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Sun's Fickle Heart May Leave Us Cold
New Scientist ^ | 1-25-2007

Posted on 01/25/2007 4:40:59 PM PST by blam

Sun's fickle heart may leave us cold

25 January 2007
From New Scientist Print Edition.Stuart Clark

There's a dimmer switch inside the sun that causes its brightness to rise and fall on timescales of around 100,000 years - exactly the same period as between ice ages on Earth. So says a physicist who has created a computer model of our star's core.

Robert Ehrlich of George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia, modelled the effect of temperature fluctuations in the sun's interior. According to the standard view, the temperature of the sun's core is held constant by the opposing pressures of gravity and nuclear fusion. However, Ehrlich believed that slight variations should be possible.

He took as his starting point the work of Attila Grandpierre of the Konkoly Observatory of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. In 2005, Grandpierre and a collaborator, Gábor Ágoston, calculated that magnetic fields in the sun's core could produce small instabilities in the solar plasma. These instabilities would induce localised oscillations in temperature.

Ehrlich's model shows that whilst most of these oscillations cancel each other out, some reinforce one another and become long-lived temperature variations. The favoured frequencies allow the sun's core temperature to oscillate around its average temperature of 13.6 million kelvin in cycles lasting either 100,000 or 41,000 years. Ehrlich says that random interactions within the sun's magnetic field could flip the fluctuations from one cycle length to the other.

These two timescales are instantly recognisable to anyone familiar with Earth's ice ages: for the past million years, ice ages have occurred roughly every 100,000 years. Before that, they occurred roughly every 41,000 years.

Most scientists believe that the ice ages are the result of subtle changes in Earth's orbit, known as the Milankovitch cycles.

(Excerpt) Read more at environment.newscientist.com ...


TOPICS: News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: brightness; catastrophism; dim; globalwarminghoax; godsgravesglyphs; gorethemoron; heart; kyoto; maunderminimum; milankovitch; milankovitchcycles; sun; vostokicecoredata
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To: Right Wing Assault

Big Rock


61 posted on 01/31/2007 1:51:46 AM PST by ThanhPhero (di hanh huong den La Vang)
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To: redheadtoo; SunkenCiv

Attila is apparently a common name in Hungary, since the original Attila used the country for his base camp. I'm a little more skeptical of the "Grandpierre" part.


62 posted on 01/31/2007 2:41:02 AM PST by Berosus ("There is no beauty like Jerusalem, no wealth like Rome, no depravity like Arabia."--the Talmud)
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To: Right Wing Assault

Atilla Grandpierre. That's Atilla the big Peter.


63 posted on 01/31/2007 3:17:17 AM PST by Alas Babylon!
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To: HiTech RedNeck

more oxygen, and consuming more CO2.


64 posted on 01/31/2007 3:30:02 AM PST by xcamel (Press to Test, Release to Detonate)
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To: Argus

There was a mini-Ice Age that lasted from around 1400 until the mid-19th century.


65 posted on 01/31/2007 4:09:22 AM PST by kellynch ("Our only freedom is the freedom to discipline ourselves." -- Bernard Baruch)
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To: blam


Snowshoes are a good thing....


66 posted on 01/31/2007 5:40:09 AM PST by Wraith (To have peace prepare for War.)
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To: Berosus

:')


67 posted on 01/31/2007 8:24:41 AM PST by SunkenCiv ("In theory, theory and practice are the same, but in practice, they're not." -- John Rummel)
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To: HiTech RedNeck; Alamo-Girl; GregoryFul; hosepipe; .30Carbine
Higher temps would mean more plant life activity producing more carbon dioxide.

And also more chlorophyl -- which ultimately is the food of all living organisms here on earth. (I.e., animals eat plants, humans eat plants and animals....)

68 posted on 01/31/2007 10:28:41 AM PST by betty boop (Beautiful are the things we see...Much the most beautiful those we do not comprehend. -- N. Steensen)
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To: Right Wing Assault
The guy"s name is Grandpierre. Big Peter?

Attila Grandpierre..... we could call him "Attila the Hung."

69 posted on 01/31/2007 10:30:42 AM PST by r9etb
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To: marron; Alamo-Girl; hosepipe; .30Carbine
These instabilities would induce localised oscillations in temperature.

And these in turn serve as causes for other forms of complex activity on the Sun which, since we live in Sol's close-by neighborhood, have very direct effects here on Earth. As Attila has told me, the Sun "is not 'a hot ball of gas,' nor is it simply a fusion reactor (machine)." Rather, despite the fact that it is not a "carbon-based lifeform," the Sun gives evidence of behaving in ways that we associate only with living systems.

I'm tickled to see my friend, an astrophysicist who specializes on the Sun, cited here! Thank you so very much for the ping, marron!

70 posted on 01/31/2007 10:35:43 AM PST by betty boop (Beautiful are the things we see...Much the most beautiful those we do not comprehend. -- N. Steensen)
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To: betty boop; marron
I'm tickled to see my friend, an astrophysicist who specializes on the Sun, cited here! Thank you so very much for the ping, marron!

Indeed!!! Thank you both so very much!
71 posted on 01/31/2007 10:55:39 AM PST by Alamo-Girl
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To: blam

Gee, I never in a million years thought that all this heating and cooling could possibly be caused by the sun. /sarc


72 posted on 01/31/2007 11:00:43 AM PST by Dustbunny (The BIBLE - Basic Instructions Before Leaving Earth)
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To: NYorkerInHouston

Actually it is less now than 325,000 y/a and about the same as 125,000 years ago. It seem the CO2 levels and temperature go up and down on a pretty reliable schedule. About every 125,000 years both go up. We would seem to be at about the high point of that 125,000 peak and should be dropping off soon.

This graph brings up a question. Do the temps go up because of CO2 or do CO2 levels go up as temps rise?


73 posted on 01/31/2007 11:20:38 AM PST by redangus
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To: HiTech RedNeck

Wrong Kemosabi. You are right that higher temps might mean more plant growth. However, plants sequester CO2. They take it out of the air and through photosynthesis combine the carbon with hydrogen and oxygen to produce starch which is stored in the plant as an energy source. As by-products they release O2 and water into the atmosphere as by-products. This would actually lower CO2 in the atmosphere and increase the level O2.


74 posted on 01/31/2007 11:28:04 AM PST by redangus
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To: blam

bookmark


75 posted on 01/31/2007 5:15:04 PM PST by TX Bluebonnet
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The Sun: A Great Ball of Iron?
Science Daily
Posted on 07/18/2002 2:33:32 AM EDT by per loin
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/718067/posts


76 posted on 10/31/2007 3:35:20 AM PDT by SunkenCiv (Profile updated Monday, October 22, 2007. https://secure.freerepublic.com/donate/)
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http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/chat/1294934/posts?page=11


77 posted on 10/31/2007 3:35:52 AM PDT by SunkenCiv (Profile updated Monday, October 22, 2007. https://secure.freerepublic.com/donate/)
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78 posted on 12/08/2013 6:04:37 PM PST by SunkenCiv (http://www.freerepublic.com/~mestamachine/)
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79 posted on 12/08/2013 6:04:56 PM PST by SunkenCiv (http://www.freerepublic.com/~mestamachine/)
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