Posted on 09/23/2008 9:22:56 PM PDT by Dawnsblood
Data from the Ulysses spacecraft, a joint NASA-European Space Agency mission, show the sun has reduced its output of solar wind to the lowest levels since accurate readings became available. The sun's current state could reduce the natural shielding that envelops our solar system.
"The sun's million mile-per-hour solar wind inflates a protective bubble, or heliosphere, around the solar system. It influences how things work here on Earth and even out at the boundary of our solar system where it meets the galaxy," said Dave McComas, Ulysses' solar wind instrument principal investigator and senior executive director at the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio. "Ulysses data indicate the solar wind's global pressure is the lowest we have seen since the beginning of the space age."
The sun's solar wind plasma is a stream of charged particles ejected from the sun's upper atmosphere. The solar wind interacts with every planet in our solar system. It also defines the border between our solar system and interstellar space. This border, called the heliopause, surrounds our solar system where the solar wind's strength is no longer great enough to push back the wind of other stars. The region around the heliopause also acts as a shield for our solar system, warding off a significant portion of the cosmic rays outside the galaxy.
"Galactic cosmic rays carry with them radiation from other parts of our galaxy," said Ed Smith, NASA's Ulysses project scientist at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. "With the solar wind at an all-time low, there is an excellent chance the heliosphere will diminish in size and strength. If that occurs, more galactic cosmic rays will make it into the inner part of our solar system."
Galactic cosmic rays are of great interest to NASA. Cosmic rays are linked to engineering decisions for unmanned interplanetary spacecraft and exposure limits for astronauts traveling beyond low-Earth orbit.
In 2007, Ulysses made its third rapid scan of the solar wind and magnetic field from the sun's south to north pole. When the results were compared with observations from the previous solar cycle, the strength of the solar wind pressure and the magnetic field embedded in the solar wind were found to have decreased by 20 percent. The field strength near the spacecraft has decreased by 36 percent. "The sun cycles between periods of great activity and lesser activity," Smith said. "Right now, we are in a period of minimal activity that has stretched on longer than anyone anticipated."
Ulysses was the first mission to survey the space environment over the sun's poles. Data Ulysses has returned have forever changed the way scientists view our star and its effects. The venerable spacecraft has lasted more than 18 years, or almost four times its expected mission lifetime. The Ulysses solar wind findings were published in a recent edition of Geophysical Research Letters.
The Ulysses spacecraft was carried into Earth orbit aboard space shuttle Discovery on Oct. 6, 1990. From Earth orbit it was propelled toward Jupiter, passing the planet on Feb. 8, 1992. Jupiter's immense gravity bent the spacecraft's flight path downward and away from the plane of the planets' orbits. This placed Ulysses into a final orbit around the sun that would take it over its north and south poles.
The Ulysses spacecraft was provided by ESA, having been built by Astrium GmbH (formerly Dornier Systems) of Friedrichshafen, Germany. NASA provided the launch vehicle and the upper stage boosters. The U.S. Department of Energy supplied a radioisotope thermoelectric generator to power the spacecraft. Science instruments were provided by U.S. and European investigators. The spacecraft is operated from JPL by a joint NASA-ESA team.
More information about the Ulysses mission is available on the Web at:
http://ulysses.jpl.nasa.gov
Break out the snowshoes!
I take it this is a bad thing.
Global warming impacts solar wind.....
Cosmic rays are theorised to play a part in low-lying cloud formation, which in turn affects global temperatures...
http://public.web.cern.ch/public/en/Spotlight/SpotlightCloud-en.html
It all means it’s getting colder.
What does this all mean, though? It means the nations of guilt - America and Europe - have spent tens of billions of dollars on the global warming craze, ignoring the relatively cheap instrument that was recording the actual cause of increased temperatures and now the cause of reduced temperatures. That big glowing thing in the sky.
But those tens of billions were never spent on science, they were spent forming a religion of guilt, about how our lifestyle was harming others, and thus we must give up our lifestyle or everyone’s going to die. The prophet Al Gore will ignore this, of course, for no one will spend tens of billions studying that which everyone can see, and it contradicts religious dogma that man is inherently evil, and we all must feel collective guilt for our excesses.
My guess is that they'll flop over to global overpopulation again, then probably back to global cooling and the looming ice age that will kill us all. As they rule their religion with fear.
Serious question: do I need to up my SPF number?
I don’t think the lack of shielding will be bad - its cosmic rays from FAR away so I imagine their strength is weak, etc.
Not sure how this all relates to the energy output of the sun. I suppose it is related - so less energy.
What I think is so amazing is how they sent the probe around Jupitor and that changed its orbit to go around the north and south poles.
“and it contradicts religious dogma that man is inherently evil, and we all must feel collective guilt for our excesses”
And what “religious dogma” is this.
From what I know of Judeo-Christian “dogma”, it is human ego and hubris to think that puny humans control climate cycles.
I suspected it would run counter to the “global warming” theory but wasn’t totally sure.
We are fortunate to live in one of the brief warm periods on earth. Ice ages are more the norm. It's pretty hard to conduct large scale, successful agriculture in the cold.
The religion of man-made global warming, of course.
Speaking of cosmic rays
Around Delta Utah (next to the middle of Nowhere NV) is a comic ray observation facility (U of U)
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2006-06/uou-fsa061606.php
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delta,_Utah
http://www.unews.utah.edu/p/?r=022806-24
for more.
IS this cool or what?
Seems Jolly Ol' Sol is marshaling his strength.
But, for what...?
| got asbestos? |
Well there goes 10 and 6 meter DX. B-)
“IS this cool or what?”
It’s Cosmic!!
We are nearing the end of solar minimum activity, which typically lasts around 11 years.
what's wrong with the sun? (nothing)
BFLR
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