[HN Gopher] The sun's magnetic field is about to flip
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The sun's magnetic field is about to flip
Author : Brajeshwar
Score : 215 points
Date : 2024-06-14 16:48 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.space.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.space.com)
| cko wrote:
| > One side effect of the magnetic field shift is slight but
| primarily beneficial: It can help shield Earth from galactic
| cosmic rays -- high-energy subatomic particles that travel at
| near light speed and can damage spacecraft and harm orbiting
| astronauts who are outside Earth's protective atmosphere.
|
| Buried three sentences from the end of the article, after a wall
| of ads and filler (I'm impatient).
| andrewfurey2003 wrote:
| Thanks
| nomel wrote:
| Why? Is it because the poles are aligned with earths,
| complimenting our own magnetic field?
|
| It appears the magnetic poles are in continuous rotation [1],
| that sometimes aligns to the rotational poles and sometimes
| doesn't, with a "flip" event being the binary classification
| from the slow and smooth traversal over the equator. I feel
| silly, but I always assumed it was from some more fairly sharp
| step in the rate of change!
|
| [1] https://www.stce.be/news/211/welcome.html
| eerpini wrote:
| There is an animation further down that shows the magnetic
| field generated by the sun when it is a dipole. Apparently
| the 3-d wave like pattern better shields from cosmic rays
| originating outside the solar system.
| whaleofatw2022 wrote:
| ... interesting question though..
|
| Is this related to why my part of the US has had UV notices
| lately?
| gleenn wrote:
| Interestingly this happens every 11 years and also their is a
| longer cycle called the Hale cycle which is double the length at
| 22 years. It flips from a mostly dipole where the poles match the
| orientation of earth to a reverse and much more irregular
| magenetic orientation. I didn't see anything about how this
| really affects Earth directly other than what I knew previously
| about sun spots make Coronal Mass Ejections sometimes towards
| Earth. Think we had a few things happen recently due to those but
| nothing too crazy.
| stanislavb wrote:
| Thank you so much. I came to the comments looking for a similar
| explanation.
| anilakar wrote:
| Is it related to the 11 year sunspot cycle or just a
| coincidence?
| teamonkey wrote:
| Directly related
| luxuryballs wrote:
| also interesting is solar activity appears correlated with
| pandemics, covid first surged globally during this last cycle's
| trough
|
| https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7961325/
|
| you can also look at more granular covid outbreak charts and
| solar activity charts and find trend matching with covid spikes
| delayed against solar (there are smaller oscillations on solar
| activity charts similar to how bitcoin oscillates up and down
| rapidly while trending up and down broadly, like most wavy
| things in nature)
|
| one such example I had saved:
|
| https://ibb.co/album/dm2mcC
| ck2 wrote:
| (it's gradual and takes five years, not like a day)
| HumblyTossed wrote:
| But that doesn't earn you a lot of clicks...
| michaelteter wrote:
| In a cosmic timescale, it's practically instant.
| renewiltord wrote:
| Yeah but if it flips every 11 years and takes 5 years to
| flip that's got a little less of the "about to flip" flavor
| to it.
| ck2 wrote:
| On a solar scale though earth goes through a full orbit in
| just a year, Mars two years.
|
| It is interesting that Jupiter has an 11 year orbit and
| that kind of matches the flip, might just be coincidence
| but that mass has a huge tug though. Sun is only 1000 times
| the mass of Jupiter, if you think of it like a "failed
| star" it's kinda like a pseudo binary? Eh I am grasping at
| straws.
| lukan wrote:
| If Jupiter was a failed star, it failed big time.
|
| "Although Jupiter would need to be about 75 times more
| massive to fuse hydrogen and become a star,[66] its
| diameter is sufficient as the smallest red dwarf may be
| only slightly larger in radius than Saturn."
|
| It got as big as it could be, though.
|
| "Theoretical models indicate that if Jupiter had over 40%
| more mass, the interior would be so compressed that its
| volume would decrease despite the increasing amount of
| matter. For smaller changes in its mass, the radius would
| not change appreciably.[63] As a result, Jupiter is
| thought to have about as large a diameter as a planet of
| its composition and evolutionary history can achieve.[64]
| The process of further shrinkage with increasing mass
| would continue until appreciable stellar ignition was
| achieved"
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jupiter
| teepo wrote:
| I'm having trouble parsing tfa; does this mean the sun is at
| "solar maximum" now, and does this also mean we may be in for
| some more frequent and intense auroras?
| wtallis wrote:
| Yes. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/May_2024_solar_storms
| and https://xkcd.com/2930/
| photochemsyn wrote:
| You can see the sunspot cycle progression here, looks like
| solar maximum will last a year or two:
|
| https://www.swpc.noaa.gov/products/solar-cycle-progression
| nikso wrote:
| If you're open to exiting an novel theories on why this happens,
| check out Dr. Robitaille liquid sun:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qUZ0Obpihbc
| raylad wrote:
| Very interesting hypothesis. Anyone here with more expertise
| want to comment?
|
| The summary is that the sun is actually metallic hydrogen,
| which forms a lattice similar to layers of graphite. This both
| explains the black-body radiation of the sun and provides a
| mechanism to explain sunspots and the solar maximum and pole
| flip: sunspots are non-hydrogen elements that are excluded from
| the metallic hydrogen lattice and push it upwards as they
| migrate to the surface and are ejected.
| gavindean90 wrote:
| I am not an expert but boy does that feel right based on the
| available evidence that I've seen.
| causality0 wrote:
| He's a retired radiologist who knows nothing about
| astrophysics.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zi_mQ0sKOfo
| dotps1 wrote:
| Perhaps you would like to offer something that is not an ad
| hominem attack?
| sneak wrote:
| causality0 was making statements about his credentials
| and expertise, not his personal characteristics. I think
| ad hominem definitionally has to be irrelevant. "x knows
| nothing about topic y" is not ad hominem even if it is a
| false statement.
| contravariant wrote:
| People really ought to learn that pointing out a fallacy
| doesn't suddenly make it false. I mean I could point out
| that that is known as the fallacy fallacy, but then I'd
| be doing the same thing myself.
|
| Really a fallacy represents a particular weak argument.
| The way to defeat them is not to name the correct fallacy
| but to point out the weakness.
|
| If that doesn't work then you likely have the wrong
| fallacy, or the argument isn't fallacious to begin with.
| causality0 wrote:
| He was booted out of his university, he has never
| published an astrophysical paper in a peer-reviewed
| journal, he buys ad space in newspapers to publicize his
| "theories", his ideas either make no testable predictions
| or make incorrect predictions. He says the cosmic
| microwave background is caused by ocean waves. He thinks
| blackbody radiation stops working in outer space.
| bmacho wrote:
| I think this is the most relevant, factual, and checkable
| info?
| HelloMcFly wrote:
| I do not personally possess the knowledge with which to
| evaluate this person's claims or belief. Therefore, I
| have to index on other information to evaluate the
| plausibility of the claims.
|
| In this case, the other information is 1) proven
| credentials in the subject matter and 2) general
| acceptance of his theories by a community with more
| credentials. He lacks the former and the latter, so I'm
| disinclined to give his theories much attention.
|
| Plenty of so-called outsiders have made amazing
| discoveries before, or at least hypothesized what would
| eventually be an amazing discovery. Maybe that's the case
| here. Yet skepticism seems warranted without that being
| considered an ad hominem attack.
| patmorgan23 wrote:
| I think those facts about the authors credentials are
| pretty relevant, especially to this audience that's
| probably not filled with astrophysics literate
| individuals.
| lupire wrote:
| Here you go: https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Pierre-
| Marie_Robitaille
|
| Astrophysics is not a matter of personal opinion. It
| requires a lot of detailed knowledge and careful
| practice. Legitimate authority is relevant.
| JALTU wrote:
| Einstein.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| Solar ejecta are almost completely composed of hydrogen. Just
| like any other part of the Sun's outer layers.
|
| And God! What a convoluted theory full of ideas nobody can
| test.
| HarHarVeryFunny wrote:
| I was just about to suggest the same thing.
|
| Here's a related Veritasium episode: "The Bizarre Behavior of
| Rotating Bodies"
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1VPfZ_XzisU
| temp0826 wrote:
| I think there is a more interesting (and longer scale) trend that
| is less talked about, that the last couple solar cycles have been
| overall less intense (less activity/spots at the maximums)-
|
| http://solen.info/solar/images/comparison_recent_cycles.png
|
| I wish that chart went further back to see if there is a greater
| cycle at play. At a glance it looks like this cycle is a slight
| rebound over the last.
| c0brac0bra wrote:
| I recall back a few years reading some articles speaking about
| the sun entering in a Grand Solar Minimum cycle similar to the
| Maunder minimum, and that the result could be global cooling,
| etc.
|
| Not sure if there's been additional research or conjecture
| since then.
| TheBlight wrote:
| I'm convinced in a few hundred/thousand years scientists are
| going to be urging politicians to figure out how to pump more
| CO2 into the atmosphere due to cooling from cyclic
| perturbations of Earth's orbit. Too bad I won't be around to
| enjoy the irony.
| idiotsecant wrote:
| Is it ironic? Right now it's getting too hot so we want
| fewer greenhouse gasses, in the future it might be cold and
| we want more. I think it's less ironic and more just the
| intentional infant science of planet-scale climate
| engineering
| hughesjj wrote:
| I don't think it would be any more ironic than a house
| using the heater in the winter and ac in the summer
|
| Also, acidification is another problem of co2. Honestly you
| might rather release methane or refrigerant if your goal
| was only to heat/insulate the atmosphere with minimal
| changes to chemistry, but I'm not a chemist etc
|
| Also never forget the great oxygenation event and the azola
| cooling the planet to the point of mass extinction and
| snowball earth
| TheBlight wrote:
| Fair enough.
| 1oooqooq wrote:
| or we will learn those studies were by the same caliber of
| people who did the food pyramid etc
| temp0826 wrote:
| Regardless of the cause of climate change, on any time
| scale (even if it is a 100% natural cycle and human effects
| are zilch in the grand scheme), pollution is icky and _hey,
| I 'm walking^W living over here_.
| tomoyoirl wrote:
| With respect, 2/3 of the carbon dioxide out there is
| purely natural such that "icky" isn't an appropriate
| foundation for the relevant public policy
| johnny22 wrote:
| uhmm.. if we have to do that, we'll do it.. i don't see
| what's ironic about that.
| precompute wrote:
| The theory is that we're due for another ice age and that
| there's going to be a pole shift. Pumping CO2 into the
| atmosphere would then be the best thing to do to stave off
| this scenario.
| akaru wrote:
| How about we don't do that? And if it indeed starts getting
| cold, we regroup?
| drmpeg wrote:
| > I wish that chart went further back to see if there is a
| greater cycle at play.
|
| There is a chart of all observed cycles on the same website.
|
| http://www.solen.info/solar/cycles1_to_present.html
| andoando wrote:
| Its so perplexing to me how the laws of physics replicates simple
| properties into massive scales.
| localfirst wrote:
| so then i wonder why do people struggle with the impact of
| polar shifts on climate?
| mordae wrote:
| So... What's the range and how do we modulate it?
| MadnessASAP wrote:
| The range would be awesome, but the city took pretty
| significant offense to my plan to setup a 11 lightyear dipole
| antenna on my property.
|
| It's a hard life being an amateur radio operator these days...
| Aspos wrote:
| Can one use Sun's magnetic field for navigation? I imagine Sun
| compass would be far more precise than Earth compass, no?
| contravariant wrote:
| You want something to make it easier to find the _sun_?
|
| Anyway the sun's magnetic fields is ridiculously weak on earth.
| dredmorbius wrote:
| Well, one always has to consider the first manned expedition
| to the Sun and how they'll navigate.
|
| Telling time of day would be the first problem as it's always
| high noon. And star sightings might prove challenging, at
| least at optical frequencies.
|
| (Am now thinking of an SF story set on the Sun in which
| navigation and timekeeping play critical roles....)
| lukan wrote:
| In that SF story, I would be far more interested in the
| tech, that allows human life (or anything we bring) to
| withstand that slightly bigger problem called heat and
| radiation.
| dredmorbius wrote:
| Pshaw! Trifling details.
|
| (Focusing on the non-obvious problems might make for a
| more interesting and/or fantastical story.)
| lukan wrote:
| Ah, a energy force field it is then.
| WJW wrote:
| Old reliable.
| dredmorbius wrote:
| Turtles all the way down.
|
| Teenage, mutant, ninja, or otherwise.
| wtetzner wrote:
| And gravity.
| dredmorbius wrote:
| I'm playing with slight variations of this prompt on GPTs:
|
| "Write a short (300--600 word) story about how human
| explorers on the Sun would address the challenges of
| navigation, orientation, and timekeeping (including the
| challenges of starfinding). Ignore obvious effects such as
| heat, gravity, and radiation."
|
| Results are ... not excellent literature, but amusing all
| the same.
| drbacon wrote:
| > Telling time of day would be the first problem as it's
| always high noon.
|
| If the sun is always directly down from the surface,
| doesn't that make it solar midnight from anywhere on the
| surface?
| dredmorbius wrote:
| A fair argument.
| deepsun wrote:
| Why, yes. It's really hard to find sun in fog, which is
| frequent at sea. And you really want it's location to be
| precise for navigation.
| gmiller123456 wrote:
| The Vikings supposedly had a "sunstone" (cordierite
| crystal) that could help find the Sun through clouds or
| fog. I did buy a piece and wasn't able to get any good
| results, but my life didn't depend on it.
| vizzier wrote:
| By what mechanism was this intended to work? Any known
| fields would surely have stronger local effects outside
| of direct sunlight...
| addaon wrote:
| It's a polarizing filter. The atmosphere polarizes
| sunlight based on the angle the light enters. You can
| find the position of the sun above the horizon as the
| point where light is least horizontally polarized (a
| horizontal filter has the least difference between
| brightness through the filter and around it), and
| potentially find the position of the sun itself by the
| highest rate of change of polarization angle. This works
| remarkably well even on overcast days -- try it with
| polarized sunglasses.
| dekhn wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunstone_(medieval)#Possibi
| lit...
| alfor wrote:
| The earth too it seem, but on a longer timeframe.
|
| Does someone here know more about this?
| emporas wrote:
| Earth's magnetic field rotates in irregular intervals. The
| terrifying part is, the time it takes to complete the rotation,
| the different intermediate magnetic poles cancel each other
| out, and we are left with a much smaller magnetic field
| overall. As low as 10% of what earth has today.
|
| Astrum's channel on youtube has several pictures and complete
| analysis[1]. (I have downloaded the whole channel on my
| computer, that's the filename.)
|
| [1] How The Earth Got Its Magnetic Field (And Why It Might Not
| Protect Us Much Longer)
| hscontinuity wrote:
| We know so much and yet so little. The writing is in the article
| stating how mathematically they have no model, therefore they
| cannot truly understand it yet (researchers/academics).
|
| This is true for climate change and it's own challenges along
| with many other applications of similar nature where models are
| incomplete or entirely missing large portions of data needed to
| further true understanding of a given process.
| mandibeet wrote:
| The sentiment captures the essence of the human pursuit of
| knowledge...
| teamonkey wrote:
| As is common in physics, a subject can be extremely well
| studied, theories can be produced, models can be created that
| predict future behaviour incredibly precisely, but because we
| can't poke it hard enough or with enough precision the exact
| underlying mechanism remains unconfirmed.
| Apocryphon wrote:
| So going off of the previous HN thread, I thought we were due for
| a Carrington event a month ago
| (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40321821). Will this next
| bout of astronomical magnetic phenomena pose a threat to
| technological civilization as we know it?
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