Bob's Blog

Via Buck Throckmorton

Mike Wall reports in part in Science Journal,

The sun may be coming out of its slumber at long last.

On Friday morning (May 29), our star fired off its strongest flare since October 2017, an eruption spotted by NASA's sun-watching Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO).

Read more here.

First they have to find Planet Nine.


h/t Nancy Reyes

At According to Hoyt Stephanie Osborne continues her attempt to educate us about Solar, Space, and Geomagnetic Weather, Part III.

the Earth’s magnetic field (aka magnetosphere aka geomagnetic field) is not nice and symmetric. This is because the solar wind is pushing on it. So the side toward the Sun has a “bow shock” and is compressed, and the side away from the Sun is stretched out into a tail. Like this:



The more charged particles hit our magnetosphere, the more get caught in the Van Allen Belts (VAB), and the more apt we are to have atmospheric effects. So an enhanced solar wind stream (EWS) from a coronal hole can generate some interesting phenomena.

But the granddaddy of those phenomena is caused by a coronal mass ejection hitting Earth. Because those suckers are (relatively) dense and VERY energized. And it might look something like this:



Worse…remember how flares are the detonations caused by “magnetic reattachment”? Well, if a CME is powerful enough, it can put so much stress on the magnetotail (that part stretched off to the right in these images) that it can snap off, and reattach closer to Earth! The energy feedback from THAT can get pretty powerful, too!

How energetic IS all this stuff?

Well, these events can actually raise the temperature of the outer layers of the Earth’s atmosphere (the thermosphere, aptly named) sufficient to cause it to expand. This affects us, because that increases drag on satellites and spacecraft, and can cause the orbits of satellites to decay and re-enter well before they were intended. This is really bad if it’s something important, like a weather satellite during hurricane season. After all, if the people of Galveston had had weather satellites in 1900, the city could have been evacuated well before it got hit, because they would have known it was coming for days. If we DON’T have weather satellites because we’ve lost ‘em to increased atmospheric drag, we might as well go back to those days, as far as weather prediction is concerned. Ditto communications satellites. Don’t even mention GPS.

...Disruption of the Earth’s magnetic field can be a problem. It can disrupt radio communication (including cell phones) rather severely. It can damage satellites that remain in orbit. It can generate “induced current” in any lengthy conductor.

...When these truly huge induced currents hit things like transformers and circuit breakers and power stations, they can quickly overload them. This, in turn, can (and has) cause(d) blackouts and brownouts, particularly in parts of the country/world where the power grid is not robust enough to handle significant surges. (Given that most large substation transformers are still hand-built, and have a lead time of months between determining need and installation, that could be a real problem.)

...Long pipelines, like the Alaskan Pipeline, can be affected as well. In fact corrosion is occurring at a higher rate than expected because its northerly location exposes it to such induced currents all the time (remember that the ends of a bar magnet’s field are open). And there are plenty of those.

Read more here.

At According to Hoyt Stephanie Osborn continues her discussion of Solar, Space, and Geomagnetic Weather.

At the end of every 11-year cycle, the magnetic orientation of the spots…flips. Yeah, you heard right — this is one of the few times when the old trope about “reversing the polarity” is actually the correct answer. The end that was North becomes South, and the end that was South becomes North. MORE, the ENTIRE solar magnetic field ALSO flips! (This got very complex this last time; it wasn’t as fast and simple. It took nearly six months, and for a time our Sun had something like FOUR South poles, and NO North poles. Yeah, stellar magnetics gets crazy.) It takes a whole ‘nother cycle to get back to the way it started out. So that’s a second solar cycle, the 22-year cycle.

Now, sunspots look dark not because they’re cold, but because they’re just a bit cooler than the surrounding plasma of the photosphere (which is the visible “surface” of the Sun). If the photosphere is about 5,800°K (~10,500°F), then the sunspots are about 3,000-4,500°K (4,900-7,600°F). Still plenty hot enough to fry your bacon, but still several thousand degrees cooler than their surroundings. They can be teeny-tiny (relatively speaking, of course) or they can be huge things (80,000km/50,000mi — not too shabby when you consider the Earth is about 13,000km/8,000mi diameter), big enough to be seen by the naked eye. (But don’t do that — we like having eyesight. If you really want to observe the Sun, the best way is to get a telescope, aim it at the Sun, and hold a sheet of white cardboard behind the eyepiece. Adjust the distance until you get an image of the Sun projected on the cardboard. This is a cool way to watch solar eclipses, too. If you don’t have a telescope, grab a shoebox, punch a small hole in one end, turn it upside down and point the hole at the Sun, then tilt the thing around until you get a small image inside the opposite end of the box.) Sunspots aren’t really dark at all; they just APPEAR dark because of the contrast with the surrounding hotter, brighter photosphere.

Read more here.

Manhattan Infidel reports that the Sun plans to attend the 2017 World Economic Summit in Davos, Switzerland.

While at Davos the Sun also hopes to counter propaganda from science-denying U.S. Republicans that it is the Sun that is primarily responsible for climate change.

“I hate Republicans” he said.

What have they got against me? I’m just a big nuclear-fusion ball with an average temperature of 10,000 degrees. I do my bit but I’m tired of taking the blame for warming temperatures on Earth. I won’t have it anymore and I’m going to Davos to state my case and place the blame for global warming where it belongs: on SUVs and 100 watt light bulbs. And let’s not forget that global warming leads to terrorism. I just thought I’d throw that in there.

Science-denying Republicans for their part call the Sun’s appearance at the World Economic forum a gimmick.

Said Marco Rubio:

Instead of going to Switzerland the Sun should be focused on helping us increase the size of our Federal government and opening our borders. This is something that all mainstream Republicans believe in.

Read more here.