Sun Sheds Skin And Flips

spacedaily.com ^ | 21 Nov 03 | staff

[RightWhale]

Sun Sheds Skin And Flips

Greenbelt - Nov 20, 2003

Research with the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) spacecraft has revealed the process that may implement the reversal in the direction of the Sun's magnetic field that is known to occur every 11 years. This newly recognized factor in the Sun's magnetic flipping is the cumulative effect of more than a thousand huge eruptions called Coronal Mass Ejections (CMEs).

The CMEs blast billions of tons of electrified gas into space, carrying away the Sun's old magnetic field and allowing a new one with a flipped orientation to form.

Reversal of the solar magnetic field is a major event in the Sun's 11-year cycle of stormy activity, when the Sun goes from quiet to active and back again, and the study is the first evidence linking the reversal to CMEs. Since CMEs occasionally disrupt satellites, radio communication, and power systems, solar scientists hope this link will eventually help them better forecast the powerful eruptions.

"The Sun is like a snake that sheds its skin," comments Dr. Nat Gopalswamy of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md., lead author of the new report, which appears in the Astrophysical Journal. "In this case, it's a magnetic skin. The process is long, drawn-out and it's pretty violent. More than a thousand coronal mass ejections, each carrying billions of tons of gas from the polar regions, are needed to clear the old magnetism away. But when it's all over the Sun's magnetic stripes are running in the opposite direction."

"This analysis of nearly eight years of CME data is a big step forward in making sense of space weather," said Dr. Joseph Gurman, NASA Project Scientist for SOHO at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md. "By identifying the solar origin of these events with CMEs of different speeds and appearances, and at different latitudes, it improves our capability to predict space weather that can affect the Earth, at different phases of the solar activity cycle."

Apparently random CMEs turn out to be signs of the Sun's diligent housekeeping. It keeps sweeping away, out into space, untidy magnetic fields created by sunspots and other contortions in its atmosphere. The climax comes in a busy period of "spring cleaning" after the count of sunspots has peaked, every 11 years. It leaves the Sun with its main magnetic field completely overturned, and its north and south magnetic poles swapped around.

The Astrophysical Journal report published by Gopalswamy and his colleagues takes stock of seven years of observations of such events by the SOHO spacecraft. It also compares them with the mass ejections recorded in 1979-85 by a US Air Force satellite, P78-1. Helping the scientists to decipher the events seen by the spaceborne telescopes are data from ground-based instruments at Kitt Peak, Ariz., and Nobeyama, Japan.

What emerges is a systematic pattern in the outbursts, according to the new research. It changes during the sunspot cycle, as the numbers of dark sunspots seen each day on the Sun's bright surface first increases and then diminishes again. The mass ejections are often directly associated with the sunspots, which always lie in the Sun's equatorial belt or at mid-latitudes.

Other mass ejections occur near the Sun's poles, far away from any sunspots. These events are most frequent at the peak of sunspot activity, but they can continue for a while as the count of sunspots begins to decline. By getting rid of the magnetic remnants of previous activity, the high-latitude outbursts groom the polar magnetic fields in a new configuration, according to the team.

When SOHO began its watch early in 1996, the Sun was quiet. There were very few sunspots and CMEs happened less than once a day. But during the most intense solar activity, 1999-2000, there were more than five a day, on average twice as many as scientists expected. What's more, the average speed of the ejected clouds of gas doubled, from 990,000 to 1,980,000 kilometres per hour (about 610,000 to 1,200,000 miles/hr.).

When the sunspot count passed its peak in July 2000, CMEs continued at a high rate. They did not reach their own peak in frequency until October 2002. Events followed a different timescale in the two polar regions of the Sun. A flurry of high-latitude mass ejections occurred near the solar north pole, completing the magnetic reversal there by November 2000. The south polar region lagged behind, and its new magnetic pole was not ‘clean' until May 2002. In effect, the solar snake shed the magnetic skin first from its head and then from its tail.

The scientific team includes Gopalswamy, Dr. Alejandro Lara and Dr. Seiji Yashiro of the Catholic University of America, Washington, DC, and Dr. Russell A. Howard of the Naval Research Laboratory, Washington, DC. SOHO is a project of international cooperation between ESA and NASA.

[RightWhale]

Crackpot science?

Possibly, but the point that the atmosphere generates the magnetic field is interesting. What if earth's magnetic field is not due to a rotating iron core but the revolving atmosphere. Seems like no one is questioning the source of earth's magnetic field, but the iron core generator is still just as much a suggestion as it was 100 years ago and hasn't been examined much.

[John H K]

I don't see why this would be considered "crackpot" science.

And you can rest assured the Earth's atmosphere doesn't generate our magnetic field.

There's a big difference between the composition and structure of the earth and the sun, of course.

BTW, due to a CME impact this morning, and the interplanetary magnetic field going south to an AMAZING degree, the Earth has been under the most massive and farthest-south Auroras in the last decade or more.

Visible in Mexico, Miami, etc....EXCEPT for one problem; daylight :-( (A few people in the far West US right before dawn caught the very beginnings of this display.)

Much of Europe is cloudy but where it isn't Europeans are reporting the best Aurora they've ever seen.

It's just now beginning to weaken so it looks like it may not be even visible at all by nightfall today in the Eastern US.

[Interesting Times]

Intriguing article. Very disturbing title.

[RightWhale]

rest assured the Earth's atmosphere doesn't generate our magnetic field

I might be alone in this thought. They knew I was a rebel but they gave me my physics degree anyway.

[Aracelis]

Ping!

[per loin]

Here's a graph of that "amazing" swing to the south:

[Alamo-Girl]

Thanks for the ping, Piltdown_Woman! betty boop, you might be interested in this article.

[Barnacle]

Ping

( If you want on or off my Aurora Ping List, Please send a Freepmail.)

Holy Aurora Batman!

If I'm reading it right, downward deflections indicate a southern polarity. They are more likely to disrupt the magnetic field in the Northern Hemisphere and produce auroras.

[No Blue States]

Great one more chance to view the northern lights in Texas, no luck yet but im hoping.

I forgot to eyeball the leonids the other night and the sky was clear as gin.

[<1/1,000,000th%]

It leaves the neutron core intact.

Or was it iron???

[Lee'sGhost]

There was something on Nova the other night about the earth losing its magnetic field and we're all gonna die -- or something like that. I didn't watch it. But it's good to know we won't have to worry about global warming now.

[RightWhale]

Like we say to the kids: 'There is nothing wrong with the sun. Don't you touch a wrench to it.'

[Lee'sGhost]

"And you can rest assured the Earth's atmosphere doesn't generate our magnetic field. "

Check out my post #11.

[RightWhale]

First thought on my mind Monday morning, strangely, wasn't global warming, but how long it would take for the water in the dog's dish to freeze. 10 minutes or 5 minutes. It was 30 below. The Toyota is very reliable, so it started right away. But the tires are definitely not arctic grade. They get flat on one side while the car is parked and then they turn solid in that shape. That was a darned bumpy ride.

[<1/1,000,000th%]

The earth's magnetic field flips every 300,000 years or so. Should make for some nice global auroras.

[Lee'sGhost]

"They get flat on one side while the car is parked and then they turn solid in that shape. That was a darned bumpy ride."

Obviously due to the increased pull on the steel belts from the shed magnetic skin.

[Cold Heat]

It has been many years since I lived in 30 below conditions.

I had forgotten the bumpy ride aspect. Also the frozen transmission.

[teeman8r]

i saw the show. quite interesting and combined with this information, it is easy to see that we are in for a magnetic shift relatively soon... the molten core of the earth, according to the nova program, through the swirling of the core, the magnetic shift, occurs every 200,000 years or so... and the last time was 700,000 years ago.

they, nova, didn't delve on the apocalyptic affects, just that magnets will point south instead of north...

but if the sun does the same, and the earth is in the sun's gravitational pull, i can see the effect the sun's change would have on the earth's core...

perhaps the Son's return, will be dependent on the sun's return to another magnetic pull...

there are no coincidences....

teeman

[VadeRetro]

Well, the sun's shed my skin enough times, it can shed its own once in a while!

[Davea]

Thought I'd toss this in. They're back. 486,488, and 484. This is from 11/20/03 BTW thanks for the ping

[TheDon]

You missed an interesting show. They discussed how the earth's magnetic field flips every few hundred thousand years, and that the field gets very weak during the transition, which can last for centuries. The field has been weaking over the last several years.

Worst case was several centuries without a stable magnetic north, auroras all over the planet, and a slight increase in cancer due to more cosmic ray exposure.

How they determined all of this, is as interesting as what they determined.

[Davea]

Here's an article from 02/16/01 "Sun Flips Magnetic Field"
http://www.cnn.com/2001/TECH/space/02/16/sun.flips/

[Barnacle]

The Leonids were a bit of a disappointment from what I saw and read.

[Barnacle]

They're back. 486,488, and 484.

All rested and ready to go.

[RightWhale]

the frozen transmission

The Toyota is great in that respect. The tires, though, are all-season except serious cold. Kind of many-seasons tires.

On another note, if there were no magnetic field of earth, the aurora would be dispersed all over the planet. Outstanding, patterned displays would be uncommon although the aurora would be present as faint background skyglow most of the time.

[commish]

Canopus is showing the Auroral Oval all the way down below 55 degrees, and NOAA shows the Magnetic component still well to the south. K-Index is currently at 8, and Geomagnetic Storm rating is still EXTREME.

As dusk approaches on the Eastern Seaboard -- if these reading hold there should be one heck of an Auroral Show for the Southern States again tonight!

[Old Professer]

So, that's why my garage door has been going up and down by itself for the past two weeks. I just finished trimming 5.38 inches off the antenna lead this morning and have been babysitting it since.

[Old Professer]

Our local Hecht's has crockpots on sale for the Holidays.

[Darksheare]

Makes one wonder what a Magnetar would do.

[Old Professer]

Go to the RV place and get a set of air-bag lift kits and install them on the underside of the car; when you park it, inflate them to lift the weight off the tires and you're clear to go in the morning. '^)

[Jemian]

No one has ever given me an answer to this question. When the magnetic field flips, do compass needles then point south?

[Darksheare]

Only when Earth's magnetic field flips.
That has happened in the past, but it may not happen inour lifetime.

[RightWhale]

one heck of an Auroral Show for the Southern States

Being in Alaska gives one a chance to see some fantastic auroral displays now and then. '73-'75 were some of the wildest. The southern states might get some aurora, which in itself is fantastic, but a fantastic display is unlikely.

For example, one night in the Brooks Range I sat out at 50 below for 3 hours and watched a yellow-orange display that looked more like a McDonald's hamburger arch going straight overhead than anything. I broke off a chunk of sublimated and recrystallized snow and looked at the arch by reflection from the perfectly flat surface of an ice crystal the size of my fingernail. When I got back to camp they said they had been worried about me. Not worried enough to brave the wolves and bears to go looking for me, though.

[RightWhale]

When the magnetic field flips, do compass needles then point south?

Yes, that is the point.

[Darksheare]

!!!
"Not worried enough to brave the wolves and bears to go looking for me, though."
Sounds like some of my friends..

[Libertarianize the GOP]

ping

[null and void]

On another note, if there were no magnetic field of earth, the aurora would be dispersed all over the planet. Outstanding, patterned displays would be uncommon although the aurora would be present as faint background skyglow most of the time.

And faint stars would be lost to view. Would we know the milky way or the zodiacal light?

[RightWhale]

All those are already lost to view of 90% of Americans. Light pollution has destroyed the night sky.

[null and void]

We'd be more worried about the wolves and bears with you wandering loose..

[commish]

CANOPUS realtime oval now below 50 Degrees -- it never got close to the 50 degree line during the last Auroral shows. While Alaska and northern tiers will get the good stuff, this could still be one for the history books in the south.

Space-weather.com is speculating thatfaint auroras might even be visible as far south as Miami. Lets keep our fingers crossed.

[petuniasevan]

Canopus oval:

http://www.dan.sp-agency.ca/www/rtoval.htm

[Davea]

Below 50 degrees. I can see why. One hell of a storm...

[Davea]

For those who want to follow it here's the url. Refresh often sometimes it "sticks"...
http://sec.noaa.gov/rt_plots/kp_3d.html

[commish]

CAnopus oval has retreated slightly to about 52-53 for now, but as your chart shows the K-index is over 9 now and the Magnetic Component on NOAA has moved from -10S to over -50S (this means the Magnetic field is now as far south as the instruments can measure.)

[DannyTN]

What would be the ramifications if the Sun's magnetic field did not flip every 11 years? Would it affect the earth. Would earth somehow become supermagnetized in one direction?

[lilylangtree]

Trying to remember my college geology classes but didn't the magnetic poles exchange several times in the earth's history? Or am I thinking about something else?

[Lawdoc]

Aurora is very active in Northern West Virginia. Lots of green, blue and red curtains. It has impressed the kids & neighbors. Better than earlier in the month!

[Barnacle]

The Earth’s magnetic fieild is generated by the convection cells of molten magma within the mantel.

Geologic evidence indicates that the field has flipped multiple times, though I think it’s been several thousand years since the last one.

I haven’t heard the latest theory on why it flips, but I don’t think the Sun has been referenced. However, since the convection cell movement is generating our magnetic field, it makes sense to me that if the Earth was buffeted by a strong magnetic field, it could affect the movement of the magma. Posted here on FR, was an interesting graph showing a correlation between the Sun’s 11 year cycle and volcanic eruptions.

[Barnacle]

Aurora is very active in Northern West Virginia.

Fantastic! Remember folks, state at least your general location when posting reports tonight.

[commish]

Hey barnacle - what is your take on some the current readings. NOAA has downgraded the storm to Severe now, and the Magnetic component is pointing back north -- yet in the last hour the CANOPUS Oval has dove even furthur south, it is now below 60 degrees again.

The NOAA readings say the storm is subsiding, yet the Auroral Oval is strengthening, wierd.