WASHINGTON — 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.
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Researchers at the Danish National Space Centre claim cosmic rays can influence the Earth’s climate through their effect on cloud formation. Earlier this year I reported on a lecture that I attended given by Dr Eigil Friis-Christensen, the Centre’s Director.
Jennifer Marohasy BSc PhD is a critical thinker with expertise in the scientific method.
Dearest brethen let us pray that this does not cause cooling as in what is happening. See http://woodfortrees.org/notes#wti for if it is we have not seen anything yet. Cooling causes bad weather events not the minor rubbish blamed on AGW. I do not fear AGW and may it start to warm soon, I do fear GC. For those who argue the Sun has no effect I hope you are right. In the meantime how about you switch it of to prove the theory!
DHMO, it’s interesting to ponder on who the real deniers might be.
If there is a reduced solar wind, does this mean more cosmic rays getting through which means more low cloud cover which means cooler conditions? Is a reduced solar wind always associated with reduced sunspot activity?
It seems yes for the first part of your question, Dennis but am not absolutely certain on the latter but it seems likely.
No sign of the resident trolls, big dose of denial out there. But whats new? Probably awaiting new guidelines on obfuscation and water muddying from Climate Central
CERN I believe is to do an experiment called CLOUD which investigates the influence cosmic rays and otherwise on the atmosphere. Does anyone here know more about it?
Cosmic rays don’t travel at the speed of light. And the heliopause is a long way away. So it was many years into the Wolf minimum when the heavy rains came.
“Seven weeks after Easter in A.D. 1315, sheets of rain spread across sodden Europe, turning freshly plowed fields into lakes of quagmires…”
The rains that ruined all the crops subsided in 1321 and thereafter they had cold and drought.
That was the real beginning of the little ice age. When you have these heavy rains you might wind up having reasonable average temperatures but its a false warmth since the oceans are being drained of energy.
So these rains would have sucked all the energy out of the oceans and once they were gone that natural duo of cold and drought would be established and a hard thing for the planet to shake.
Graeme then humans were blamed for the cooling. It was a lack of morality that caused it. How long before cooling is blamed on human behaviour.
I think they were judged and found wanting in the eyes of Gaia.
And Gaias vengeance sort of goes with the flow. She can screw you up with cooling one century and kill everything with warming in another. But its only on account of us breaking her covenant.
This is how alarmists see mother nature. In reality mother nature is a nazi bitch goddess who will mess you up just out of caprice.
But these sexually ambivalent metrosexuals in the public service get all confused about everything. So to them Gaia is veangeful, old testament Yahweh…………… IN DRAG.
Some people were just not ready to be atheists. These global warmers ought to get themselves to a church of some sort.
I’m not a believer myself but many of my fellow atheists are just an embarrassment.
People,
The flux of ions known as the Solar wind is a serious misnomer – a flow of ions constitutes an electric current.
Cosmic rays are also ions in motion – electric currents. We don’t speak of a wind flowing down the copper wires to our electric heaters do we.
And the Solar wind sometimes stops completely.
This is like stating that the source of energy in the sun has coffee breaks.
And the magnetic fields near sunspots reverse polarity during the transition from one cycle to the next. How?
The standard model of the Sun involves the existence of a nuclear fusion reactor inside it. Yet a temperature minimum exists above the SUn’s photosphere, and the sun’s Corona is millions of degrees hotter than the sun itself.
Climate science assumes the standard model for the Sun.
Observations contradict this.
And you wonder why GCM’s have problems when we really don’t know how the immediate source of energy that drives the earth’s climate works?
Forbush events clearly punch a lot of energy into the oceans. Louis. Under your favoured paradigm, is the transmission mechanism ONLY the chasing away of cosmic rays thus reducing cloud cover?
I’m sure your view is that there is another transmission mechanism for this extra energy. How does it work in your view?
Or to put it this way: If the strength of the solar wind is important, independent of radiance, just how is the energy transferred?
Particularly how is it transferred as far as the oceans?
When ions reconstitute themselves into normal atoms and molecules is latent energy released?
If you describe the solar wind as akin to an electric current is the warming it may be causing simply akin to resistance in a wire? But this time its resistance in the atmosphere?
I suppose I ought to do the hard yards and check this type of thinking out for myself.
“humans were blamed for the cooling. It was a lack of morality that caused it. How long before cooling is blamed on human behaviour.”
That bait and switch has already taken place in the change of nomenclature from GW to “climate change”, in order to be able to take maximum publicity advantage of both ‘positive and negative temperature events’.
Graeme
How many clarets have you had tonight?
Think about the Ulysses spacecraft and its trajectory. All of the planets in our solar system seem to lie on a plane, or a disc if you want. There are, of course, variations in position about the positions of the planets about that plabe, but for discussion’s sake, we assume that the planets lie within a broad disc with the sun at its centre.
So in what direction was the Ulysses probe sent?
Anyone know?
The most significant part of the NASA conference call was the Q&A where they admit that they just do not know what is going to happen next.
Thus all these so-called “perfect” climate models who have the sun as a forcing now have a huge unknown factor. Gee, think that’s what many of us have been saying all along. Definitely sand in the climate model machine!
Question. Is the predicted cooling going to be enough to stop the Australian economy being crueled by the Krudd government and its so called carbon pollution cap and trade hoax?
This abstract summarises the issue – what is the mechanism – well, go to Dr Tony Peratt’s official Plasma site and work it out – http://public.lanl.gov/alp/plasma/universe.html.
All matter is made up of electrically charged particles and of all the forces in nature electricity has no role to play at all?
COSMIC RAYS AND CLIMATE
Jasper Kirkby
CERN, Geneva, Switzerland
March 2008
ABSTRACT
Among the most puzzling questions in climate change is that of solar-climate variability, which has attracted the attention of scientists for more than two centuries. Until recently, even the existence of solar-climate variability has been controversial—perhaps because
the observations had largely involved correlations between climate and the sunspot cycle that had persisted for only a few decades. Over the last few years, however, diverse reconstructions of past climate change have revealed clear associations with cosmic ray variations recorded in cosmogenic isotope archives, providing persuasive evidence for solar or cosmic ray forcing of the climate. However, despite the increasing evidence of its importance, solar-climate variability is likely to remain controversial until a physical mechanism is established. Although this remains a mystery, observations suggest that cloud cover may be influenced by cosmic rays, which are modulated by the solar wind and, on longer time scales, by the geomagnetic field and by the galactic environment of
Earth. Two different classes of microphysical mechanisms have been proposed to connect cosmic rays with clouds: firstly, an influence of cosmic rays on the production of cloud condensation nuclei and, secondly, an influence of cosmic rays on the global electrical
circuit in the atmosphere and, in turn, on ice nucleation and other cloud microphysical processes. Considerable progress on understanding ion-aerosol-cloud processes has been made in recent years, and the results are suggestive of a physically-plausible link between cosmic rays, clouds and climate. However, a concerted effort is now required to carry out definitive laboratory measurements of the fundamental physical and chemical processes involved, and to evaluate their climatic significance with dedicated field observations and modelling studies.
Published in
Surveys in Geophysics 28, 333–375, doi: 10.1007/s10712-008-9030-6 (2007).
Louis, my understanding was that Ulysses was sent along the plane to a point where the mass of Jupiter was used to fling it into an orbit that is perpendicular to the planetary plane.
Ian Mott
Thanks for that.
Where the hell is the apostle Luke et al to proclaim the word. In the beginning there was the word and the word the Goracle. “I say unto thee sinners it is all your fault and may you all suffer in everlasting damnation for not believing in me your saviour”. There is an interesting article in the last Quadrant about enviro religion. Seems we don’t have to do anything that actually has a perceptable effect. We should just believe an give lots of money to those who think they know all. Should I get a prayer mat?
Comment from DHMO
Time September 26, 2008 at 12:24 pm
Where the hell is the apostle Luke et al to proclaim the word?
I’m sorry, but there is too much science here for him – No links to wiki to be obtained.
That stuff you quoted looks very interesting Louis. Bad science drives out the good. These guys have been sucking up all the oxygen and finances and so these other ideas aren’t being followed up.
“How many clarets have you had tonight?”
Well spotted. But the fact is I haven’t followed up on the electric universe ideas so I’m lost and am unlikely to be able to click with the tantalizing leads you are lining up.
My thinking, generally speaking, would be that its unlikely that the new paradigm has all the answers holus bolus but I must get around to looking at it.
I was referred to a video with people talking about the electric universe theory and what impressed me about it was that they were attempting to explain observed phenomenon without recourse to the unobserved, and in a way that didn’t contradict absolutely fully known stuff.
But I didn’t follow up.
In economics the neoclassicals have been leaped on as advocates of the revealed truth since they were far superior to the Keynesians. But when I went back to look at the Austrians they were far better still. And then when I read George Reismans synthesis of the British Classical School with the Austrians that was a whole new level better again.
50 billion dollars spent and most of it wasted. We could do more with 5 billion. In a better world people of inherited wealth would be expected on a social level to sponsor these missions to find the truth. And I’m sure they’d do a superior and more cost-effective job of it.
Graeme
Yes, the plasma universe theories on Peratt’s site are the hard science stuff – but Wal Thornhill, a physicist and Dr Don Scott, a retired professor of electrical engineering have both written expositions of the Plasma Universe theory in lay terms which you should find easy reading.
Thornhill’s material is on http://www.holoscience.com and Scott’s http://members.cox.net/dascott3/index.htm
There are links to the Thunderbolts site which might be too controversial, but underlying the science is the principle of only explaining observations with known physical facts – not imaginative mathematical constructs such as string theory, black holes, dark matter, energy etc.
In particular the Plasma Universe position of the earth’s climate is that it is the physical interface between an electrically charged earth immersed in the diffuse electric plasma of the solar system.
The essential assumptions you need to understand is the three modes of electric plasma – dark current mode, glow mode and arc mode. Lightning is arc mode, fluro lights are glow mode, and the electric currents or the solar wind are dark current mode, dark because we cannot see it.
Great. I must follow it up.
Graeme
In addition, there is little research being done on this – Brian Tinsley does work in this area (I referred to his url elsewhere on Jen’s blog) but other wise I only know of Wal Thornhill doing research on it and my own lukewarm efforts (I only have so many hours in the day) as an infrequent foray in blosg or as an article in Henry Thornton. (I am writing a summary article for E&E for January next year).
One point which astrophysics has not understood is that Hannes Alfven coined the term magnetohydrodynamics and proposed that magnetic fields could be frozen in plasma. Subsequent experimental work showed him that this was wrong, and despite getting a Nobel Prize for this work, Alfven used that occassion to tell the astrophysical world that the theory was wrong, that electric plasma is not a perfect electrical conductor but a very good one.
Hence ALL magnetic fields observed anywhere in the universe HAVE to be formed by electric currents, and you cannot have electric currents without magnetic fields and vice versa.
This is the chicken and egg condunrum.
Have fun reading this stuff – there is much to learn and the plasma people have only started to scratch the surface.
One thing we are reasonably sure of is that the sun is not powered by a fusion reactor or that other astronomical myth, a neutron star.
No one has yet managed to create a sustainable fusion reaction because the theory of the magnetic bottle, based on Alfven’s magnetohydrodynamics, is flawed.
Thornhill and Scott discuss this in the relevant sections of their expositions.
You can buy their books for Mikamar publications listed on the Thunderbolts site.
There are some bogus sites on the Plasma Universe and the disclaimer on Dr Peratt’s site will guide you to the official ones.
The scientific mafia are alive and well in this area of science too.
Oh, and Wikipedia is not regarded as a reliable source of science – see Dr Peratt’s comments on the necessity of Peer Review.
Comment from Louis Hissink
“One thing we are reasonably sure of is that the sun is not powered by a fusion reactor or that other astronomical myth, a neutron star.”
Please explain – I understood that the proton-proton reaction was fairly well understood and supported by observations.
As is stellar dynamics and evolution, although there is much to learn.
I cannot understand this statement.
http://www.nocarbontaxes.org
Oil Shrill
The standard model of the sun claims that at the sun’s core exists a continuous fusion reactor surrounded by a radiative zone which transfers heat from the core by photons and comprises some 50% of the sun’s radius. This is enclosed by another zone in which heat is carried to the surface by convection columns and it is estimate that that the entire journey from core to the surface takes about 100,000 and 200,000 years.
The standard model implies that the temperature gradient decreases from the core to space and obeys the inverse square law, much like the temperature gradient from a hot stove.
What the standard model does not predict is the existence of the hotter chromosphere some 2000-3000km above the sun’s surface or photosphere. It also cannot predict the temperature minimum just above the photosphere and the lower regions of the sun’s corona are millions of degrees higher than its surface.
Furthermore we know that the solar wind sometimes stops completely, and that the speed of the ions comprising the solar wind accelerate the further from the sun they are. The sun also rotates more rapidly at its equator than near its poles, and the magnetic fields near sunspots reverse polarity from one 11 year sunspot cycle to the next.
None of these observations can be explained by the standard model which astronomers insist has been verified experimentally in the laboratory. Wrong. We still have not managed to create a sustained fusion reaction after half a century’s work. The only time fusion of hydrogen and helium is done is via the H-Bomb and that is instantaneous. Apparently recently discovered instabilities in plasma that is generated in the process may make it impossible to control it and make it occur continuously.
All of these observations can be explained by the electric sun model first proposed by Ralph Juergens during the 1970’s and which actually predicts the temperature discontinuity above the photosphere.
The electric sun model assumes that the source of the sun’s energy is external and that there is a sufficient flow of electrons from space into the sun to power it. There is criticism that no one has measured the presence of the electrons assumed to power the sun but that is because most of our measurements were along the sun’s equatorial plane. However during the spring of 2001 the Ulysses spacecraft found long plasma tubes reaching to the south pole of the sun from a distance as far out as Mars, and more recently the THEMIS mission found similar plasma tubes, or magnetic flux ropes, connecting the earth and the sun.
There is another criticism that if the sun’s core is not a fusion reactor, then why hasn’t the sun collapsed upon itself. The standard model assumes that the sun behaves like a ball of gas, with temperature and pressure both increasing from the outer surface toward the centre. The temperature is needed to sustain the pressure which fends of gravitational forces which in the absence of sufficient pressure would lead to collapse.
So if there is no fusion going on inside the sun, what has it not collapsed? Physicist Wal Thornhill explains best – “The electric star model makes the simplest assumption – that nothing is going on in the sun….[In the plasma that makes up the sun] the nucleus of each atom, which is thousands of times heavier than electrons, will be gravitationally offset from the centre of the atom resulting in the formation of small electric dipoles. These dipoles align to form a radial electric field that causes electrons to diffuse outwards in enormously greater numbers than simple gravitational sorting allows. That leaves positively charged ions behind which repel one another. That electrical repulsion balances the compressive forces of gravity without the need for a central heat source in the star.
In 1926 Arthur Eddington assumed that the sun was a ball of hot gas and “If there is no other way out we might have to suppose that the bright line spectra in the stars are produced by electric discharges similar to those producing bright line spectra in a vacuum tube,” A.S. Eddington, The Internal constitution of Stars”.
Ralph Juergen’s wrote in 1972 – “The known characteristics of the interplanetary medium suggest not only that the sun and the planets are electrically charged, but that the sun itself is the focus of a cosmic electric discharge – the probable source of all its radiant energy” 1972. Juergen’s model has the sun as a high voltage anode imbedded in galactic plasma of a lower voltage. This model is based on known experimental behavior of electric plasmas. The standard model of the sun relies things which have not been verified experimentally.
Of course the solar fusion model cannot wax and wane in output either, as is observed today.
(adapted from Dr. D Scott’s book, The Electric Sky”, 2006.
The Space and Science Research Center sent a warning to US leaders of impending long term cold. http://www.spaceandscience.net/id16.html It is unfortunate that countries will dismantle their whole civilization for a lie.
Surely it must b e clear by now, that the Sun energy is not generated from its so called “core”.
The highest temperatures are to be found quite some distance away from the surface of the Sun; this fact alone suggests that the source of the suns energies have their origins in the Vacuum of Space.
In other words the vacuum of space is the potential source of all our energies.
The Sun has an enormous capture area, which is even more significant than it’s Mass, therefore the corona will be constantly interfaced with this immutable source
This explains perfectly why, in the wake of a large solar flare, that the temperature in hole on the surface (Sun spot) is considerably cooler than else where.
Energy from this unlimited source is available on demand. .