http://www.freerepublic.com/tag/maunderminimum/ en-us Wed, 31 Dec 2008 19:50:42 GMT Focus Forum 15 http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2156871/posts 2008 will be coming to a close with yet another spotless days according to the latest solar image. This will bring the total number of sunspotless days this month to 28 and for the year to 266, clearly enough to make 2008, the second least active solar year since 1900. See larger image here. http://icecap.us/index.php The total number of spotless days this solar minimum is now at around 510 days since the last maximum. The earliest the minimum of the sunspot cycles can be is July 2008, which would make the cycle length 12 years 3 months, longest since cycle... Icecap http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2156871/posts#comment Wed, 31 Dec 2008 19:50:42 GMT http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2095407/posts The Sun has gone quiet, very quiet. The solar wind – which is comprised of electrically charged particles streaming out from the star – is weaker than at any time since scientists began accurate observations in the 1950s, and the number of sunspots in 2008 may be the lowest since the 19th century. This year’s solar silence has surprised space physicists, who were expecting the Sun to have moved away from the minimum point of the 11-year solar cycle by now. “To see such a significant and consistent long-term reduction in the solar wind output is really remarkable,” says David... Financial Times http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2095407/posts#comment Thu, 2 Oct 2008 01:19:04 GMT http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2040381/posts Australian astronomers may have found a solution to how far-away Jupiter and Saturn drive the sun's solar cycle. In a paper published in the Publications of the Astronomical Society of Australia, astronomer Dr Ian Wilson and colleagues from the University of Southern Queensland, suggest Jupiter and Saturn affect the sun's movement and its rotation, and hence its sunspot activity. Every 11 years the sun undergoes a period of intense solar activity, marked by flares, coronal mass ejections and sunspots. This period is known as the solar maximum and occurs twice each solar, or Hale, cycle. "The sun can be thought... ABC Science http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2040381/posts#comment Thu, 3 Jul 2008 19:09:26 GMT http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/2029577/posts The sun's surface has been fairly blank for the last couple of years, and that has some worried that it may be entering another Maunder minimum, the sun's 50-year abstinence from sunspots, which some scientists have linked to the Little Ice Age of the 17th century. Could a new sunspot drought plunge us into another decades-long cold spell? It's not very likely, says David Hathaway a solar physicist at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala. The question came up after an international solar conference held last week at Montana State University, where scientists discussed the dearth of solar... Space.com http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/2029577/posts#comment Wed, 11 Jun 2008 19:00:22 GMT http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1976447/posts Calm Sun, Cold Earth By Alan Caruba CNSNews.com Commentary from the National Anxiety Center February 18, 2008 I can understand why people believe that global warming is real and that all the things Greens say are true. One cannot read a newspaper or magazine, turn on the television or radio, without getting the Green message. Since switching their message in the 1970s that an Ice Age was coming to the complete fiction of a massive, dramatic global warming due to greenhouse gases, the Greens have been able to influence policy at the international and national level. They have been utterly... CNS http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1976447/posts#comment Tue, 26 Feb 2008 14:40:53 GMT http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1967753/posts Global Cooling comes back in a big way Dr. Kenneth Tapping is worried about the sun. Solar activity comes in regular cycles, but the latest one is refusing to start. Sunspots have all but vanished, and activity is suspiciously quiet. The last time this happened was 400 years ago -- and it signaled a solar event known as a "Maunder Minimum," along with the start of what we now call the "Little Ice Age." Tapping, a solar researcher and project director for Canada's National Research Council, says it may be happening again. Overseeing a giant radio telescope he calls a... dailytech.com http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1967753/posts#comment Sat, 9 Feb 2008 20:25:57 GMT