Is our Sun falling silent?

"I've been a solar physicist for 30 years, and I've never seen anything quite like this," says Richard Harrison, head of space physics at the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory in Oxfordshire. He shows me recent footage captured by spacecraft that have their sights trained on our star. The Sun is revealed in exquisite detail, but its face is strangely featureless. "If you want to go back to see when the Sun was this inactive... you've got to go back about 100 years," he says. This solar lull is baffling scientists, because right now the Sun should be awash with activity.

www.bbc.co.uk...

Interesting new story from BBC News science environment. I did a search and didn't find it, mods feel free to delete or move if need be.

Could this account for the harsher weather that we have been seeing the past few years?

reply to post by lifttheveil


Not over the past few years, since the lull has only just begun, we are yet to feel it's effects.

There was a massive solar flare like 2 weeks a go and since then, in england anyway, it's been quite moderate temperatures, like I'm comfortable in an open hoodie outside.

As of tomorrow, the temperature will be -2°C, this will be because of the solar lull.

The Sun's gone out. It'll just take a few millennia for it to cool down enough to notice.

Maunder Minimum
This is what it is called, a mini ICe Age... so does the global warming crowd have a reply?
I bet they do....

MM

DogMeat
Maunder Minimum
This is what it is called, a mini ICe Age... so does the global warming crowd have a reply?
I bet they do....

MM

The sun becoming inactive and freezing our planet has no relation to global warming.

Global warming is because of greenhouse gases that trap the heat from the sun, if the sun doesn't give off heat then it makes it completely irrelevant.

In other words, greenhouse gases are not a source of heat and so could not replace the sun.

and by the way, I am not a global warming enthusiast. I believe we should be careful what we pump into our atmosphere but CO2 levels are not at a crazy hight out of the normal cycle of CO2 levels of the earth.

What about that huge sunspot and the flare we had from the Sun recently?

Also, how can a quiet Sun cause bad weather?

wildespace
What about that huge sunspot and the flare we had from the Sun recently?

Also, how can a quiet Sun cause bad weather?

Once the flare died down, the Sun has gone extremely inactive and it has been linked to very cold winters.

Less radiation and heat being given off, means thick gloves for iRoyalty on his walks to work!

wildespace
What about that huge sunspot and the flare we had from the Sun recently?

Also, how can a quiet Sun cause bad weather?

That was a snore.

Once the sun quiets, radioactive decay increases, so the earth tries to make up for it a little. That helps keep earth from turning into a frozen snowball.

reply to post by lifttheveil

Interesting OP....Sunny and 83 here in So Cali today though. Gotta love So Cal "winters". Of coarse all is not great we are in a drought and Fire dangers. One is all ready Burning 11 Buildings and I think like 4 homes. Hoping we have a "rainy" season, we need it.

DogMeat
Maunder Minimum
This is what it is called, a mini ICe Age... so does the global warming crowd have a reply?
I bet they do....

MM

What has this got to do with global warming? The mechanism is entirely different. What we will see is an excuse by the deniers, I'll save the deniers some time by putting them here (you may copy and paste, they are copyright free):
1. Climate scientists change their mind.
2. Climate scientists have got it wrong.
3. See the sun is the main driver of our climate and it's cooling. (this is a good one since even climate scientists would not disagree with the first part)

Of course the relationship between the various aspects of solar properties is too complex for deniers to understand (otherwise they would not be deniers !)

If the sun is on its way out, it will soon eat up all the heavier elements it has stored. It will expand and consume the inner planets in the solar system.

No worries though. We will all be dead and gone and our entire civilization turned to dust long before that happens.

iRoyalty
the Sun has gone extremely inactive and it has been linked to very cold winters.

It's relatively warm here in Britain. It's around +15C in Spain where I'm going soon. Because it's cold in one place doesn't mean it's cold everywhere.

Does the Sun's varying activity actually makes it produce less heat?

the suns not dieing.. the suns just on holidays in Australia at the moment.
We will send it back when we get sick of it...

Me and the sun have been enjoying some nice iced beers as of late.
we have been going swimming and even laying on the beach together.
But I am trying to not let the sun become to attached as I have my friend cloud is wanting to come to Australia, he rang me up and said rain hail and thunder we will get hell flooded till we're drunk...


Serious note

Isn't this a 10 year cycle?

reply to post by lifttheveil


The cooling down of the sun has been known for years.

This scientist predicted the coming mini Ice Age back in 2010.

Ref: www.wnd.com...

Habibullo Abdussamatov

In his capacity of the head of the Russian-Ukrainian project “Astrometria” on the Russian segment of the International Space Station, Abdussamatov is conducting additional research to refine his prediction that a new Little Ice Age will begin in 2014.

Less solar activity I.E. sun spots and solar flares mean more heat not less.

The sun not only goes through the 11 year cycle. There are a few.

11 year schwabe, 88 year gleisberg, 208 year devries and 1,000 year eddy

We dont have enough data to compare against to make any accurate assessment.
The recorded history of the sun is short in contrast to how long its been around and how long its going to remain.

It would be irresponsible of me to make any claims without the data.

I can state without a doubt, we are part of a system that goes way beyond our scope.

Too bad we cant figure out how the solar fusion reactor (Sun) works.
I mean understand it enough to create sustainable fusion.

Bedlam
The Sun's gone out. It'll just take a few millennia for it to cool down enough to notice.

I'm not worried. Sir Isaac Newton said the world won't end before 2060:

The world will end in 2060, according to Newton

he confidently stated in the letter that the Bible proved the world would end in 2060, adding: "It may end later, but I see no reason for its ending sooner."

Continuing in a decidedly sniffy tone, he wrote: "This I mention not to assert when the time of the end shall be, but to put a stop to the rash conjectures of fanciful men who are frequently predicting the time of the end, and by doing so bring the sacred prophesies into discredit as often as their predictions fail."

Unlike you and I, he apparently wasn't joking.

In any case, we still have a lot to learn about the sun. A few thousand more years of detailed observations should help our understanding, assuming the world won't end in 2060 and that the sun hasn't gone out yet.

shaneslaughta
Too bad we cant figure out how the solar fusion reactor (Sun) works.
I mean understand it enough to create sustainable fusion.

We understand fusion pretty well and we can create sustainable fusion. The problem is that our experiments and reactors don't have as much gravity as a star, and without the gravity, we end up putting in more energy than we get out to sustain it, so far:

Tabletop Machine Triggers Telltale Nuclear Fusion

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, as Carl Sagan liked to say. So when Seth Putterman and his colleagues at UCLA announced in April that they had achieved nuclear fusion using a simple device that fits on a lab bench, they knew their work would come under close scrutiny. In addition to outlining their findings in the journal Nature, they also released graphs, photos, videos, and their complete raw data showing the telltale production of neutrons, a signature of a fusion reaction. "We published probably the largest dose of supplementary material ever to accompany a paper," Putterman says.

reply to post by lifttheveil


The Sun imho controls our climate. I look for our meteorologists to focus more on Space Weather to predict our weather here on Earth in the future.

The solar cycles have been in question for many years now. When our Sun is in a lull we see more cooling and more volcanic activity. It indeed controls our climate.

I actually watched this video earlier this morning and believe we are heading for a mini ice age IF the Sun does not get real active real quick.

I've often wondered if the Sun does not work hard trying to neutralize our climate for habitable living. If this is the case the Sun seems to be worn out and giving up or it's simply trying to cool us off for a period of time.

Since in the linked article the scientist says it also happened a hundred years ago, and it probably happened before that too, is there really any reasons to be worried?

NowanKenubi
Since in the linked article the scientist says it also happened a hundred years ago, and it probably happened before that too, is there really any reasons to be worried?

It did happen only it was not an ice age per say. Just a period of global cooling.

reply to post by NowanKenubi


No there isn't, not about the Sun. It just a slow news cycle filler...

How could anyone take the thread/information seriously after the line "I've been a solar physicist for 30 years, and I've never seen anything quite like this," any one that can think after reading this nullity simply disregarded the subject...