March 10, 2006: It's official: Solar minimum has arrived. Sunspots have all but vanished. Solar flares are nonexistent. The sun is utterly quiet.
Like the quiet before a storm.
This week researchers announced that a storm is coming--the most intense solar maximum in fifty years. The prediction comes from a team led by Mausumi Dikpati of the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR). "The next sunspot cycle will be 30% to 50% stronger than the previous one," she says. If correct, the years ahead could produce a burst of solar activity second only to the historic Solar Max of 1958.
That was a solar maximum. The Space Age was just beginning: Sputnik was launched in Oct. 1957 and Explorer 1 (the first US satellite) in Jan. 1958. In 1958 you couldn't tell that a solar storm was underway by looking at the bars on your cell phone; cell phones didn't exist. Even so, people knew something big was happening when Northern Lights were sighted three times in Mexico. A similar maximum now would be noticed by its effect on cell phones, GPS, weather satellites and many other modern technologies.
Right: Intense auroras over Fairbanks, Alaska, in 1958. [More]
Dikpati's prediction is unprecedented. In nearly-two centuries since the 11-year sunspot cycle was discovered, scientists have struggled to predict the size of future maxima—and failed. Solar maxima can be intense, as in 1958, or barely detectable, as in 1805, obeying no obvious pattern.
The key to the mystery, Dikpati realized years ago, is a conveyor belt on the sun.
We have something similar here on Earth—the Great Ocean Conveyor Belt, popularized in the sci-fi movieThe Day After Tomorrow. It is a network of currents that carry water and heat from ocean to ocean--see the diagram below. In the movie, the Conveyor Belt stopped and threw the world's weather into chaos.
Above: Earth's "Great Ocean Conveyor Belt." [More]
The sun's conveyor belt is a current, not of water, but of electrically-conducting gas. It flows in a loop from the sun's equator to the poles and back again. Just as the Great Ocean Conveyor Belt controls weather on Earth, this solar conveyor belt controls weather on the sun. Specifically, it controls the sunspot cycle.
Solar physicist David Hathaway of the National Space Science & Technology Center (NSSTC) explains: "First, remember what sunspots are--tangled knots of magnetism generated by the sun's inner dynamo. A typical sunspot exists for just a few weeks. Then it decays, leaving behind a 'corpse' of weak magnetic fields."
Enter the conveyor belt.
"The top of the conveyor belt skims the surface of the sun, sweeping up the magnetic fields of old, dead sunspots. The 'corpses' are dragged down at the poles to a depth of 200,000 km where the sun's magnetic dynamo can amplify them. Once the corpses (magnetic knots) are reincarnated (amplified), they become buoyant and float back to the surface." Presto—new sunspots!
Right: The sun's "great conveyor belt." [Larger image]
All this happens with massive slowness. "It takes about 40 years for the belt to complete one loop," says Hathaway. The speed varies "anywhere from a 50-year pace (slow) to a 30-year pace (fast)."
When the belt is turning "fast," it means that lots of magnetic fields are being swept up, and that a future sunspot cycle is going to be intense. This is a basis for forecasting: "The belt was turning fast in 1986-1996," says Hathaway. "Old magnetic fields swept up then should re-appear as big sunspots in 2010-2011."
Like most experts in the field, Hathaway has confidence in the conveyor belt model and agrees with Dikpati that the next solar maximum should be a doozy. But he disagrees with one point. Dikpati's forecast puts Solar Max at 2012. Hathaway believes it will arrive sooner, in 2010 or 2011.
"History shows that big sunspot cycles 'ramp up' faster than small ones," he says. "I expect to see the first sunspots of the next cycle appear in late 2006 or 2007—and Solar Max to be underway by 2010 or 2011."
Who's right? Time will tell. Either way, a storm is coming.
COMMENTARY: According to Dr. Richard Fisher, director of NASA's Heliphysics division, after the earth is hit by a once-in-a-generation "space storm", solar flares will cause devastation that could result in widespread power blackouts and critical communication signals could be knocked out for long periods of time.
The solar storms which will cause the Sun to reach temperatures of more than 10,000 F (5500C), occur only a few times over a person’s life. Every 22 years the Sun’s magnetic energy cycle peaks while the number of sun spots and solar flares hits a maximum level every 11 years.
National power grids could overheat and air travel severely disrupted while electronic items, navigation devices and major satellites could stop working after the Sun reaches its maximum power in a few years.
Senior space agency scientists believe the Earth will be hit with unprecedented levels of magnetic energy from solar flares after the Sun wakes “from a deep slumber” sometime around 2013, Britain's The Daily Telegraph reported.
In a Fox television interview, renowned physicist Michio Kaku, says that a once-in-100-years massive solar flare could cause $2 trillion in damages to our communications and electronics infrastructure. Here's the video:
Let's hope that Dr. Kaku is wrong.
In a new warning, NASA said the super storm would hit like “a bolt of lightning” and could cause catastrophic consequences for the world’s health, emergency services and national security unless precautions are taken.
Scientists believe it could damage everything from emergency services’ systems, hospital equipment, banking systems and air traffic control devices, through to “everyday” items such as home computers, iPods and Sat Navs.
Due to humans’ heavy reliance on electronic devices, which are sensitive to magnetic energy, the storm could leave a multi-billion dollar damage bill and “potentially devastating” problems for governments.
Dr. Richard Fisher said in a Daily Telegraph interview:
“We know it is coming but we don’t know how bad it is going to be. "It will disrupt communication devices such as satellites and car navigations, air travel, the banking system, our computers, everything that is electronic. It will cause major problems for the world. Large areas will be without electricity power and to repair that damage will be hard as that takes time. Systems will just not work. The flares change the magnetic field on the earth that is rapid and like a lightning bolt. That is the solar affect.”
I wondered to myself, can this prediction of a massive solar flare, if it should come true, harm humans here on earth? The answer is NO, but I qualify this somewhat. Here's what scientists say in a very detailed explanation of solar flares:
The Earth’s magnetic field (magnetosphere) acts as an enormous protector against the shower of particles that comes along with a large solar flare. It sweeps aside the particles as they come cascading down on the planet, deflecting them to the north and south poles of the Earth, which then pushes them off into space. The particles that make it past the magnetic fields are absorbed by the Earth’s ionosphere (see section 1). However, if a solar flare is powerful enough, some of the radioactive particles cannot be fully deflected and absorbed by these two forces and make it to the Earth’s surface. There is no scientific indication that this could actually cause catastrophic harm to life on this planet (unlike the inaccurate depiction of solar flares in the recent Hollywood movie Knowing, which suggests that a large enough solar flare could heat up the Earth and cause it to be engulfed by all-destructive radiation and heat). The effects of immense ejections of radiation brought about by large solar flares are in fact negligible to biological systems on Earth.
I saw the movie "Knowing" starring Nicholas Cage, and it mostly sucked, but I didn't like the ending. Okay, since you all wanted to know, here's how that damn movie ENDS. I have a feeling some neocon is going to blame Obama.
Courtesy of an article dated March 10, 2006 appearing in NASA Science News and an article dated June 17, 2010 appearing in The Daily Galaxy and an article titled "How Do Solar Flares Affect Human Existence" appearing in Intense Cogitation
Nice Post!
Posted by: Conveyor Belt Manufacturer | 06/27/2012 at 10:39 PM