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Sun's Fickle Heart May Leave Us Cold
New Scientist ^ | 1-25-2007

Posted on 01/25/2007 4:40:59 PM PST by blam

Sun's fickle heart may leave us cold

25 January 2007
From New Scientist Print Edition.Stuart Clark

There's a dimmer switch inside the sun that causes its brightness to rise and fall on timescales of around 100,000 years - exactly the same period as between ice ages on Earth. So says a physicist who has created a computer model of our star's core.

Robert Ehrlich of George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia, modelled the effect of temperature fluctuations in the sun's interior. According to the standard view, the temperature of the sun's core is held constant by the opposing pressures of gravity and nuclear fusion. However, Ehrlich believed that slight variations should be possible.

He took as his starting point the work of Attila Grandpierre of the Konkoly Observatory of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. In 2005, Grandpierre and a collaborator, Gábor Ágoston, calculated that magnetic fields in the sun's core could produce small instabilities in the solar plasma. These instabilities would induce localised oscillations in temperature.

Ehrlich's model shows that whilst most of these oscillations cancel each other out, some reinforce one another and become long-lived temperature variations. The favoured frequencies allow the sun's core temperature to oscillate around its average temperature of 13.6 million kelvin in cycles lasting either 100,000 or 41,000 years. Ehrlich says that random interactions within the sun's magnetic field could flip the fluctuations from one cycle length to the other.

These two timescales are instantly recognisable to anyone familiar with Earth's ice ages: for the past million years, ice ages have occurred roughly every 100,000 years. Before that, they occurred roughly every 41,000 years.

Most scientists believe that the ice ages are the result of subtle changes in Earth's orbit, known as the Milankovitch cycles.

(Excerpt) Read more at environment.newscientist.com ...


TOPICS: News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: brightness; catastrophism; dim; globalwarminghoax; godsgravesglyphs; gorethemoron; heart; kyoto; maunderminimum; milankovitch; milankovitchcycles; sun; vostokicecoredata
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To: blam

IF true, then it's good we've been practicing our global warming skills. There's a plan for everything.....


21 posted on 01/25/2007 5:53:19 PM PST by CharlesWayneCT
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To: TASMANIANRED
Time to toss global warming on the trash heap and worry about the new ice age...Again.

Lord knows we have to worry about something...otherwise the blood-sucking political class and the screaming ninny news media would never be able to fund their lifestyles.

22 posted on 01/25/2007 5:56:38 PM PST by Scott from the Left Coast
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To: Right Wing Assault

Betcha his wife calls him Hun...


23 posted on 01/25/2007 6:15:04 PM PST by mikrofon (Global Cold Shoulder)
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To: mikrofon

Oh, good one!


24 posted on 01/25/2007 6:19:52 PM PST by Right Wing Assault ("..this administration is planning a 'Right Wing Assault' on values and ideals.." - John Kerry)
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To: blam
We're still coming out of the last Ice Age...some are calling it Global Warming.

Actually, I'm in the camp that is firmly convinced that anthropogenic (man made) global warming is affecting our current climate... and that it's the only thing keeping the overdue ice age at bay!!!!

So throw another log on the fire!

Download the book Fallen Angels (free from Baen's library) by Larry Niven, Jerry Pournelle and Michael Flynn for a fun story based on that premise.  They use the opportunity to skewer every liberal sacred cow they can.  Fun book.

Seriously, I agree with your comment about still being in the "warm up" phase following the last ice age.  It is well within the range of recorded evidence that we've got a lot more natural warming to go before things change, or that we're just about to tip over into another ice age.  The most alarming thing to me about the so called science of "global warming" is the conceit of the money grubbing whores jockeying for grant money that somehow what they have known during their lifetimes is "normal" or "right."  They simply don't have a clue about the nature of reality.

25 posted on 01/25/2007 6:20:11 PM PST by Phsstpok (Often wrong, but never in doubt)
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To: devolve; george76; ntnychik; PhilDragoo

26 posted on 01/25/2007 6:34:51 PM PST by potlatch (Does a clean house indicate that there is a broken computer in it?)
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To: Phsstpok
Wonderful story, Fallen Angels. Wonderful site, Baen Free Library.

Love your screen name.

We have similar tastes in fiction. Have you read "The Burning City" by Niven and Pournelle? It is great political satire under the wonderful adventure/nuts and bolts sorcery tale.
27 posted on 01/25/2007 6:43:17 PM PST by marktwain
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To: NorCoGOP
Earth's ice ages: for the past million years, ice ages have occurred roughly every 100,000 years. Before that, they occurred roughly every 41,000 years.

-- --

Eat this data Gore you Idiot:


28 posted on 01/25/2007 6:53:08 PM PST by HighWheeler (A true liberal today is a combination of socialist, fascist, hypocrite, and anti-American.)
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To: blam

Ok, have we backed up 30+ years when all these "scientists" originally claimed that our current case of GW started out as "Global cooling"?

Anyone who believes ANY of these idiot "scientists" are mental cases. The same people who can't look out the window and tell if the sun is shining are going to tell us that the climate has changed due to human activity.

What BS!!


29 posted on 01/25/2007 6:58:12 PM PST by DustyMoment (FloriDUH - proud inventors of pregnant/hanging chads and judicide!!)
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To: Pontiac

I did you one better and drove my Dodge 440 cu in engine motor home around. I've got a carbon footprint that kicks butt.


30 posted on 01/25/2007 7:06:12 PM PST by Excellence (Vote Dhimmocrat; Submit for Peace! (Bacon bits make great confetti.))
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To: potlatch
Great post potlatch!
HOT STUFF!


31 posted on 01/25/2007 7:06:40 PM PST by devolve ( ........"refresh" my (updated) graphics posts)
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To: devolve

Thank you devolve. I like your ring of fire, didn't realize it got that big!


32 posted on 01/25/2007 7:09:40 PM PST by potlatch (Does a clean house indicate that there is a broken computer in it?)
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To: Excellence; Pontiac

I'll go you both one better.

I love Korean food, especially kimchee. Regulate that alGore.


33 posted on 01/25/2007 7:16:08 PM PST by ChildOfThe60s (If you can remember the 60s......you weren't really there)
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To: potlatch


That's the "medium" size!

I have one about 600x600


34 posted on 01/25/2007 7:17:58 PM PST by devolve ( ........"refresh" my (updated) graphics posts)
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To: Excellence
Dodge 440 cu in engine

Now if you tell me that you have two Holly 600 cfm double pumpers on that thing I will start to drool.

35 posted on 01/25/2007 7:22:10 PM PST by Pontiac (Patriotism is the natural consequence of having a free mind in a free society.)
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To: ChildOfThe60s
I love Korean food, especially kimchee

Me too.

We used to have a Korean restaurant in the next town loved the place. Just a little store front run by a former American GI and his Korean wife.

I really miss that place.

36 posted on 01/25/2007 7:25:55 PM PST by Pontiac (Patriotism is the natural consequence of having a free mind in a free society.)
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To: devolve

Oh WOW, don't blow up the thread with that one, lol!


37 posted on 01/25/2007 7:27:04 PM PST by potlatch (Does a clean house indicate that there is a broken computer in it?)
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To: HighWheeler

I wouldn't show that particular graph around here if I were you.

After all if you ignore the blue line and focus on the red (the CO2 ppmv data) then it appears to show that we have a current level about 25% higher then at any time in the past 400,000 years.


38 posted on 01/25/2007 7:47:10 PM PST by NYorkerInHouston
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To: potlatch

I still laugh when the kid skies into the tree top.


39 posted on 01/25/2007 9:41:10 PM PST by george76 (Ward Churchill : Fake Indian, Fake Scholarship, and Fake Art)
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To: devolve; george76

Ya, that was my final touch on that one. That KID has a mustache I think, or else it's his mouth??


40 posted on 01/25/2007 9:46:33 PM PST by potlatch (Does a clean house indicate that there is a broken computer in it?)
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