Surprise In Earth's Upper Atmosphere: Mode Of Energy Transfer From The Solar Wind

Surprise In Earth's Upper Atmosphere: Mode Of Energy Transfer From The Solar Wind

www.sciencedaily.com

"It's like something else is heating the atmosphere besides the sun. This discovery is like finding it got hotter when the sun went down," said Larry Lyons, UCLA professor of atmospheric and oceanic sciences and a co-author of the research, which is in press in two companion papers in the Journal of Geophysical Research.

(visit the link for the full news article)

I have been saying something similar to this, that when the Sun's activity is at it's lowest, the defenses of the entire Solar System, including Earth and the Sun, goes down, and the entire Solar System is more susceptible to forces from outside the Solar system, which affect the planets, but also the Sun.

During such quiet periods of solar activity there are still sunspots, but fewer than during times of high solar activity, but since the Earth's defenses are down such activity by the Sun is much stronger, and affects the Earth more.

"We all have thought for our entire careers — I learned it as a graduate student — that this energy transfer rate is primarily controlled by the direction of the interplanetary magnetic field," Lyons said. "The closer to southward-pointing the magnetic field is, the stronger the energy transfer rate is, and the stronger the magnetic field is in that direction. If it is both southward and big, the energy transfer rate is even bigger."

However, Lyons, Kim and their colleagues analyzed radar data that measure the strength of the interaction by measuring flows in the ionosphere, the part of Earth's upper atmosphere ionized by solar radiation. The results surprised them.

"Any space physicist, including me, would have said a year ago there could not be substorms when the interplanetary magnetic field was staying northward, but that's wrong," Lyons said. "Generally, it's correct, but when you have a fluctuating interplanetary magnetic field, you can have substorms going off once per hour.

"Heejeong used detailed statistical analysis to prove this phenomenon is real. Convection in the magnetosphere and ionosphere can be strongly driven by these fluctuations, independent of the direction of the interplanetary magnetic field."

Science is not settled in stone, and every once in a while the Solar System, and in fact the entire galaxy and Universe surprise us and shows us that what we once thought impossible is possible.


www.sciencedaily.com
(visit the link for the full news article)

Thankyou for the post. That's very interesting. S & F for you!

reply to post by zenius


Thanks for the star and flag. I agree with you that this is very interesting. This would also be part of the reason why we are seeing fluctuations in weather/climate all over the world.

But there is also something else.

I have posted in the past a thread, which started about a rogue brown dawrf, but as I kept researching I found out that something is causing an increase in the astronomical unit, the distance between the planets in the Solar system, and the Sun, and this same force, or object has also been affecting satellites (pioneer anomaly).

IMO this is related to the Climate Changes we have been observing on Earth, but also every other planet with an atmosphere, and even moons in the Solar System have been undergoing dramatic Climate Changes, just like Earth has been doing, which is also affecting the Sun.

Secular increase of the astronomical unit and perihelion precessions as tests of the Dvali–Gabadadze–Porrati multi-dimensional braneworld scenario
Lorenzo Iorio JCAP09(2005)006 doi: 10.1088/1475-7516/2005/09/006

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Lorenzo Iorio
Viale Unità di Italia 68, 70125, Bari, Italy
E-mail: [email protected]

Abstract. An unexpected secular increase of the astronomical unit, the length scale of the Solar System, has recently been reported by three different research groups (Krasinsky and Brumberg, Pitjeva, Standish). The latest JPL measurements amount to 7 ± 2 m cy−1. At present, there are no explanations able to accommodate such an observed phenomenon, either in the realm of classical physics or in the usual four-dimensional framework of the Einsteinian general relativity. The Dvali–Gabadadze–Porrati braneworld scenario, which is a multi-dimensional model of gravity aimed at providing an explanation of the observed cosmic acceleration without dark energy, predicts, among other things, a perihelion secular shift, due to Lue and Starkman, of 5 × 10−4 arcsec cy−1 for all the planets of the Solar System. It yields a variation of about 6 m cy−1 for the Earth–Sun distance which is compatible with the observed rate of change for the astronomical unit. The recently measured corrections to the secular motions of the perihelia of the inner planets of the Solar System are in agreement with the predicted value of the Lue–Starkman effect for Mercury, Mars and, at a slightly worse level, the Earth.

www.iop.org...

In that thread I also reported another finding i made.

6 The increase of the Astronomical Unit

6.1 The observation

From the analysis of radiometric measurements of distances between the Earth and the major planets including observations from Martian orbiters and landers from 1961 to 2003 a secular increase of the Astronomical Unit of approximately 10 m/cy has been reported (36) (see also the article (37) and the discussion therein).

6.2 Search for explanation

Time–dependent gravitational constant and velocity of light This increase cannot be explained by a time–dependent gravitational constant G because the ˙ G/G needed is larger than the restrictions obtained from LLR.

It has also been speculated that a time–dependent change in the velocity of light can be responsible for this effect. Indeed, if the speed of light becomes smaller, than ranging will simulate a drift of distances. However, a inspection of Kepler’s third law
T2 4π2
a3 = GM⊙

(17)
12

shows that, if one replaces the distance a by a ranging time a = ct, then effectively the quotient G/c3 appears. Only this combination of the gravitational constant and the speed of light governs the ratio between the orbit time, in our case the orbit time of the Earth. Consequently, a time–dependent speed of light is equivalent to a time–dependent gravitational constant. Since the latter has been ruled out to be possibly responsible for an increase of the Astronomical Unit, also a time–dependent speed of light has to be ruled out.

Cosmic expansion The influence of cosmic expansion by many orders of magnitude too small, see Sec.9.2. Neither the modification of the gravitational field of the Sun nor the drag of the planetary orbits due to the expansion is big enough to explain this drift.

Clock drift An increase of ranged distances might also be due to a drift of the time scale of the form t → t + αt2 for α > 0. This is of the same form as the time drift needed to account for the Pioneer anomaly. From Kepler’s third law one may ask which α is suitable in order to simulate the increase of the Astronomical Unit. One obtains α ≈ 3 · 10−20 s−1 what is astonishing close to the clock drift needed for a clock drift simulation of the pioneer anomaly, see Eq.(16) and below.
7 The quadrupole and octupule anomaly Recently an anomalous behavior of the low–l contributions to the cosmic microwave background has been reported. It has been shown that (i) there exists an alignment between the quadrupole and octupole with > 99.87% C.L. [38], and (ii) that the quadrupole and octupole are aligned to Solar system ecliptic to > 99% C.L. [39]. No correlation with the galactic plane has been found.

The reason for this is totally unclear. One may speculate that an unknown gravitational field within the Solar system slightly redirects the incoming cosmic microwave radiation (in the similar way as a motion with a certain velocity with respect to the rest frame of the cosmological background redirects the cosmic background radiation and leads to modifications of the dipole and quadrupole parts). Such a redirection should be more pronounced for low–l components of the radiation. It should be possible to calculate the gravitational field needed for such a redirection and then to compare that with the observational data of the Solar system and the other observed anomalies.

..........................
8.2 Other anomalies?

There is one further observation which status is rather unclear bit which perhaps may fit into the other observations. This is the observation of the return time of comets: Comets usually come back a few days before they are expected when applying ordinary equations of motion. The delay usually is assigned to the outgassing of these objects. In fact, the delay is used for an estimate of the strength of this outgassing. On the other hand, it has been calculated in (44) that the assumption that starting with 20 AU there is an additional acceleration of the order of the Pioneer anomaly also leads to the effect that comets come back a few days earlier. It is not clear whether this is a serious indications but a further study of the trajectories of comets certainly is worthwhile.

arxiv.org...

Here is a link to the thread where those links and excerpts, as well as others can be found.
www.abovetopsecret.com...

So not only are satellites being affected by this "something", but comets are also affected, and now an unexpected secular increase in the astronomical unit, or the distance between the planets and the Sun has been foudn to have increased.

IMO this is not only related but will continue to affect the Solar System, and Earth which is why it is important to find out exactly what is causing this.



[edit on 11-9-2009 by ElectricUniverse]

Nice find....

I wonder if it is in anyway related to this thread I posted earlier today>?

Gravitational Corridors

very interesting
please post any related information once new findings are discovered.

thanks

star n flag

[edit on 11-9-2009 by ModernAcademia]