From the UK Telegraph – source link
The protective bubble around the sun that helps to shield the Earth from harmful interstellar radiation is shrinking and getting weaker, NASA scientists have warned.
By Richard Gray, Science Correspondent
Last Updated: 9:23AM BST 19 Oct 2008
New data has revealed that the heliosphere, the protective shield of energy that surrounds our solar system, has weakened by 25 per cent over the past decade and is now at it lowest level since the space race began 50 years ago.
Scientists are baffled at what could be causing the barrier to shrink in this way and are to launch mission to study the heliosphere.
The Interstellar Boundary Explorer, or IBEX, will be launched from an aircraft on Sunday on a Pegasus rocket into an orbit 150,000 miles above the Earth where it will “listen” for the shock wave that forms as our solar system meets the interstellar radiation.
Dr Nathan Schwadron, co-investigator on the IBEX mission at Boston University, said: “The interstellar medium, which is part of the galaxy as a whole, is actually quite a harsh environment. There is a very high energy galactic radiation that is dangerous to living things.
“Around 90 per cent of the galactic cosmic radiation is deflected by our heliosphere, so the boundary protects us from this harsh galactic environment.”
The heliosphere is created by the solar wind, a combination of electrically charged particles and magnetic fields that emanate a more than a million miles an hour from the sun, meet the intergalactic gas that fills the gaps in space between solar systems.
At the boundary where they meet a shock wave is formed that deflects interstellar radiation around the solar system as it travels through the galaxy.
The scientists hope the IBEX mission will allow them to gain a better understanding of what happens at this boundary and help them predict what protection it will offer in the future.
Without the heliosphere the harmful intergalactic cosmic radiation would make life on Earth almost impossible by destroying DNA and making the climate uninhabitable.
Measurements made by the Ulysses deep space probe, which was launched in 1990 to orbit the sun, have shown that the pressure created inside the heliosphere by the solar wind has been decreasing.
Dr David McComas, principal investigator on the IBEX mission, said: “It is a fascinating interaction that our sun has with the galaxy surrounding us. This million mile an hour wind inflates this protective bubble that keeps us safe from intergalactic cosmic rays.
“With less pressure on the inside, the interaction at the boundaries becomes weaker and the heliosphere as a whole gets smaller.”
If the heliosphere continues to weaken, scientists fear that the amount of cosmic radiation reaching the inner parts of our solar system, including Earth, will increase.
This could result in growing levels of disruption to electrical equipment, damage satellites and potentially even harm life on Earth.
But Dr McComas added that it was still unclear exactly what would happen if the heliosphere continued to weaken or what even what the timescale for changes in the heliosphere are.
He said: “There is no imminent danger, but it is hard to know what the future holds. Certainly if the solar wind pressure was to continue to go down and the heliosphere were to almost evaporate then we would be in this sea of galactic cosmic rays. That could have some large effects.
“It is likely that there are natural variations in solar wind pressure and over time it will either stabilise or start going back up.”
(hat tip to Dvid Gladstone)
I’m glad you picked this story up that I sent you, Anthony.
REPLY: thanks for the reminder, I got it again fresh today from another source, but you were the first.
Oh my, how did man cause this one?
Interesting times . . . . .
You mean there is something that CO2 isn’t causing?
This is worrying.
Gol-dingy! There oughta be a law against the sun changing.
(Give it time. Our cream-o’-the-crop politicians will think of some law to pass in order to be seen as “doing somthing.” I suppose tinfoil hats will become mandatory and be federally regulated. Me, I’m going to beat the rush and start evolving a cosmic radiation-proof hide now. I can’t wait for Washington.)
Seriously, that’s some disconcerting news. I was unaware of the issue.
I’ve heard there has been also an increase in the intensity of sun shine. Could that be connected and is there any scientific proof and maybe graphs/data to look at?
WT
Imagine the fun if it turns out the best defense for our blue planet is higher atmospheric CO2 concentrations…
Without the heliosphere the harmful intergalactic cosmic radiation would make life on Earth almost impossible by destroying DNA and making the climate uninhabitable.
Nonsense – only man made CO2 can affect the climate. The sun has nothing to do with the radiative heat balance of the earth.
If we are, in fact, heading toward a solar minimum, wouldn’t this affect both climate on earth and the solar wind? It also seems reasonable that this is cyclical. It’s worrying because of our short view of things, but if we had data for the past 1000 years, this would be normal and predictable.
Here comes the Maunder or Dalton Minimum… 🙁
Bah! Fifty years is nothing!
Why, I remember the heliodip of 1,234,567 BC! The cosmic radiation was so bad we could only leave our caves carrying mammoth skulls over our heads…the thicker the better. Imagine commuting to work with a bone umbrella and a stone briefcase…on foot…uphill…both ways. 🙂
Seriously, this is great news. We learn a lot more about nature when things change. Good times for solar science.
Now if only our planet’s climate system weren’t so darn stable…
This is very worrying. As I read it I kept thinking about the punctuated equilibrium theory of evolution. If this is a long-term cycle, it will start to go up again before it kills everything, since life has gone on for 3+ billion years. But how long is that cycle, how low does it go, and to what extent has it effected DNA in the past?
I know I’m stretching my imagination a bit, but I can’t help but wonder.
I too think this is cyclical. Every 22 or so years the cosmic ray measures flatten at the top instead of peaking. Leif has said this flat, peak, flat, peak thing related to cosmic rays measured during minimums when they can get into the atmosphere to be measured, is related to the complete switch from positive leading, to negative leading, then back to positive leading sunspots. I may have that reversed and it should be negative leading, to positive leading, then back to negative leading sunspots but you get the point. The fact that this happens is related to the Sun’s magnetic shield strength (Leif please correct if wrong) as it builds and weakens during these 22 year cycles. It could then be that there are longer cycles that result in waxing and waning shield strength. Anyway, I think that Leif has talked about this phenomena in some of his articles and will shortly refer us to them. I hope so. By and large, this is nothing to worry about, at least in that it has probably happened before.
Okay, so it’s shrinking. Supposedly alot. So where’s the graphic so we can get an idea of the scale of the problem?
Or is the ‘bubble’ so expansive that it could shrink by, say 75% and Earth would still reside within it’s protective sphere of influence?
Anthony,
Once again you have posted on this subject so obviously have suspicions this phenomenon is now affecting and will affect climatic conditions on earth. Do you think it is inclusive of the PDO shift or a separate issue that may add to it? It would seem with the sun at such low levels, if Svensmark et al are correct with respect to GCR, the possibility of a serious drop in global temperatures may in fact be witnessed in a few short years.
As oceans have been releasing enormous amounts of heat into space, if OHC continues to wane and decline, isn’t it logical to assume surface temperatures at some point will begin to decline as well, and more rapidly apart from ENSO? It would certainly be nice if Josh Willis would make the Argo OHC data available to the public. Jason1sea level data is in limbo as well.
If oceans do not continue to accumulate heat, there is no “global” warming.
First the dot com bubble, then the housing bubble, and now the heliosphere bubble. I’m about bubbled out.
Maybe there’s a silver lining. We could sell solar offsets. Get in the game before Algore figures out what’s going on.
Or lead hats. Lead roofing. Cosmic ray shelters. Protect your DNA, move underground!
I’m sure there’s money to made in this latest sky-is-falling report somehow.
I have read that it takes Earth approx 300,000 years to complete one orbit of the galaxy. Are there any Earth events that have a 300,000 year pattern?
According to the “Cosmic Rays Seed Clouds” theory, an increase in cosmic rays should increase cloud cover and accelerate cooling. I don’t know what the status of that theory is, but it’s probably better than “Man Made CO2 Causes Catastrophic Global Warming”.
I don’t think we should use the term “bubble”. It implies a boundary, a hard border. It is more likely a statistical transition region that is defined by how many and of what energy GCRs permeate the heliosphere. I’m sure that there’s no “light switch” or “step function” point in the heliosphere.
Swampie,
Obviously it is caused by the same chlorofluorocarbons that caused the hole in the ozone.
Al Gore told me so!
He forgot to add this, which I though was compulsory for any MSM science reporter today.
“It has been claimed by some scientists that the increase in cosmic radiation hitting Earth might cold down earth’s temperature.
However the huge majority of scientists dismiss such claim and conclude that the human increase in greenhouse gases will continue to warm up the Earth’s climate to dangerous levels. This was reported by a consensus UN report from IPCC which was compiled by over 2500 scientists.”
Is it just me or are these sunspots that show cycle 24 polarity starting out nearer the equator than other ramping up cycles and would that lead one to hypothesis that the Sun really didn’t have enough magnetic energy to allow cycle 24 sunspots to pop out further towards the poles? They were there but just didn’t have enough mojo to get to the surface and now the conveyor belt is more towards the equator now. I remember many months ago when some of us were saying that the very first sunspot tiny tim was way back in 2006. Might we already be a quarter of the way to maximum?
“Without the heliosphere the harmful intergalactic cosmic radiation would make life on Earth almost impossible by destroying DNA and making the climate uninhabitable.”
We’re all gonna die!
“It is likely that there are natural variations in solar wind pressure and over time it will either stabilise or start going back up.”
Well, maybe not! 🙂
/sarc off (proper protocol)
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