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Source:   University Of Missouri-Rolla (http://www.umr.edu) Date:   Posted 7/17/2002 The Sun: A Great Ball Of Iron? For years, scientists have assumed that the sun is an enormous mass of hydrogen. But in a paper presented before the American Astronomical Society, Dr. Oliver Manuel, a professor of nuclear chemistry at UMR, says iron, not hydrogen, is the sun's most abundant element. Manuel claims that hydrogen fusion creates some of the sun's heat, as hydrogen -- the lightest of all elements -- moves to the sun's surface. But most of the heat comes from the core of an exploded supernova...

Primordial NukesThe 2-billion-year-old tale of Earth's natural nuclear reactors Peter Weiss For more than a decade, Alexander P. Meshik has kept close tabs on a fleck of black rock no larger than an infant's fingernail. It's so unassuming that most people would sweep it into a dustpan without a second thought. Yet to Meshik, a nuclear physicist originally from Russia, this little scrap of mineral is a scientific gem. E. Roell The fleck, with its clues to believe-it-or-not geophysical events, emerged from the bowels of Earth decades ago. It was unearthed in the early 1970s at the Oklo uranium mine...

The collapse of the Earth's magnetic field, which both guards the planet and guides many of its creatures, appears to have started in earnest about 150 years ago. The field's strength has waned 10 to 15 percent, and the deterioration has accelerated of late, increasing debate over whether it portends a reversal of the lines of magnetic force that normally envelop the Earth. During a reversal, the main field weakens, almost vanishes, then reappears with opposite polarity. Afterward, compass needles that normally point north would point south, and during the thousands of years of transition, much in the heavens and...

Earthquakes and Tsunamis are triggered by Star-quakes – the invisible interconnection between different parts of the Universe The position of SGR1806-20 in a radio image of the sky - 50,000 light-years away Staff Reporter Mar. 7, 2005 Computer models are showing an interesting relationship between star-quakes and earthquakes. Supernova, star-quakes and similar burst of energy in the Universe triggers earthquakes and tsunamis. According to researchers, most of the large earthquakes and Tsunamis happened when there was a burst of energy somewhere in the cosmos. According to BBC, Astronomers say they have been stunned by the amount of energy released in...

COPENHAGEN (AFP) – The earth's climate has been significantly affected by the planet's magnetic field, according to a Danish study published Monday that could challenge the notion that human emissions are responsible for global warming. "Our results show a strong correlation between the strength of the earth's magnetic field and the amount of precipitation in the tropics," one of the two Danish geophysicists behind the study, Mads Faurschou Knudsen of the geology department at Aarhus University in western Denmark, told the Videnskab journal. He and his colleague Peter Riisager, of the Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland (GEUS), compared a...

The earth's climate has been significantly affected by the planet's magnetic field, according to a Danish study published Monday that could challenge the notion that human emissions are responsible for global warming. "Our results show a strong correlation between the strength of the earth's magnetic field and the amount of precipitation in the tropics," one of the two Danish geophysicists behind the study, Mads Faurschou Knudsen of the geology department at Aarhus University in western Denmark, told the Videnskab journal. He and his colleague Peter Riisager, of the Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland (GEUS), compared a reconstruction of the...

Exclusive from New Scientist Hidden extra dimensions are causing measurements of the strength of gravity at different locations on Earth to be affected by the planet's magnetic field, French researchers say. This is a controversial claim because no one has ever provided experimental evidence to support either the existence of extra dimensions or any interaction between gravity and electromagnetism. But lab measurements of Newton's gravitational constant G suggest that both are real. Newton's constant, which describes the strength of the gravitational pull that bodies exert on each other, is the most poorly determined of the constants of nature. The two...

Physicists in Japan have discovered that the melting point of water increases slightly in a strong magnetic field. Hideaki Inaba and colleagues at Chiba University found that it increases by 5.6 millikelvin for ordinary water in a field of 6 Tesla, and by 21.8 millikelvin for heavy water (J. Appl. Phys. 96 6127). Water has many unusual properties: it has relatively high melting and boiling points for a small molecule, and the liquid state can also be denser than the solid state. These properties are thought to arise from the 3D network of hydrogen bonds in the molecule. Recently, it...

Magnetic Stars The puzzle of `magnetic stars' solved by astrophysicists of the Max Planck Society How does one explain the enormous magnetic field strengths of the so-called `magnetic stars'? This question concerning magnetic fields in the cosmos, first posed half a century ago, has now been answered by scientists of the Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics in Garching. With 3-dimensional numerical simulations they have found the magnetic field configurations that underly the strong magnetic fields observed on the surface of the so-called magnetic A-stars and magnetic White Dwarfs, and how these fields can survive for the life time of these...

For education and discussion only. Not for commercial use. Astronomy is a science of extremes - the biggest, the hottest, and the most massive. Today, astrophysicist Bryan Gaensler (Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics) and colleagues announced that they have linked two of astronomy's extremes, showing that some of the biggest stars in the cosmos become the strongest magnets when they die. "The source of these very powerful magnetic objects has been a mystery since the first one was discovered in 1998. Now, we think we have solved that mystery," says Gaensler. The astronomers base their conclusions on data taken with CSIRO's...

A radical new idea may revolutionise our understanding of one of the most vital forces on Earth Earth's magnetic field, long thought to be generated by molten metals swirling around its core, may instead be produced by ocean currents, according to controversial new research published this week. It suggests that the movements of such volumes of salt water around the world have been seriously underestimated by scientists as a source of magnetism. If proven, the research would revolutionise geophysics, the study of the Earth’s physical properties and behaviour, in which the idea that magnetism originates in a molten core is...

Enlarge Image Turmoil. Magnetism produces much of the sun's surface phenomena, such as these sunspots, seen in ultraviolet light. Credit: NASA/TRACE Researchers have discovered that one of the mysterious forces that sweep the sun's surface shows an unexpectedly strong connection with the number of sunspots, magnetic disturbances that can affect Earth's weather and telecommunications. The findings should improve predictions of the sun's dynamics and might even help scientists develop better climate models. Along with heat and light, the sun emits x-rays and magnetically charged particles that can endanger astronauts, fry circuits aboard satellites orbiting Earth, and overload electric power...

What’s more fun than something that misbehaves? When it comes to solar dynamics, we know a lot, but there are many things we don’t yet understand. For example, when a particle filled solar flare lashes out from the Sun, its magnetic field lines can do some pretty unexpected things – like split apart and then rapidly reconnect. According to the flux-freezing theorem, these magnetic lines should simply “flow away in lock-step” with the particles. They should stay intact, but they don’t. It’s not just a simple rule they break… it’s a law of physics.

The Earth's magnetic poles might be starting to flip say researchers who have seen strange anomalies in our planet's magnetic field. The magnetic field is created by the flow of molten iron inside the Earth's core. These circulation patterns are affected by the planet's rotation, so the field normally aligns with the Earth's axis - forming the north and south poles. But the way minerals are aligned in ancient rock shows that the planet's magnetic dipole occasionally disappears altogether, leaving a much more complicated field with many poles all over the planet. When the dipole comes back into force, the...

<p>Ship logs and pottery show how the geomagnetic field has changed.</p> <p>Old ship records of magnetic north have helped to unravel a record of our planet's field.</p> <p>While sailors plied the Seven Seas in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, little did they know that their ships' logs would one day help scientists to reconstruct the history of the Earth's magnetic field.</p>

Full title: Forget global warming, worry about the MAGNETOSPHERE: Earth's magnetic field is collapsing and it could affect the climate and wipe out power grids Deep within the Earth, a fierce molten core is generating a magnetic field capable of defending our planet against devastating solar winds. The protective field extends thousands of miles into space and its magnetism affects everything from global communication to animal migration and weather patterns. But this magnetic field, so important to life on Earth, has weakened by 15 per cent over the last 200 years. And this, scientists claim, could be a sign that...

The sun is flipping its poles! Actually, NASA reports that this phenomenon happens about 11 years, when the sun's vast magnetic field flips. "It looks like we're no more than three to four months away from a complete field reversal," said solar physicist Todd Hoeksema of Stanford University. "This change will have ripple effects throughout the solar system." A video shows how the sun will complete the reversal, which appens at the peak of each solar cycle as the sun's inner magnetic dynamo re-organizes. The current "flip" is the midway point of Solar Cycle 24, NASA said. Hoeksema is the...

The European Space Agency’s Swarm constellation flew into space on Friday (Nov. 22) on a quest to understand more about the Earth’s magnetic field. Around the same time, ESA put out a few videos explaining why the magnetic field is important. This one explains that the magnetic field has weakened over the past few years, while the north pole has shifted direction. “In fact, a whole pole reversal is possible,” the narrator says. “It happened last 780,000 years ago at the very beginning of human history. But cavemen didn’t have mobile phone networks, GPS networks or power supplies.” If a...

In one of the most stark illustrations of how a changing climate can have regional effects, scientists have learned that winds over North America have done a complete 180 since the time of the last Ice Age several thousand years ago. Winter blizzards and spring thunderstorms today are usually fueled by moisture-laden winds blowing in from the West Coast. “In this study, we found evidence that during the last glacial period, about 14,000 to 36,000 years ago, the prevailing wind in this zone was easterly, and marine moisture came predominantly from the East Coast,” said lead study author Xiahong Feng...

Wandering hot spots worry geologists 09:48 18 December 01 Betsy Mason, San Francisco "Hot spots" where plumes of molten magma break through the Earth's crust appear to be wandering across the planet - a discovery that undermines many of the accepted ideas about how the Earth's tectonic plates are moving. Geologists thought that magma plumes such as the one that created the Hawaiian Islands remain in place as the plates of the Earth's crust move over them. For years, they have used these hot spots as a fixed frame of reference to gauge the motion of the plates relative ...