sunpot activity.
As the jet stream passes below about 22 degrees latitude (north and south), then sunspot activity intensifies around and above the jet stream. On the far right, you can see that we have had little jet stream activity below 22 degrees during the last few years, hence almost no sunspot activity.
This relationship is recently discovered. It begs the question, of course, of what is responsible for creating the solar jet stream. Scientists don't yet know the answer to that question. This new awareness regarding solar cycles, though, is very useful to help predict future sunspot trends.
In different news, bringing the sun "a little closer to home" is basically what scientists are doing as they try to create nuclear fusion. Fusion is the only thing that I see as a possibility of keeping traditional human industry from crashing as existing fuel sources are exhausted or found to be too costly in terms of side effects (global warming, pollution, etc.). I had been hopeful that ITER would be showing the way to industrial-grade fusion in just a few years. Those hopes are now dashed.
Cost overruns and technical problems are expected to delay the operation of this new facility. There is talk of scaling back the project.
"Fusion is not going to be the alternative in the next 20, 30 or 40 years, that is correct. But there needs to a long term plan; 40 years is little more than a generation. We need to think about the next generation and the many after that."That is much too long a timespan for saving humanity from the "crash" that I think is otherwise inevitable. :(
- http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8103557.stm