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Climate Change: A team of international scientists has finally figured out why sunspots have a dramatic effect on the weather. It shows the folly of fearing the SUV while dismissing that thermonuclear furnace in the sky.Mankind once worshiped the sun. Now the world studiously ignores it as nations prepare to hammer out a successor to the failed Kyoto Protocol, which expires in 2012, in Copenhagen in December. Something is indeed rotten in Denmark. Our own government is committed to fighting climate change whether it be though Son of Kyoto or our own growth-capping, job-killing cap-and-trade legislation known as Waxman-Markey. Despite...

Enlarge ImageSurprise! The IBEX spacecraft, preparing to explore deep space (inset), accidentally made an important discovery about the moon.Credit: Southwest Research Institute Scientists probing the outer reaches of our solar system have hit upon an unusual phenomenon much closer to home. Instruments aboard a NASA spacecraft have detected fast-moving hydrogen atoms emanating from the moon. The atoms, which originated as protons from the sun, may help scientists study the lunar surface and other solar system objects in greater detail than believed possible. The moon is continuously being pelted by hazardous radiation. Most of it comes from the solar wind,...

Environment: The solar wind is slowing, but Al Gore is still spewing hot air. The Oscar winner is promoting civil disobedience to stop energy and economic growth as the first U.S. emissions cap-and-trade program begins.Speaking before Bill Clinton's Global Initiative, junk science advocate Gore called on young people to take the law into their own hands because the climate, he claims, is a-changin'. He told the gathering in New York City that "the world has lost ground to the climate crisis" and the time for action is now. "If you're a young person looking at the future of this planet...

In a briefing today at NASA headquarters, solar physicists announced that the solar wind is losing power. "The average pressure of the solar wind has dropped more than 20% since the mid-1990s," says Dave McComas of the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio, Texas. "This is the weakest it's been since we began monitoring solar wind almost 50 years ago.

The intensity of the sun's million-mile-per-hour solar wind has dropped to its lowest levels since accurate records began half a century ago, scientists say.

The intensity of the sun's million-mile-per-hour solar wind has dropped to its lowest levels since accurate records began half a century ago, scientists say. Measurements of the cosmic blasts of radiation, ejected from the sun's upper atmosphere, were made with the Ulysses spacecraft, a joint mission between NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA). The solar wind "inflates a protective bubble, or heliosphere, around the solar system," which protects the inner planets against the radiation from other stars, said Dave McComas, Ulysses' solar wind principal investigator and senior executive director at the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio, Texas. "With...

The intensity of the sun's million-mile-per-hour solar wind has dropped to its lowest levels since accurate records began half a century ago, scientists say. Measurements of the cosmic blasts of radiation, ejected from the sun's upper atmosphere, were made with the Ulysses spacecraft, a joint mission between NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA). The solar wind "inflates a protective bubble, or heliosphere, around the solar system," which protects the inner planets against the radiation from other stars, said Dave McComas, Ulysses' solar wind principal investigator and senior executive director at the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio, Texas. "With...

Data from the Ulysses spacecraft, a joint NASA-European Space Agency mission, show the sun has reduced its output of solar wind to the lowest levels since accurate readings became available. The sun's current state could reduce the natural shielding that envelops our solar system. "The sun's million mile-per-hour solar wind inflates a protective bubble, or heliosphere, around the solar system. It influences how things work here on Earth and even out at the boundary of our solar system where it meets the galaxy," said Dave McComas, Ulysses' solar wind instrument principal investigator and senior executive director at the Southwest Research...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The solar wind, which whips off the sun and blows past Earth and through the solar system, is unleashed by powerful magnetic waves in electrically charged gas around the sun, scientists said on Thursday. The mechanisms that cause the solar wind had baffled scientists for decades, but were revealed in observations by a Japanese satellite called Hinode orbiting Earth, the scientists said in research published in the journal Science. "The magnificent thing about the success of Hinode is its unprecedented view of the dynamics of the sun," Jonathan Cirtain, a solar physicist at NASA's Marshall Space Flight...

Sept. 21, 2006: Almost every day, the great antennas of NASA's Deep Space Network turn to a blank patch of sky in the constellation Ophiuchus. Pointing at nothing, or so it seems, they invariably pick up a signal, faint but full of intelligence. The source is beyond Neptune, beyond Pluto, on the verge of the stars themselves. It's Voyager 1. The spacecraft left Earth in 1977 on a mission to visit Jupiter and Saturn. Almost 30 years later, with the gas giants long ago seen and done, Voyager 1 is still going and encountering some strange things....

Scientists study pieces from NASA's Genesis probe after it crashed into the Utah desert in 2004. LOS ANGELES, California (AP) -- A report released Tuesday blamed a design flaw for the 2004 crash of a NASA space probe carrying solar wind atoms back to Earth and criticized engineers for failing to detect the error. The 231-page document prepared by independent investigators found that gravity switches on the Genesis probe designed to trigger the deployment of its parachutes were installed backward. Genesis' chutes never opened and it slammed into the Utah desert on September 8, 2004, after a three-year mission collecting...

SALT LAKE CITY - The Genesis space capsule carrying solar wind particles will be plucked from nearly a mile above the Utah desert by stunt helicopter pilots who've replicated the retrieval, without fumbles, in nearly a dozen practice runs. "It's very exciting to be a civilian helicopter pilot and have the opportunity to work with NASA (news - web sites)," said Dan Rudert, a stunt pilot from Santa Ana, Calif., who rated the difficulty of the maneuver at an 8 or 9 on a scale to 10. Rudert spoke Thursday during a briefing with scientists on NASA television. The other...

Astronomy Picture of the Day Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation written by a professional astronomer. 2002 October 31 Aurora in the Night Credit & Copyright: Juha Kinnunen Explanation: For much of the month of October, traveling shock waves from the Sun and solar wind gusts have buffeted planet Earth's magnetosphere. As a result, skywatchers at high latitudes in the northern hemisphere were treated to many displays of the aurora borealis or northern lights. For example, on the first of October this particularly ghostly apparition...

Astronomy Picture of the Day Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation written by a professional astronomer. 2002 July 27 Apollo 11: Catching Some Sun Credit: Apollo 11, NASA (Image scanned by Kipp Teague) Explanation: Bright sunlight glints and long dark shadows dramatize this image of the lunar surface taken by Apollo 11 astronaut Neil Armstrong, the first to walk on the Moon. Pictured is the mission's lunar module, the Eagle, and spacesuited lunar module pilot Buzz Aldrin unfurling a long sheet of foil also...

Astronomy Picture of the Day Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation written by a professional astronomer. 2002 June 24 The Sun's Heliosphere & Heliopause Credit & Copyright: P. C. Frisch (U. Chicago) et al., U. Indiana Explanation: Where does the Sun's influence end? Nobody is sure. Out past the orbits of Neptune and Pluto extends a region named the heliosphere where the Sun's magnetic field and particles from the Solar Wind continue to dominate. The surface where the Solar Wind drops below sound speed...