Posted on 07/02/2002 8:44:15 AM PDT by logic101.net
The day the sun caught fire
by Ed Harris
This spectacular eruption of superheated gases, shooting a flame hundreds of thousands of miles long into space from the sun, was captured on film by an orbiting satellite.
The solar eruption, which is more than 240,000 miles long, burst from the surface of the sun yesterday as the satellite had its cameras trained on our nearest star.
The explosion is what astronomers call an eruptive prominence, a loop of magnetic fields that trap hot gas inside. As the trapped gas becomes unstable it erupts violently into space.
If eruptions like these are aimed at Earth, they can disturb the magnetosphere, the planet's magnetic field, with dramatic consequences.
Past eruptions have knocked out satellites, wrecked television reception and caused power surges and blackouts, but this one was fortunately not aimed at us.
Scientists say the sun is experiencing a solar max, a period of strong activity that happens about every 11 years and lasts for about three or four years.
The eruption is mostly burning hydrogen gas and solar particles which have been flung into space at around 100,000F, eight times the temperature at the core of the Earth, which is up to 13,000F - and hot enough to vapourise our planet should the Earth cross its path.
So much superheated hydrogen was involved in the eruption that although the gas is one of the lightest substances in the universe, it would have had a greater mass and weighed more than Mount Everest, our tallest peak.
The Soho satellite - short for Solar and Heliospheric Observatory - is a joint Nasa and European Space Agency project, orbiting the Sun a million miles from Earth. Its mission is to observe "space weather".
Todd Hoeksema, solar astronomer at Nasa, said: "This was quite a large eruption and they are pretty spectacular.
"The material goes out into space, and if it is heading towards Earth it will hit our atmosphere and disturb the magnetic field.
"It can damage satellites and sometimes means planes flying over the poles have to be re-routed, because it interferes with communications equipment."
Hmmm, can you say global warming? Think there might be a connection between a hotter sun and earth temps? Nahh! Algore couldn't be wrong, could he?
MARK A SITY
http://www.logic101.net/
"Despite its melodramatic title, which carried on a '50s doomsday naming convention, this taut 1961 English science fiction thriller offers an object lesson in the power of story over special effects. When both the Soviets and the West detonate nuclear tests simultaneously, the seismic double whammy jolts the earth off its axis and onto a new orbit sending it fatally closer to the sun--a fate that writer-director-producer Val Guest views from the street-level perspective of its principal characters, rather than an off-world vantage point. The street in question, however, is London's Fleet Street, the venerable hub of its newspaper and tabloid publishers, and the hard-nosed reporters growing realization that their number is up carries its own stark punch. Edward Judd is Peter Stenning, a rugged, appropriately grim reporter, Leo McKern is tough but compassionate editor Bill Maguire, and Janet Munro is Stenning's love interest, in an elfin, sexy turn that's a striking contrast to her best-known turn in Disney's Darby O'Gill and the Little People. With an effects arsenal that consists largely of a spray bottle to apply beads of "sweat," Guest and his small but crack cast are surprisingly effective, and the cold war plot hook still works, thanks to its uncomfortable proximity to more contemporary environmental terrors." --Sam Sutherland
Just FYI:
Check out what Dr. Dewpoint at Intellicast has to say about the subject. (He tends to think the answer is yes, BTW) More specifically see IS THIS RECORD WARM WINTER A SURE SIGN OF GLOBAL WARMING?
There are hundreds of variables. How can they even attempt to prove one thing is the leading cause.
I predict there will be a general climatic cooling as well, probably beginning around September/October.
Remember, you heard it here first.
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