Posted on 11/20/2003 11:59:37 AM PST by RightWhale
Sun Sheds Skin And Flips
Greenbelt - Nov 20, 2003
Research with the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) spacecraft has revealed the process that may implement the reversal in the direction of the Sun's magnetic field that is known to occur every 11 years. This newly recognized factor in the Sun's magnetic flipping is the cumulative effect of more than a thousand huge eruptions called Coronal Mass Ejections (CMEs).
The CMEs blast billions of tons of electrified gas into space, carrying away the Sun's old magnetic field and allowing a new one with a flipped orientation to form.
Reversal of the solar magnetic field is a major event in the Sun's 11-year cycle of stormy activity, when the Sun goes from quiet to active and back again, and the study is the first evidence linking the reversal to CMEs. Since CMEs occasionally disrupt satellites, radio communication, and power systems, solar scientists hope this link will eventually help them better forecast the powerful eruptions.
"The Sun is like a snake that sheds its skin," comments Dr. Nat Gopalswamy of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md., lead author of the new report, which appears in the Astrophysical Journal. "In this case, it's a magnetic skin. The process is long, drawn-out and it's pretty violent. More than a thousand coronal mass ejections, each carrying billions of tons of gas from the polar regions, are needed to clear the old magnetism away. But when it's all over the Sun's magnetic stripes are running in the opposite direction."
"This analysis of nearly eight years of CME data is a big step forward in making sense of space weather," said Dr. Joseph Gurman, NASA Project Scientist for SOHO at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md. "By identifying the solar origin of these events with CMEs of different speeds and appearances, and at different latitudes, it improves our capability to predict space weather that can affect the Earth, at different phases of the solar activity cycle."
Apparently random CMEs turn out to be signs of the Sun's diligent housekeeping. It keeps sweeping away, out into space, untidy magnetic fields created by sunspots and other contortions in its atmosphere. The climax comes in a busy period of "spring cleaning" after the count of sunspots has peaked, every 11 years. It leaves the Sun with its main magnetic field completely overturned, and its north and south magnetic poles swapped around.
The Astrophysical Journal report published by Gopalswamy and his colleagues takes stock of seven years of observations of such events by the SOHO spacecraft. It also compares them with the mass ejections recorded in 1979-85 by a US Air Force satellite, P78-1. Helping the scientists to decipher the events seen by the spaceborne telescopes are data from ground-based instruments at Kitt Peak, Ariz., and Nobeyama, Japan.
What emerges is a systematic pattern in the outbursts, according to the new research. It changes during the sunspot cycle, as the numbers of dark sunspots seen each day on the Sun's bright surface first increases and then diminishes again. The mass ejections are often directly associated with the sunspots, which always lie in the Sun's equatorial belt or at mid-latitudes.
Other mass ejections occur near the Sun's poles, far away from any sunspots. These events are most frequent at the peak of sunspot activity, but they can continue for a while as the count of sunspots begins to decline. By getting rid of the magnetic remnants of previous activity, the high-latitude outbursts groom the polar magnetic fields in a new configuration, according to the team.
When SOHO began its watch early in 1996, the Sun was quiet. There were very few sunspots and CMEs happened less than once a day. But during the most intense solar activity, 1999-2000, there were more than five a day, on average twice as many as scientists expected. What's more, the average speed of the ejected clouds of gas doubled, from 990,000 to 1,980,000 kilometres per hour (about 610,000 to 1,200,000 miles/hr.).
When the sunspot count passed its peak in July 2000, CMEs continued at a high rate. They did not reach their own peak in frequency until October 2002. Events followed a different timescale in the two polar regions of the Sun. A flurry of high-latitude mass ejections occurred near the solar north pole, completing the magnetic reversal there by November 2000. The south polar region lagged behind, and its new magnetic pole was not ‘clean' until May 2002. In effect, the solar snake shed the magnetic skin first from its head and then from its tail.
The scientific team includes Gopalswamy, Dr. Alejandro Lara and Dr. Seiji Yashiro of the Catholic University of America, Washington, DC, and Dr. Russell A. Howard of the Naval Research Laboratory, Washington, DC. SOHO is a project of international cooperation between ESA and NASA.
So, I suppose in no time at all, one will refer to fire as a "carbon-based life form."
That does not necessarily follow. Why do you jump to conclusions? You haven't heard the details of the hypothesis yet.
The great omission in the Theory of Evolution is an answer to the question: "What is Life?"
From the article linked below:
Karl Pearson The Grammar of Science
Jump to conclusions? I’m really not interested in the details of a hypothesis with the premise that a fusion reaction is a “life form.” My analogy of fire as a life form is just as valid.
Say that enough times and it will be true.
With all due respect, I doubt very much that I’ll invest the time on Attila’s hypothesis that a fusion reaction is a life form while our culture continues to hypothesizes that an unborn human being is not life form.
When it comes to topic of life forms, I have to use my resources to their greatest benefit.
It's not much of a theory anyway. What might be interesting is to hypothesize that Mars has no magnetic field because it has lost its atmosphere.
Then how would you explain Venus' lack of a strong magnetic field?
In the model, which apparently physics rebel RightWhale is the only one to have thought of, there must be an atmosphere, but it must also be rotating to produce the characteristic magnetic field. It might be that the atmosphere must also contain components that respond to nuclear magnetic resonance fields. Water vapor is one such component. One may experiment with various materials in the kitchen by putting various materials in the microwave oven. Those that are warmed by the microwaves may have the ability to generate magnetic fields in an atmosphere. In some cases the spousal unit may discourage such basic experimental science. Venus' atmosphere does not appear to be rotating vigorously.
If you say so, Barnacle. There's no sense trying to interest you in a fascinating hypothesis you have already determined is impossible, based on what you already know. Your mind is "made up," sight unseen.
Myself, I find it best to keep an open mind. If the hypothesis is experimentally falsified, well, there's the end of it. The forthcoming Grandpierre article deals with proposed experimental tests. I'm content to let the astrophysicists do the science, and wait to see what they come up with.
Perhaps the concern is that such a hypothesis is a type of mysticism rather than physics. I disagree.
From the Pattee article:
From what I understand, Dr. Grandpierre is not dealing in analogy here. He means it when he says the Sun may be a living system -- not just a vast fusion reactor, not just "a luminous ball of gas." He argues that new conceptual research, new theoretical approaches are needed in our understanding of solar dynamics that have become feasible with the advent of helioseismology, space-based neutrino detectors and other new technical tools, plus theoretical work that has been done in information science, etc.
Natch, the jury's still out; but I will be following the science as it evolves, and see what develops.
A-G, I'm sure that is the case with many people who object to the suggestion that there is anything at all immaterial about our Universe. But it seems to me the objection just doesn't hold up.
I mean, think about it: Matter is universal, ubiquitous, and homogeneous, generally speaking. Everything in the world is made out of the same "stuff," to put it very crudely. It seems to me that what makes an entity the thing it is, given the ubiquity and "sameness" of matter, is how the matter is put together, how it is assembled -- its "instruction set." But now we are talking about an entity's information content -- and this is not a material thing.
Just a little speculation I've been thinking through lately....
Thanks so much for writing, A-G. Hugs!
'Scuse me, but who is Art Bell? Should I stay tuned to him, too?
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