SUNSPOTS come and go, but recently they have mostly gone. For centuries, astronomers have recorded when these dark blemishes on the solar surface emerge, only for them to fade away again after a few days, weeks or months. Thanks to their efforts, we know that sunspot numbers ebb and flow in cycles lasting about 11 years.
But for the past two years, the sunspots have mostly been missing. Their absence, the most prolonged for nearly a hundred years, has taken even seasoned sun watchers by surprise. "This is solar behaviour we haven't seen in living memory," says David Hathaway, a physicist at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama.
What the sun will do next is beyond our ability to predict. Most astronomers think that the solar cycle will proceed, but at significantly depressed levels of activity similar to those last seen in the 19th century. However, there is also evidence that the sun is inexorably losing its ability to produce sunspots (see "The sunspot forecast"). By 2015, they could be gone altogether, plunging us into a new Maunder minimum - and perhaps a new Little Ice Age.
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20627640.800-whats-wrong-with-the-sun.html?DCMP=OTC-rss&nsref=online-news
But for the past two years, the sunspots have mostly been missing. Their absence, the most prolonged for nearly a hundred years, has taken even seasoned sun watchers by surprise. "This is solar behaviour we haven't seen in living memory," says David Hathaway, a physicist at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama.
What the sun will do next is beyond our ability to predict. Most astronomers think that the solar cycle will proceed, but at significantly depressed levels of activity similar to those last seen in the 19th century. However, there is also evidence that the sun is inexorably losing its ability to produce sunspots (see "The sunspot forecast"). By 2015, they could be gone altogether, plunging us into a new Maunder minimum - and perhaps a new Little Ice Age.
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20627640.800-whats-wrong-with-the-sun.html?DCMP=OTC-rss&nsref=online-news
Vastaukset 1
Vanhimmat
liikaa hiilidioksidia, joka absorboi lämmön jo lähtiessaan!
Tämmmösii alaaarmeja on ollut ennenkin, ei soiteta hälytyskelloja, ainakaan vielä!
Meillä on 90 sekuntia aikaa vielä, kertoo NASA!
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20127001.300-space-storm-alert-90-seconds-from-catastrophe.html?full=true