From the AGU weekly highlights:
Large solar proton event explains 774-775 CE carbon-14 increase
Tree ring records indicate that in 774-775 CE, atmospheric carbon-14 levels increased substantially. Researchers suggest that a solar proton event may have been the cause. In solar proton events, large numbers of high-energy protons are emitted from the Sun, along with other particles. If these particles reach Earth’s atmosphere, they ionize the atmosphere and induce nuclear reactions that produce higher levels of carbon-14; the particles also cause chemical reactions that result in depletion of ozone in the ozone layer, allowing harmful ultraviolet radiation to reach the ground.
A previous group of researchers suggested that to cause the observed eighth century carbon-14 increase, a solar proton event would have had to be thousands of times larger than any that has been observed from the Sun. However, Thomas et al. believe that group’s calculations were incorrect. They modeled the atmospheric and biologic effects of three solar proton events with different energy spectra and fluences (number of protons per area). They find that an event with about 7 or more times greater fluence (depending on the spectrum) than an observed October 1989 solar flare event could explain the 774-775 CE carbon-14 enhancement. With a hard (high-energy) spectrum, an event with this fluence would result in moderately damaging effects on life but would not cause a mass extinction. They rule out an event with a softer spectrum because such an event would cause severe ozone depletion and mass extinction, which were not observed in the eighth century. The authors estimate that solar proton events of this magnitude occur on average once in a thousand years, and more often if the estimate is based on astronomical observations of flares on Sun-like stars. They note that although that may seem low, such an event would have severely damaging effects on the technology on which society relies.
Source:
Geophysical Research Letters, doi:10.1002/grl.50222, 2013 http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/grl.50222/abstract
Title:
Terrestrial effects of possible astrophysical sources of an AD 774-775 increase in carbon-14 production
Abstract:
We examine possible sources of a substantial increase in tree ring14C measurements for the years AD 774-775. Contrary to claims regarding a coronal mass ejection (CME), the required CME energy is not several orders of magnitude greater than known solar events. We consider solar proton events (SPEs) with three different fluences and two different spectra. The data may be explained byan event with fluenceabout one order of magnitude beyond the October 1989 SPE.Two hard spectrum cases considered here result in moderate ozone depletion, so no mass extinction is implied, though we do predict increases in erythema and damage to plants from enhanced solar UV.We are able to rule out an event with a very soft spectrum that causes severe ozone depletion and subsequent biological impacts.Nitrate enhancements are consistent with their apparent absence in ice core data. The modern technological implications of such an eventmay beextreme, and considering recent confirmation of superflares on solar-type stars, this issue merits attention.
Authors:
Brian C. Thomas, Keith R. Arkenberg and Brock R. Snyder II: Department of Physics and Astronomy, Washburn University, Topeka, Kansas, United States;
Adrian L. Melott: Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Kansas, Lawrence, Kansas, United States.
“. They rule out an event with a softer spectrum because such an event would cause severe ozone depletion and mass extinction, which were not observed in the eighth century.”
Not observed in the Old Word – what about South America and demise of it’s great civilizations? For example the (infamous) Mayans (google “Classic Maya collapse”)? Most likely just a coincidence, but what if it’s not? There’s strong evidence for many significant SPEs in earth’s history (for example 12,900 ya), Maybe our sun is not as docile as we’d like it to be?
Astronomers using ESA’s Herschel space observatory have detected emission from the base of black-hole jets for the first time.
http://sci.esa.int/science-e/www/object/index.cfm?fobjectid=51482
Why do you introduce the article using ‘CE’ instead of ‘AD’? Why would anybody in Europe or countries settled by Europeans use such a peculiar dating terminology?
Why not write it as 774-775 AD, which is used by 99 percent of us?
No matter what somebody’s own religion / culture, if he wants to cater to his audience, he uses the dating scheme that is ingrained in its culture. To use this ‘CE’ nonsense is an insult to the people he is talking to.
Anyone know of any human perturbations around this time period, Famine, pestilence, etc? Any historians out there that can wade in on this comment?
Many Google hits refer to mention of an astronomical event in the Saxon chronicles for that year, when a “red crucifix” is seen in the sky. Also to Song of Roland episode when Charlemagne begs God to make the sun stand still so he may pursue his enemies in daylight.
I think the period in question was referred to as ‘The Dark Ages’.
But just remember, TSI is constant and therefore the sun has no influence on climate! /sarc
The entire second half of the first millennium CE is chaotic. It has been suggested that Krakatoa may have erupted on an even greater scale than the 1883 eruption in 535 CE. There is abundant historical evidence of a profound cooling event similar to the effects of the Laki eruption in Iceland in the 18th C. The chill apparently didn’t last long and regionally there are records of both drought and flood. In California the Sierra Nevada are nearly depopulated. Developing cultural patterns are terminated and a near-hiatus in the Sierran archaeological record lasts at least a couple of centuries. Historical documents place the main event at 535 CE, but there is no record of the precise location, unsurprising, since being near enough to know what went up would have been fatal. Following that initial event the plague passes through at least three major cycles. Christian and Muslim shills sell the terrible weather as the punishment of God/Allah and drum up some major business and also blame the bad times on each other. This is followed by the Medieval Warm Period. Interestingly, the first half of the same millennium sees cooling from the Roman Warm period that is comparable to the LIA.
Perhaps the 14C effect could have been achieved by a series of smaller proton events, rather than one large burst.
I note that the politically correct AGU uses Christian Era years, where the abstract uses Anno Domini years. Extra credit to Thomas et al. for placing the AD as a prefix.
vukcevic says:
March 12, 2013 at 2:54 pm
“Astronomers using ESA’s Herschel space observatory have detected emission from the base of black-hole jets for the first time.”
When Black holes become attracted to each other they release their energy and form galaxies, The big bang theory is based on the observation of “Background radiation” and dictated contradictorily, our milky-way galaxy is releasing energy, it came into contact as a black hole with Andromeda which was also a black hole. It is now currently doing what galaxies do, that is releasing it’s energy.
The current theory is; that galaxies formed from nothing, hot dense gases formed galaxies throughout the universe.
The Sun is not “docile” but natural processes follow the power law.
Newman, M. E. J. (2005). “Power laws, Pareto distributions and Zipf’s law”. Contemporary Physics 46 (5): 323–351. arXiv:cond-mat/0412004. doi:10.1080/00107510500052444
[quote]Abstract: When the probability of measuring a particular value of some quantity varies inversely as a power of that value, the quantity is said to follow a power law, also known variously as Zipf’s law or the Pareto distribution. Power laws appear widely in physics, biology, earth and planetary sciences, economics and finance, computer science, demography and the social sciences. For instance, the distributions of the sizes of cities, earthquakes, forest fires, solar flares, moon craters and people’s personal fortunes all appear to follow power laws. The origin of power-law behaviour has been a topic of debate in the scientific community for more than a century. Here we review some of the empirical evidence for the existence of power-law forms and the theories proposed to explain them.[/quote]
Joe Grappa says:
March 12, 2013 at 2:57 pm
Why do you introduce the article using ‘CE’ instead of ‘AD’? Why would anybody in Europe or countries settled by Europeans use such a peculiar dating terminology?
Why not write it as 774-775 AD, which is used by 99 percent of us?
No matter what somebody’s own religion / culture, if he wants to cater to his audience, he uses the dating scheme that is ingrained in its culture. To use this ‘CE’ nonsense is an insult to the people he is talking to.
Joe, the odds are you’re wrong about what dating systems the majority of readers use given WUWT’s global viewership. Even here in the USofA some of us find the use of AD presumptuous. BTW, the “AD” precedes the year number in proper usage. It would properly be “AD 774-775.” Use it backward around a classicist or two and they won’t hesitate to set you straight and accuse you of parochialism as well. Happened to me in Israel. So another good reason to use “CE” is because it is a simple, proper English usage, as opposed to an inverted Latinism, without built-in religious assumptions that irritate Muslims, and make Buddhists smile, while Hindus simply shake their heads.
Technically, the term CE is Common Era – invented by academia to denigrate “any” implication that we have any religious influence on life and liberty – but it is interesting to note that those who are “politically corrupt” didn’t recognize that it could also be “Christian Era.”
What the heck is CE anyway? Why the need for a replacement? Because someone might be offended? Political Correctness at its best.
Ancient text gives clue to mysterious radiation spike
http://www.nature.com/news/ancient-text-gives-clue-to-mysterious-radiation-spike-1.10898
Duster says:
“…another good reason to use ‘CE’ is because it is a simple, proper English usage, as opposed to an inverted Latinism, without built-in religious assumptions that irritate Muslims…”
But what if I like to irritate Muslims?
Two hard spectrum cases considered here result in moderate ozone depletion, so no mass extinction is implied, though we do predict increases in erythema and damage to plants from enhanced solar UV.
And for some perspective on this, relatively how damaging is it to plants for CO2 to double and for temperatures to go up 3 C?
@RACookPE1978
AD-BC does fine, Wikipedia is carp, a fantastic idea as a social experiment, but it has issues.
This might be construed to be relevant: –
Apparently, $400K grant to Yue Deng at U of Texas @ Arlington, who’s been central to the development of the 3-D GITM and she’s also winner of the 2010 CAREER Award. A Leading Light, so-to-speak, and perhaps we’ll be gaining further understanding how that Node (?) in the Sky is affecting our Climate (by orders of magnitude larger, likely, than CO2)
A Quote from her, in the article: –
“Right now, estimation of the amount of energy entering the Earth’s thermosphere is not very precise and can be underestimated by 100 percent. We know even less about how that energy is distributed,” Deng said. “This information is critical because if you put the same amount of energy at 400 kilometers the impact can be 100 times larger than if you put it at 100 kilometers.”
Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2013-03-space-weather-energy.html#jCp
NB: – No opponents of the EU Model have been harmed in the posting of this comment.
Wow, great link, vukcevic!
Thanks also due to Michael Cohen for the ‘red crucifix’ ancient culture connection…
Personally I believe we would all benefit by paying closer attention to what’s been dismissed as ‘myth and ignorance’ over the last century of reductionist science, in most disciplines.
D.B. Stealey says: March 12, 2013 at 3:55 pm
But what if I like to irritate Muslims?
Then you have company.
Mike, who flew past New York on 9–11 enroute to London.
Here is another good article
http://soundgecko.com/view/7eDYPeCdS02s_5V2Nqe7XwoD73BYrx/why-was-earth-bombarded-with-high-energy-particles-in-the-year-774
warning: word ‘crucifix’ is mentioned (the world has gone nuts!).
RACookPE1978 says:
March 12, 2013 at 3:46 pm
“Technically, the term CE is Common Era – invented by academia to denigrate “any” implication that we have any religious influence on life and liberty”
Or…..Carbon Era ?
Correctness Era?
When I was in school a few decades ago, I was taught about “BC”, “AD”, and “CE”.
“BC” being “Before Christ”, and you counted backwards from zero, such that 1000 BC was actually 3000 years ago.
“AD” being “Anno Domini”, or “in the year of our Lord”, and you counted forwards from zero, such that today would be AD 2013.
“CE” was the politically correct version of “AD”, meaning “Current Era”. You counted forward, and if you wanted to count backward from zero, it was “BCE”, or “Before Current Era”.
I thought then, and still do, that the whole thing was stupid; it’s just a naming convention, if you can’t get over the fact that it was started by a bunch of Christians, and really are offended by the terms “BC” and “AD” when stating the year, then you must not be of very sound mind… no need to replace terms that have been in use for hundreds of years with brand new ones that are still based around the religious event!
Of course, being a geologically minded child, I was much more interested in times recorded in “MYA”, and the history of beings inhabiting the earth back then. I’ll never forget the day my mother drove me all the way across town to the new library that had opened, because I had completely exhausted our small, local branch of every book that contained the word “dinosaur” by age 8, including Bakker’s “Dinosaur Heresies”, a copy of which still sits on my shelf at home.
Anyway, protons, yeah, cool stuff 🙂
MHO is, using CE is giving in to the other side.Whoever that is.
When I read 774-775 CE, I felt like Count Dracula getting a stake
in the heart at sunrise. Use AD,please.Thank you.
Alfred
CE is common era. Problem with Anno Domini (shortened form of in the year of our lord):
1/ most people aren’t Christians.
2/ embarrassingly the actual year and date of Jesus’s birth isn’t know to better than about a 10 year period (about 4 BC to 6 AD), assuming that you believe the Biblical accounts.
Duster: …the Sierra Nevada are nearly depopulated. Developing cultural patterns are terminated and a near-hiatus in the Sierran archaeological record lasts at least a couple of centuries.
Well, I googled around looking for more information on this, and, as frequently happens, wound up following all kinds of interesting rabbit trails that weren’t what I was looking for. Any chance you can give us links or citations?
Indicative perhaps of a stronger solar magnetic field during the Dark Ages Cold Period, as during the Little Ice Age, known from the Maunder & Dalton sunspot minima, backed up by Be & C isotope data. Cosmoclimatology yet again rears its ugly (to the anti-scientific consensus) head.
Ok, I’ll bite – just what effects would we expect on present day technologies from a proton spike? EMP is one thing that’s discussed, but heck if I’ve seen anything on proton effects…
Another question would be, could the spike have lasted for significantly less than 24 hours? If so, only part of the Earth would have been affected.
Of course, the big question is, could it happen again in similar fashion?
vukcevic says: “Ancient text gives clue to mysterious radiation spike
http://www.nature.com/news/ancient-text-gives-clue-to-mysterious-radiation-spike-1.10898 ”
Nice link, vuk. The phenomenon was seen shortly after sunset, which would be consistent with some sort of solar flare made visible upon occlusion of the solar disc by the horizon. I think we’re closing in on something important. A pity there aren’t more contemporary accounts.
BC and AD return to the museum of history:
http://life.nationalpost.com/2013/02/27/museum-of-civilization-putting-the-christ-back-in-history-as-bc-and-ad-return/
Any historical references to something weird happening?
“Following this announcement, researchers pointed to an entry in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle that describes a ‘red crucifix’ seen after sunset and suggested this might be a supernova. But this dates from 776, too late to account for the carbon-14 data and still does not explain why no remnant has been detected.”
How accurate is the dating? or the account? Does this include the calendar correction that changed Isaac Newton’s birday to later than Christmas day?
stricq says:
March 12, 2013 at 3:51 pm
What the heck is CE anyway? Why the need for a replacement? Because someone might be offended? Political Correctness at its best.
*
I’m with you. I reject CE precisely for that reason. The count of years we use in the West – call it whatever you will – will still be wrong anyway according to other calendar systems. By changing the name so as “not to offend” we make ourselves look weak and stupid because we are not actually changing the system – just the name, as though we are ashamed.
Does anyone know of any other country, nation or religion, other than those in the West, that sells itself out? I loathe that in our modern era, the West is so ashamed of itself and our religion(s) are thrust aside. Hate to break to it everyone but WE ARE NOT GUILTY. Our nations should grow some pride.
AD/BC has lasted over 2000 years already, I think we can accept it now. If others can’t, that’s their choice and their problem, but you know what? You might find the objections came from WITHIN our society, not without. PC is another Green tool, in my opinion. Take away religion, you take away spirit, and a nation without spirit is a nation easily controlled. People who don’t value an inner worth don’t see any reason for ethics. People who don’t have ethics see no problem with killing and maiming and destroying, nor for thieving, lying and manipulating data to achieve the end they desire for their Cause.
Look to the Green-Reds. They are dismantling everything about our societies – Everything. Religion has to go. It’s a major step to gain full control and give us hopelessness.
Re sensitive souls offended by use of the Christian calendar’s “AD” designation: if you are going to use the numbers themselves (774-775) they are Christian, too. The Islamic calendar would make this the year 125 (I think) and there are probably other systems (Myan, etc). We could be so politically correct that we couldn’t tell a story with at date in it.
This has to be a record. An article on Solar variations and still no condescending remarks from Svalgaard to vukcevic
I would like to see some discussion of the effect of proton-events and other solar activity on the reliability of C14-dating. If solar events can increase the C14 production, can the absence of these events also decrease C14 production? It seems to me that the dating scheme is highly dependent on a constant production rate, which this post would call into doubt.
I’ve been collecting descriptions of natural phenomena, for a Masters project, from the British Isles (mostly) and also from the Frankish kingdom and the Middle East for this period. The following is what I have so far for the years 773-776.
773. “Unaccustomed drought and heat of the sun so that nearly all bread-(grain) failed. Abundance of oak-mast afterwards.” (Annals of Ulster, vol. 1. p 227.)
Between 775 and 785. “In the reign of al-Mahdi we were struck by a wind so strong that we thought that we would be swept away to the last judgement…We remained only a little time before the wind disappeared and what we were in vanished.” (al-Tabari, vol XXIX, p 250.)
776. “Here a red sign of Christ appeared in the heavens after the sun’s setting.” (Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, p 50.)
776. “Then a sign appeared; it extended from heaven to earth, and appeared like a cross. After sunset this sign showed itself.” (Geoffrey Gaimar’s History of the English, p 752.) The date for this event is corrected from the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle.
776. “…fiery and fearful signs were seen in the heavens after sunset…” (Roger of Wendover, vol. 1, p 154.) Repeated by Matthew of Westminster, vol. 1, p369, A.D. 776. Both Roger and Matthew are later compilers.
776, at the castle of Syburg in Saxony, where the Frankish garrison was being besieged by the Saxons. “One day, while they prepared for battle against the Christians in the castle, God’s glory was made manifest over the castle church in the sight of a great number outside as well as inside, many of whom are still with us. They reportedly saw the likeness of two shields red with flame wheeling over the church.” (Royal Frankish Annals, year 776, pp 53 and 55.)
I hope this helps.
There is also the following item, which is my favourite anomalous “event”, which fits into the same time frame.
776. “At that time serpents were seen; never before had any been observed like them; they showed themselves in Sussex; those who looked at them said that they were white and black, that they became red and green, and changed many colours seven or eight times a day; when night approached, they sang in so sweet a manner that there was no instrument under heaven which men would so willingly hear. When any one ran after them, the fool who wished to catch them was quickly tied by the legs, so that he could not move his feet.” (Geoffrey Gaimar’s History of the English, p 752.) The date for this entry is from the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. This entry adds much to the very simple entry in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (p 50), which reads “…snakes were seen extraordinarily in the land of the South Saxons.”
Best wishes, Paul Farquharson.
Before Present:
Wiki
Before Present (BP) years is a time scale used in archaeology, geology, and other scientific disciplines to specify when events in the past occurred. Because the “present” time changes, standard practice is to use 1 January 1950 as the origin of the age scale, reflecting the fact that radiocarbon dating became practicable in the 1950s. The abbreviation “BP”, with the same meaning, has also been interpreted as “Before Physics”; that is, before nuclear weapons testing artificially altered the proportion of the carbon isotopes in the atmosphere.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Before_Present
Some “peaks cosmic origin”:
774?: ~Japan?
1006: China? (SN1006)
1054>1056: Europa? (SN1054)
1181: ? (SN1181)
~1300: “RX J0852.0-4622”, ?
~1420: explosion of the star Betelgeuse
1344?-1348?: ??
1572: ? (SN1572)
1604: ? (SN1604)
… (SN 1667) – (SN 1680)
…and I keep my “BP” (Before Present)
Political correctness gone wild. I read an article today that referred to lesbians as, “women of minority sexual orientation”.
Tim from Australia says:
March 12, 2013 at 6:17 pm
This has to be a record. An article on Solar variations and still no condescending remarks from Svalgaard to vukcevic
Vuk is behaving himself [for a change].
Carrington Event anyone? Would be more of a crisis than some casual warming!
Good article. Thanks.
Tiburon says:
March 12, 2013 at 4:03 pm
Space weather research to look at energy distribution
March 11, 2013
..“Right now, estimation of the amount of energy entering the Earth’s thermosphere is not very precise and can be underestimated by 100 percent. We know even less about how that energy is distributed,” Deng said. “This information is critical because if you put the same amount of energy at 400 kilometers the impact can be 100 times larger than if you put it at 100 kilometers.”..
..Deng said the grant team plans to integrate information from several different scientific models and the COSMIC satellite program. They will create a more comprehensive model of how conductivity is distributed through altitudes. The research also will explore the role that Joule heating, or friction heating, and charged particles in the ionosphere play in energy distribution. COSMIC is a joint Taiwan/United States science mission for weather, climate, space weather and geodetic research that is entering its sixth year…
http://phys.org/news/2013-03-space-weather-energy.html#jCp
thx for tip
Ha!
Want to keep your keep your internet connection, power, communication in most forms, after a major solar event?
Ya can’t,,,,,,,but ya can know about the onset of such before most other folks will.
Try this if interested.
https://pss.swpc.noaa.gov/LoginWebForm.aspx?ReturnUrl=%2fproductsubscriptionservice%2f
Leif, can you give us a dissection of this discussion’s accuracy? Yes, Art Bell and Michio Kaku ~:-)
lsvalgaard says:
March 12, 2013 at 7:07 pm
“Vuk is behaving himself [for a change].”
That remark is in itself arrogant and condescending.
I would request that everyone from now on date things Ab Urbe Condita. Using any other calendar will offend me.
There. AUC 1527.
OssQss says:
March 12, 2013 at 8:22 pm
Leif, can you give us a dissection of this discussion’s accuracy? Yes, Art Bell and Michio Kaku ~:-)
Generally, OK, but with a few flaps:
‘every time the solar poles flips a shock wave …’ is nonsense. No shock wave.
‘monitored sunspots for a century…’ more like 4 centuries.
The effect of a Carrington event [or larger] when [not if] it happens will be severe and global. Many of our satellites will get zapped, communications and internet will not work too well. Power transmission lines will be impacted big time. So this is a real [future] problem. We really cannot do much to protect ourselves because our vulnerable infra-structure is already in place. Perhaps stock up on supplies [I hate to sound like a survivalist, but this is real – I haven’t BTW] is something individuals can do.
Alberta Slim says:
March 12, 2013 at 8:32 pm
“Vuk is behaving himself [for a change].”
That remark is in itself arrogant and condescending.
It was meant that way. What’s in it for you that you should complain?
wow, great thread! mix of science and spirituality and good humour (mostly), which is catnip for mois.
speaking of ‘proton events’ though, I see we’re likely to be clipped by a filament erupted this morning from somewhere near SS 1690 and 1691, sometime around midnight UT – 1:00 UT on the 14th…expected long duration C-class. And yet another event about an hour ago (2:45 UT) from SS 1692, but not clear where it’s headed. Gonna check Stereo Behind COR2 imagery, and the density and radial velocity on the CME predictor, though I doubt that’s updated yet.
Nice pics here: – http://www.solarham.net/
make that 1:00 to 3:00 UT on 15th and this evening’s was also a long duration C-class.
So far no worries. Feed the horses though. 😉
I’ve always wondered about Carrington level events – – modern cars lack ‘points’ (remember those, anyone?) to replace, rather computers only for ignition. Would a hi-level X-class light up the circuit boards enough to fry, even if turned off? Makes for an interesting mental picture, if several hundred million cars can’t be started (except those parked in Faraday cages, I suppose… ;-))
Something about the Dr M Kaku audio clip posted, that I don’t get/understand: – He mentions ‘eight minutes’ later… I get ( I think) that X-rays move quick, flare-wise, and that CME’s can, on rare occasion, hit 1/4 speed of light, but isn’t it true that CME’s are moving about 500 km second, so we’d have a day or two before things start interacting with our magnetic field?
And on the positive side, isn’t it true there’s some evidence that our field has some sort of ‘muting’ effect the facing sun’s SunSpots? As yet fully understood, that is, but I believe it was Maunder who lent weight to this postulate.
Tiburon,
I saw a show on the military channel on which they demonstrated a prototype EMP weapon. The range of the prototype wasn’t that great and the machine was pretty massive, but they drove a modern car through the pulse and while it killed the engine, the car started right back up after. While a Carrington level even is much bigger, the car was only 10-20 meters from the pulse emitter when the device was fired.
My understanding is that a big part of the vulnerability of the power grid is thousands of miles of wire that will act as a massive antenna. The strength of the current surge is proportional not only to the strength of the magnetic pulse, but the length of the affected conductor. I think it is highly unlikely that computer chips not directly connected to the power grid (or something else that will act as a large enough antenna) will be permanently damaged even if active when the pulse hits.
Tiburon says:
March 12, 2013 at 9:14 pm
Would a hi-level X-class light up the circuit boards enough to fry, even if turned off?
No, as the particles will mostly not penetrate the atmosphere and the effect from induction from a rapidly changing magnetic field will be small because the size of the board is small. Telegraph lines were affected back then, because they were looooong.
A highly unlikely but relevent risk: – (the author often references WUWT)
about 6 min.
Tiburon says:
March 12, 2013 at 9:22 pm
Something about the Dr M Kaku audio clip posted, that I don’t get/understand: – He mentions ‘eight minutes’ later…
Yeah, that was kind of nonsense too. It takes the light 8 minutes to get from the Sun to the Earth [and in those 8 minutes we have no idea what is going to hit us]
CMEs take usually a day or two the reach us. The speed record is 17 hours [Carrington’s was in this class]
And on the positive side, isn’t it true there’s some evidence that our field has some sort of ‘muting’ effect the facing sun’s SunSpots? As yet fully understood, that is, but I believe it was Maunder who lent weight to this postulate.
The Earth field is hundreds of times stronger than the strongest solar wind field so is a pretty good shield. What can cause problems is the electric currents induced in long conductors by rapid changes of the external magnetic field.
CE = Common Era
To remove religious standard, at least in name.
Dr Svalgaard – Thank you. I think I understand. Magnetic induction has to build up over long circuitry, ie power station transformers, transmission lines, and the like, and wouldn’t do so over tiny short length PC chips. That’s a relief then, but I’m still keeping my pocket siphon dust free as I doubt the pumps will be working down at the local Exxon 😉
Nature carried an article last summer on the subject. Hope no one objects. It’s a bit more satisfying than an abstract.
http://www.nature.com/news/mysterious-radiation-burst-recorded-in-tree-rings-1.10768
D.B. Stealey says:
March 12, 2013 at 3:55 pm
Duster says:
“…another good reason to use ‘CE’ is because it is a simple, proper English usage, as opposed to an inverted Latinism, without built-in religious assumptions that irritate Muslims…”
But what if I like to irritate Muslims?
That would be your fatwa 😉
Thank you also, MattS – – two knowledgable opinions make for me, ‘until disproven’ (G-d Forbid, of course, a real world test), fact.
I suppose wel’ll soon be learning much more about what generates Earthly weather, as we begin to understand more about the electrical/magnetic/chemical atmospheric interactions through the levels of the atmosphere from thermopause down to troposphere, in response to ‘inductions’ into our Earth’s magnetic “shield” by the solar “wind” (I’ve learned it’s anything but a ‘wind’, that being just a poor term that got entrenched – but rather charged particles, in arguably varying ‘balances’ between negative and positive charge – hence potentially ‘electrical current’….in turn generating a magnetic field…if one subscribes to that. I do ‘get’ that there’s heated debate as to whether plasma in vacuum can carry current, and cart versus horse debate about magnetic fields in space I’m not qualified to do more than observe at this juncture, while having my ‘suspicions’ about which way it’s leaning)
I find it fascinating, engaging and delightful, and comments like yours and from Dr. Svalgaard, and vukcevic and so many others are constantly expanding my horizons. Thanks!
“””””…..Mike McMillan says:
March 12, 2013 at 3:37 pm
Perhaps the 14C effect could have been achieved by a series of smaller proton events, rather than one large burst.
I note that the politically correct AGU uses Christian Era years, where the abstract uses Anno Domini years. Extra credit to Thomas et al. for placing the AD as a prefix……”””””
And here I thought that CE stood for “Common Era”, and you are telling us it is some religious connotation; so I assume that AD stands for “After the Death”.
Well I hope it gets sorted out soon.
“””””…..D.B. Stealey says:
March 12, 2013 at 3:55 pm
Duster says:
“…another good reason to use ‘CE’ is because it is a simple, proper English usage, as opposed to an inverted Latinism, without built-in religious assumptions that irritate Muslims…”
But what if I like to irritate Muslims?…..”””””
Well when I grew up, they were called Moslems, or Mohammedans, and muslim was a kind of sack cloth material; oh, I suppose that’s why they changed it. Maybe I was lucky to grow up!
“””””…..MattS says:
March 12, 2013 at 9:32 pm
Tiburon,
I saw a show on the military channel on which they demonstrated a prototype EMP weapon. The range of the prototype wasn’t that great and the machine was pretty massive, but they drove a modern car through the pulse and while it killed the engine, the car started right back up after. While a Carrington level even is much bigger, the car was only 10-20 meters from the pulse emitter when the device was fired.
My understanding is that a big part of the vulnerability of the power grid is thousands of miles of wire that will act as a massive antenna. The strength of the current surge is proportional not only to the strength of the magnetic pulse, but the length of the affected conductor. I think it is highly unlikely that computer chips not directly connected to the power grid (or something else that will act as a large enough antenna) will be permanently damaged even if active when the pulse hits……”””””
Well they aren’t likely to affect long distance power transmission lines because those lines are twisted up tightly , so em waves don’t induce any net currents in them of any consequence.
Next time you drive along a freeway with high Voltage transmission lines along it, watch the conductors spiral around each other as you move from pole to pole. Well it may take a mile to make one twist. They are typically three phase, and every few polses they will change the lay of the wires, and slip a third of a twist in; it’s really rather clever how they change the hardware to twist the cables without shorting everything out.
So nyet on the induced em currents. Remember at 60 Herz, the wavelength is 5,000 km, so those HV wires are twisted tighter than a pretzel, maybe 1,000 twists per wavelength.
Tiburon says: “(the author [Suspicous Observa] often references WUWT)”
That is remarkable to hear that SuspiciousObserver “often references WUWT.” If anyone drops by that channel be sure to “reference WUWT” too. Perhaps you might “reference WUWT” and mention that “Greedy Lying Bastards” is a box office fail and WUWT says “When they lie right on the cover, it speaks volumes about the content of the film.”.
Or you might “reference WUWT” to point out that we could actually be producing far more oil and coal than we are. In any event, be sure to “reference WUWT” right back, to return the favor, and enjoy the response. They are going to love you! (:
“Vuk is behaving himself [for a change].”
Yeah, that’ll be the day .
The Earth’s is dancing to the sun’s tune, beyond and above the TSI
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/SGMF.htm
Joe
I agree with you.
“AD/BC has lasted over 2000 years already”, yeah i believe Jesus’ first words were, “This is year zero, I ‘ll explain later…”.
While we wait for a CME hit
Duster says:
March 12, 2013 at 3:34 pm
The entire second half of the first millennium CE is chaotic. It has been suggested that Krakatoa may have erupted on an even greater scale than the 1883 eruption in 535 CE.
—
I saw a show on one of the science channels this weekend that postulated a cometary impact just north of Australia in 535or 536AD. They’ve found two craters that date to that time just off the coast.
Duster says:
March 12, 2013 at 3:46 pm
—
Most of the non-Europeans that I talk to don’t mind the AD convention, they find the CE convention to be just silly and equally Euro-centric, since there is in reality nothing common about it. Every culture has it’s own dating system, it’s quite presumptous of us to proclaim that ours is the common one. It isn’t.
A.D. Everard says:
March 12, 2013 at 5:37 pm
—
The AD/BC system didn’t start until around 400 to 500 AD.
The Christian leaders got tired of numbering time by how long since the most recent Ceaser came to power, so they assigned a monk (who’s name I have forgotten again) to figure out when Christ was born. Given the quality of historical records available to him, he did a pretty good job.
Daniel Sweger says:
March 12, 2013 at 6:18 pm
—-
The fact that C14 production is not constant is already know, it’s one of the reason’s why there is an error bar around C14 dates.
Any how, they’ve been able to calibrate the C14 tables by taking objects who’s dates are known via other mechanisms and carbon dating them.
Hmm. Wondering if such an event (or the 1857 event) is more just bad luck (event aimed directly at earth), a truly gigantic, unusual event, or a combo of both.
Rob Ricket says:
March 12, 2013 at 7:00 pm
Political correctness gone wild. I read an article today that referred to lesbians as, “women of minority sexual orientation”.
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If I hadn’t seen that in context, I would have assumed it meant women who prefer minorities. IE blacks, asians, hispanics, etc.
The power grid has protection. Whether it’s enough will, as always, be subject to debate.
When protecting the grid there are two considerations, the first is rise time, how quickly does the voltage level jump. With a lightning strike, the voltage can jump by thousands of volts in a matter of micro-seconds. The other is total energy. A lightning strike has a lot of energy, but it is small compared to projected EMP events.
Power lines have two types of protection, surge protectors and circuit breakers. Circuit breakers shut the system down in the case of a high energy event, but they are slow, taking several tenths of a second to react. Surge protectors can react quickly but would burn up if they tried to absorb a high energy event. The two together provide sufficient protection for most foreseeable events. The surge protector kicks in, absorbing what it can which gives the circuit breakers time to react.
There is cause for concern, but I”m not as paniced as many people seem to be.
george e. smith says:
March 12, 2013 at 11:09 pm
—
That twisting would control the voltage between each of the three wires, but an EMP would still raise the potential of all three wires relative to ground.
Joe Grappa says:
March 12, 2013 at 2:57 pm
“…”
____________
Bravo, Sir.
Lsvalgaard or another solar expert, while a bit off topic, sort of, I have a question for you. Does TSI fully account for the energy input, or effect on Earth from the solar “winds” eg… EUV and ????…etc…?
Wlf15y says:
March 13, 2013 at 7:51 am
Does TSI fully account for the energy input, or effect on Earth from the solar “winds” eg… EUV and ????…etc…?
The ‘T’ in TSI stands for Total [Solar Irradiance], so is the Total Radiative Output of the Sun [at least in our direction]. EUV is part of TSI. The solar wind [particles, magnetic effects, cosmic rays, etc] accounts for less than a millionth of the total.
@ vukcevic
– Beautiful, haunting video from NASA Goddard. I’m struck by how much the colourized twists (Birkland currents?) of energy and magnetism, followed by violent ejections of something (ionized mass?), resemble the Z-pinch sequence as employed at point of fusion ignition by the FocusFusion folks (DPF dense plasma focus) (and hi-speed photographed). “resemble” – to my eye, that is, not ‘fact’.
@ George E. Smith; and MarkW
– George, what you say makes sense (though it seems to contradict Dr. Svalgaard’s and MattS’ insight – I didn’t realize about the twisted sets of transmission line wires. I’ll ‘assume’ (risk) that this sophisticated technique to counter wave propagation is more employed in 1st World applications, less so in developing countries. Not understanding the physics I have to wonder though that although the wavelengths of space induced (?) EM surges is in 60 Hz range (?), meaning 5000 km waves, whether some interaction with the Earth’s own magnetic field and currents would work to ‘shorten’ those wavelengths, that is that shorter wavelength frequencies present in our EM environment would somehow be amplified.
– Mark – I afraid I don’t understand about a solar EMP ‘raising the potential’ of the transmission wire sets relative to ground, but while it makes some sense to me, also, my question would remain as above – whether some interaction/propagation of energy through the EM spectrum would nonetheless be at work in such an event.
I’m also not losing sleep over a ‘Solar Kill Shot’ – because none of us know ‘our time’; “teach us to count our days, then we shall acquire a heart of wisdom” as it says in Psalm 90 by Moses Our Teacher; and in any case Man(+Woman)kind have apparently survived such events in the past, however devastating. So far, at least 😉 But that said, I’ve heard you’re argument regards how robust is the Grid, and contrary explanations that a significant Solar EMP Event would cut through the surge protectors like butter, and far too quickly for the circuit breakers to cut in. Couldn’t this be tested somehow? My understanding is that electrical/plasma phenomena are scalable, so one would think something meaningful could be deduced from laboratory experiment…(though of course it wouldn’t account for my imagined ‘real world’ corollary EM effects mentioned above…)
All that said, I’d feel a little more sanguine if we were busy building a reserve of main transformers, which I understand take months to construct, and are as big as 3 story houses, or something (and of which, we have zero ‘spares’). Sort of like keeping some candles around the house, and some water carboys, in case of an icestorm, for example (I’m in Ontario, Canada :-))
issue@Zeke
Tiburon says: “(the author [Suspicous Observa] often references WUWT)”
“That is remarkable to hear that SuspiciousObserver “often references WUWT.” If anyone drops by that channel be sure to “reference WUWT” too. Perhaps you might “reference WUWT” and mention that “Greedy Lying Bastards” is a box office fail and WUWT says “When they lie right on the cover, it speaks volumes about the content of the film.”.
Or you might “reference WUWT” to point out that we could actually be producing far more oil and coal than we are. In any event, be sure to “reference WUWT” right back, to return the favor, and enjoy the response. They are going to love you! (: ”
Zeke, I’m afraid I can’t quite follow what you’re saying here. SO (Suspicious Observer) seems a very sober and measured individual, careful in his pronouncements, and he’s certainly more knowledgeable than ‘the average bear’ regards earth/sky interactions. He has his opinions, but is clear, repeatedly, to counsel that the listener use discernment, research and review and reach their own conclusions. He also states, that he’s of a mind the ‘whenever he hears only ‘one side’ of an idea, he’s suspicious’, and that he believes the actual Truth of “what’s really going on” lies somewhere between what we receive as information from the MSM and the many analyses, good and bad, that one finds in the private and contrarian media. This seems cool to me, which is why I listen to his daily 3 min. ‘weather reports’, daily.
If you’re implying that SO is a Warmist (as the term is understood here), I’d have to differ with you – if anything his commentary shows him a “Cool-ist” – though he has strong opinion that weather events are tending extreme, along with geo-seismic events (also within our solar system, both). – I’m at a little variance with him on this, as I’ve read the abstracts of multiple papers showing that nothing we’ve seen exceeds the bounds of ‘natural variability’. However, that said, I believe he’s right also (about the “extremes”), in that it’s not a question of How Big, or How Frequent, but rather, Where, and When, in overview.
If you’re implying that he has a following of commenters on YouTube who get bent out of shape about resource depletion, CO2 catastrophe, and the like – I wouldn’t know, I very rarely browse his comment threads, and have never commented there (he has over 70,000 subscribers, and nearly 12 Million Views). My impression regards his opinion of CAGW is that he ‘doesn’t have a dog in the fight’, and tries to educate his followers that while we (humans) certainly have some effects on our climate, it’s not by pathway of CO2 ‘enrichment’. He’s often referenced WUWT as source of articles further debunking this claim.
All that said, many of his opinions would not likely be welcome here at WUWT, and in those issues he does have a stake: – the EU model, HAARP, contrails/Chemtrails – ; but I further find his analyses of these issues to also be quite sober, and persuasive, and a welcome relief from the often ‘fever swamp’ quality of much that’s online in this regard (with exception of EU Model, which is, after all, going Mainstream step-by-step, despite it’s enormous threat to established scientific disciplines, and subsequently, scientific funding and careers. I could wish that everyone would just ‘get outta the Sandbox’ – there’s so much to learn and integrate that in a reasonable world no one would be ‘hurt’ by these ideas, only further enlightened, by opening themselves to new data and it’s implications. Isn’t that what science is supposed to be about?)
BTW, If you’re saying that Oil and Coal production should be amplified beyond our immediate needs without a concurrent ‘full-court push’ for alterative and do-able energy sources, I’d have to ask you, Why?
To me, Oil and Coal are far too valuable a resource for all aspects of our industrial plant to be burned for power, and their products and by-products are (likely) vital for future generations, at least until we get Star Trek “replicators” ;-).
We should get off them as an energy source as soon as practically possible. And I say this even though I tend (without meaningful geologic proofs or references) to the thinking of Dr Thomas Gold on this issue – that Oil is Abiotic, and sourced from deep mantle biologic processi. To me, however, it seems obvious that replenishment rates of fields is well below our rates of consumption, so ‘give it a rest’, if we can; – that is – we have to care for the living today, first.
Those curious about what all the fuss is about can find SO and his daily 3 min ‘weather reports’, here: – http://www.youtube.com/user/Suspicious0bservers
“””””…..MarkW says:
March 13, 2013 at 7:06 am
george e. smith says:
March 12, 2013 at 11:09 pm
—
That twisting would control the voltage between each of the three wires, but an EMP would still raise the potential of all three wires relative to ground……”””””
Mark, why don’t you throw in some calculations, to show us just how large an induced Voltage between the multiphase twisted cables and the ground can occur; well compared to the multi hundred kiloVolt potentials that are there already, or the multi megaVolt spikes that result from direct lightning strikes on power lines.
Solar EM bursts and EMP are like striking a match in a forest fire inferno, as power grid threats.
Now if you are talking about transient effects on the actual control electronics, you might have a weakness there, but the power machinery itself is quite another matter.
So just what is the characteristic impedance of a wire (high) over a ground plane, and how is the effective diameter of the wire impacted by the twisted structure.
Are we talking about a new species of Brazillian jungle butterfly here ?
This problem is akin to the problem of cancers “caused” by power lines going across school grounds. Simple field and energy density calculations show such fields are about 27 orders of magnitude too low to cause changes in any atomic or molecular structure in a human body.
“””””…..Tiburon says:
March 13, 2013 at 9:46 am
>……………………………………<
@ George E. Smith; and MarkW
– George, what you say makes sense (though it seems to contradict Dr. Svalgaard’s and MattS’ insight – I didn’t realize about the twisted sets of transmission line wires. I’ll ‘assume’ (risk) that this sophisticated technique to counter wave propagation is more employed in 1st World applications, less so in developing countries. Not understanding the physics I have to wonder though that although the wavelengths of space induced (?) EM surges is in 60 Hz range (?), meaning 5000 km waves, whether some interaction with the Earth’s own magnetic field and currents would work to ‘shorten’ those wavelengths, that is that shorter wavelength frequencies present in our EM environment would somehow be amplified.
– Mark – I afraid I don’t understand about a solar EMP ‘raising the potential’ of the transmission wire sets relative to ground, but while it makes some sense to me, also, my question would remain as above – whether some interaction/propagation of energy through the EM spectrum would nonetheless be at work in such an event………"""""
Well Sharky, nothing I said, is in conflict with what Dr Svalgaard said about currents induced in long wires.
He has a PhD (wild guess) in presumably solar physics, so he would understand solar emps.
I only have a bachelor degree in Physics, including a major in Radio-Physics, that being EM propagation theory (Maxwell/Hertz), Antenna design Transmission line theory, Electronics, Ionospheric physics, radio transmission and reception; you know, that sort of stuff.
The power transmission lines are twisted, not for any EMP reasons. At 60 Hz, the wavelength in air is 5,000 km, or about 1250 km for a quarter wavelength, so long crosscountry transmission grids, are a significant fraction of a wavelength at 60 Hz, so a whole lot of power is radiatively lost from the transmission lines, if you DON'T twist them. The twisting results in mutual cancellation of one wire by the others, and completely kills any dipole radiation and many other higher order radiation modes as well.
Dr Svalgaard said nothing about twisted wires.
Not sure what MattS's insight was, I must have missed that.
And if as you said, you don't understand the Physics, why would you wonderabout the earth magnetic field fluctuations. Are YOU aware of ANY fluctuations in the earth's magnetic field, that happen at frequencies that are even HIGHER than the 60 Hz of power line transmission frequencies ? I'm not; which doesn't mean they don't occur; just means that I've never heard of that.
Incidently, any long wire antenna, that is short compared to a quarter wavelength, (lambda/10) looks electrically like a capacitor.
So the equivalent circuit of a long wire antenna, would be your EMP generator as a Voltage source of so many Volts per metre electric field strength (microvolts per metre for radio/tv), times the antenna height, with a series source resistance of 377 Ohms (120 pi, the characteristic impedance of free space), connected by a small capacitor ( a few tens of picoFarads)to whatever electrical load you have. The magnetic coupling to a long wire antenna is small compared to the electric field coupling.
You hear a lot of talk about varying EM fields from the sun. You don't hear a heck of a lot of information about the time rate of change of those fields. The sun is a pretty big object. It doesn't tend to do a lot of things in too much of a hurry.
But now that is over in Dr Svalgaard's bailiwick, about which I know next to nothing.
You have to have wire coils with varying magnetic fields to induce currents in them. The inductance of a wire over a ground plane is of the order of 3.3 nanoHenry's per cm, or about 0.1 microHenry per foot. So the induced Voltage would be L di/dt, so of you know the rate of change of current in your emp field, then you could calculate the induced current in a wire.
Oh! Noes!……We are all gonna die from a Solar event!!!!!!! Let’s gather up several Quadrillion dollars and build spaceships to put a tinfoil hat on the earth. Yep! that will do it!
I see mass media every where doing test marketing to see if they can con us with solar events, since the climate scam is winding down.
They picked a loser with CO2 and now in their ignorance start banging the drum for anther loser idea during the least active solar cycle in quite a long time.
They find that an event with about 7 or more times greater fluence (depending on the spectrum) than an observed October 1989 solar flare event
What ‘October 1989’ event are they talking about. The NE power outage was in March, 1989 caused by a solar event.
Did they even look for or find any spike in the 1857 event?
george e. smith says:
March 13, 2013 at 11:20 am
…….
Hi George
Here is what one hour of geomagnetic storm ( recorded at Tromso) looks like:
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/SO.htm
these are recordings at 1 min rate, I am sure there must be lot more of higher frequencies..
Not much of a chance for a standing wave at above frequency
Thanks George E. – I’m going to save your comment for leisurely review! At this rate you’ll be inspiring me to head back to college for physics/electronics (seriously). This stuff fascinates, but the visualization still eludes. BTW, I of course do NOT know of any higher frequencies in our magnetic field than the power line 60 Hz – would have been all over that, were it so ;o).
But it does give me a little ‘assignment’ to explore, should I find access to sources in the future. As you point out, there are millions of volts of potential between earth and sky so mayhaps there’s something ‘unexpected’ that can develop, in special circumstance? Just babbling, so never mind.
I’m still not clear then why wires burned during the Carrington (this is anecdotal of course), except that I suppose they weren’t high voltage/frequency and certainly weren’t braided to cancel out dipole radiation and higher orders of rad.
And also not clear why at least one, if not more, of the honkin’ main transformers burnt out during the Quebec event…all considered. Something to do with them ‘acting as antenna/capacitors’?
Please don’t feel constrained to answer, btw – you’re not gettin’ paid for this Physics 101 stuff, and I can carry m’own water in terms of reading and research. Thanks again…
@Dennis Gaskill “I see mass media every where doing test marketing to see if they can con us with solar events, since the climate scam is winding down.
They picked a loser with CO2 and now in their ignorance start banging the drum for anther loser idea during the least active solar cycle in quite a long time.”
Dennis, firstly it seems pretty well accepted and established from what I’ve read, that flares/CME’s can occur irrespective of where we are in the solar cycle, minima or maxima…
Secondly, while I agree there’s the usual sensational catering to folk’s fears in the MSM, it’s not to my eye focused on the condition of our star, our high atmosphere, nor our magnetics. Rather, it seems like NASA and the like are grudgingly letting out little hints that there are some changes that are ‘outside the norm’ going on over the last few centuries and recent decades, on earth and in the solar system, and for which they don’t have a clear accounting. Do they ‘know or suspect more than they’re telling us’? Who knows! A big blessing about our modern info universe is that source data is widely available, as is popular peer-to-peer communication, so many qualified folks can do analysis and bring out these anomalies and their potential implications.
Given the range of anomalous data emerging, I think it’s reasonable to suspect that macro changes in our environment, not of our doing, may be pointing towards substantive shifts in the earth’s ‘balance’ – energy balance perhaps, or homeostasis – towards a different order.
Solar Kill Shot? Not so much.
sorry, vukcevic….what’s on the y axis?
@Duster says:
March 12, 2013 at 3:34 pm
If you’re staying in the 535 time frame, Muslims won’t be doing any haranguing for another 100 years or so, since Muhammad didn’t have his visions until c. 622.
Tiburon says:
March 13, 2013 at 2:21 pm
………..
graph is updated
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/SO.htm
@Joe Grappa:
Hey, if he wants to use CE for Christian Era, that’s his choice…
😉
@MattS:
That’s not a prototype weapon, it is an EMP testing station. Mil Spec gear goes there to be tested against pulses of the size likely from nukes.
@Anyone Worried:
Old (up until about 1986) Mercedes Diesels have NO electronics on the engine. There is a vacuum driven fuel shut off to stop it, once running. Only “electrical” needed is the starter motor and battery… I have one. I’ll be driving. (The “kid” got the wagon with “points” in it… so he will be driving too 😉
Old cars are still out there…
Any vehicle based on a design used by any major military power ought to be fine, too (that is why they have the test station…) Frankly, I’d expect any solar event to be orders of magnitude less than a nuke in the ionosphere, so don’t expect cars to “have issues” anyway (even those with computers).
@Tiburon:
We don’t need to “save the oil” for “petro” chemicals. They were made from coal before the petroleum was found to be cheaper and Eastman Chemical still does use coal. Also most “petro” chemicals in the USA are made from natural gas as it is cheaper here. Also we can make them from wood (guess where we got methanol aka “Wood Alcohol” before using coal or natural gas?…) and even from trash. ANY carbon source will do. (Heck, we could even use carbonate rocks…)
The notion that running out of oil means running out of plastics and organic chemicals is just a fantasy to scare the children and other gullibles.
We never run out of energy, and the carbon never leaves the planet, so we can always make carbon based chemicals as needed.
Using charcoal as a Diesel fuel:
http://chiefio.wordpress.com/2013/03/09/chws-charcoal-liquid-diesel-fuel/
Why we never run out of energy supply:
http://chiefio.wordpress.com/2009/05/29/ulum-ultra-large-uranium-miner-ship/
Or other stuff:
http://chiefio.wordpress.com/2009/05/08/there-is-no-shortage-of-stuff/
http://chiefio.wordpress.com/2009/03/20/there-is-no-energy-shortage/
Meanwhile, back at the sun….
has anyone correlated times of major Carrington type events with any particular solar cycle or pattern? Or is it just random noise and not much pattern?
“””””…..Tiburon says:
March 13, 2013 at 2:15 pm
Thanks George E. – I’m going to save your comment for leisurely review! At this rate you’ll be inspiring me to head back to college for physics/electronics (seriously). This stuff fascinates, but the visualization still eludes. BTW, I of course do NOT know of any higher frequencies in our magnetic field than the power line 60 Hz – would have been all over that, were it so ;o)……”””””
An interesting EM antenna comparison, is the typical marine antennas used on small private vessels for Marine VHF communications (line of sight) and the old, now seldom seen Loran-C navigation system.
Marine VHF is at frequencies near the broadcast FM bands. 136 MHz seems to come to mind.
So at that frequency the wavelength is about 2.2 metres, or about 7 ft 3 inches.. So a half wavelength dipole antenna would be about three feet 8 inches long….But vertical whips are used for that, and they only need to be a quarter wave long, since the reflected image of the whip, in the ground (ocean) provides the other quarter wave. Some small boats do use a springy wire a couple of feet long, but for serious use if going offshore some distance, the standard whip antenna is 8 feet long. Now it is NOT a full wavelength long antenna, it actually consists of several smaller segments stacked end to end, inside the fiberglass pole to form an antenna array, which has higher gain and directivity.
Well a Loran C whip antenna looks about the same, 8 feet long and usually not as small diameter at the VHF whip.
Well Loran-C operates at a frequency of 100 kHz, so the wavelength is 3,000 metres long, so 8 feet is a pitiful small fraction of a wavelength, even with its reflection in the ground. And it is a long range longer than line of sight system, feeding mostly off the ground wave. So it looks like a very small capacitor in series with the effective electric field and of course the 377 Ohms source resistance. All that matters signal wise, is how much capacitance to free space it has. That is why they are usually larger diameter, and typically consist of a strip of copper foil wrapped on the inside of the fiber glass tube. Larger diameter gives a bit more capacitance..
A very well known salt water fly fisherman (now deceased) loved to hunt for tarpon with a fly rod, seeking world records; he had many. He had his own special fishing boat made, which was an open side console boat for shallow water, and inside the boat he had built a rectangular fishing ring platform. A square stainless steel boxing ring, except about five foot square, sitting about 18 inches up off the center of the boat on a central pedestal bolted to the fiberglass inside of the boat (insulated from the water). So he would stand up in the ring, with rails to lean against so he didn’t trip over, and from up there he could look in any direction and cast in any direction without bothering his guide, who poled the boat for him, hunting fish.His fly line just dropped on the boat bottom outside the ring.
One place he liked to fish for record tarpon, was at Homosassa Florida, north of Tampa. It has deeper water, and not a lot of bottom structure to tell where you were; but the fish knew where they were, and if you found them in one place yesterday, chances were good, they would go down the same roads today, and tomorrow, if you had any idea where the hell you were.
So he had a Loran C system set up in his boat, to tell him exactly where he was.
Well there’s the rub. An 8 ft high fiberglass whip sticking up on the boat is simply not compatible with fly fishing. He and his guide tried everything making quick disconnect whip antennas, so they could take it down and stow it in a rod rack, but then you couldn’t keep track of where you were. I was fishing there one year, and he and his guide (who was also my guide) asked me if I had any ideas about how to get his Loran-C whip up in the air, and not get in the way of his 360 circle casting space.
So I told him, just get rid of the whip antenna; throw it away. well you see all that matters for Loran-C is how much capacitance to space you can get, and all you need to get lots of capacitance, is abig pile of scrap metal in the boat. Perfect !, his five foot square stainless steel frame bull pen, was a whole bunch of welded together SS pipes and it was insulated from the water, and had a ton of capacitance compared to an 8 ft whip.
So we simply connected the input terminal to his Loran receiver, to a strategic point on the bull pen frame, and in came Loran-C signals loud and clear. Well the fishing competitors, were suspicious, that somehow this guy seemed to know exactly where the tarpon runs were from day to day, but they couldn’t get close enough to see what he had in his boat. Well everybody knew about his casting platform.
So to spread a bit of confusion on the waters, I told my guide to call this chap up on the radio, and ask him how his new phased array Loran-C rig was working. Well talk about consternation; all the competitors from that “other” fishing camp, were hitting the books to find out what the hell a Loran-C phased arrray antenna system looked like. None of them coujld see the little screw, and solder lug that tied his receiver to his elevated casting platform, to give him a Loran-C antenna par excellance..
The Loran whip, and the marine VHF whip look almost identical, but they are completely different in construction and operating principles.
OT
Lightning from the Sakurajima volcano eruption
http://www.vijesti.me/data/slika/23/225826.jpg
photo by Martin Reitze. “Volcanic lightning is still a mystery, though it may be that electrically charged silica part of magma interacts with the atmosphere when it flies out of a volcano”.
OT but solar related..
A cool discovery about the Sun’s next-door twin
20 Feb 2013
One of the great curiosities in solar science is that our Sun’s outer atmosphere – the corona – is heated to millions of degrees when its visible surface is ‘only’ about 6000 degrees. Even stranger is a curious temperature minimum of 4000 degrees lying between the two layers, in the chromosphere. Now, using ESA’s Herschel space observatory, scientists have made the first discovery of an equivalent cool layer in the atmosphere of the Sun-like star, Alpha Centauri A.
http://sci.esa.int/science-e/www/object/index.cfm?fobjectid=51395
And..
NASA’s IRIS Spacecraft Is Fully Integrated
1.18.13
..Scheduled to launch in April 2013, the Interface Region Imaging Spectrograph (IRIS) will make use of high-resolution images, data and advanced computer models to unravel how matter, light, and energy move from the sun’s 6,000 K (10,240 F / 5,727 C) surface to its million K (1.8 million F / 999,700 C) outer atmosphere, the corona. Such movement ultimately heats the sun’s atmosphere to temperatures much hotter than the surface, and also powers solar flares and coronal mass ejections, which can have societal and economic impacts on Earth.
“This is the first time we’ll be directly observing this region since the 1970s,” says Joe Davila, IRIS project scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. “We’re excited to bring this new set of observations to bear on the continued question of how the corona gets so hot.”
A fundamentally mysterious region that helps drive heat into the corona, the lower levels of the atmosphere — namely two layers called the chromosphere and the transition region — have been notoriously hard to study. IRIS will be able to tease apart what’s happening there better than ever before by providing observations to pinpoint physical forces at work near the surface of the sun.
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/iris/news/iris-integration.html
It seems to me that there is a soft intensity to connect the solar system physics, especially the solar periods in respect to the solar system periods, to try to connect this with terrestrial global periods of climate or climate proxies.
But instead of a basic research of this matter there come up strange ideas based on old history books with a crucifix on the sky some 1239 years ago.
More than three years ago I have given some hints that there is a stable geometric connection between solar tide functions and the terrestrial global climate, but it was rejected or ignored.
Directed by the idea to fight the holy sceptical war against the CO2 cult and its monotone increasing content in the atmosphere, there were no place to work on climate physics. An example of this is the adjusting of the measured sea level after the history trend of the last century using a linear function. Science? No.
http://sealevel.colorado.edu/files/2013_rel2/sl_ns_global.txt
Taking the function of the sea level rise data in that the seasonal effects are removed, one can see, that there is a function superimposed to the linear function. This function can be studied better, if the average linear trend of 3.22 mm per year is also removed form the data.
It may be of interest that the maximum values of the seasonal ‘effects’ are top with beginning of the calendar year, because the Earth have it nearest distance from the Sun then. But there is one other major oscillation frequency superimposed to the sea level trend, which can be analysed as f = 6.3 oscillations per year, an this is may be more of interest, because this frequency cannot only be addressed to the solar tide function of the couple of Mercury/Earth, it is moreover in coherent phase with the ‘spring tide’ events on the sun.over the data time interval.
The period of Mercury [ME] is 0.240846 years. The period of Earth [EA] is 1.00001742 years. Taking the difference of the frequencies one gets the synodic frequency.
F syn = f_ME – f ER = 4.15172 – 0.999982 = 3.1517379 periods per yer. The solar tide frequency is then twice the synodic frequency = f tide_ME/EA = 6.30347 periods per year.
The solar tide function of the couple of Mercury/Earth can be taken for the time range 1950 AD – 2038 AD from: http://www.volker-doormann.org/mercury_earth_hel_tide.txt
Additionally to the two discussed frequencies superimposed to the sea level trend there is a complex function, that seems to have a connection to the ONI function:
http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/analysis_monitoring/ensostuff/ensoyears.shtml .
This all is shown in this graph:
http://www.volker-doormann.org/images/sea_level_vs_solar_tide_1.gif
What ever is the real ’cause’ of the increasing linear trend of the seal level data adjustments of the University of Colorado; the questions remain, why is the sea level oscillation frequency in phase with the solar tide function of the couple of the most dense objects in the solar system ?, and why is the reconstructed temperature function in the alps by Prof. G. Patzelt in a correlation to some two tide couples in the solar system with a main period of ~900 years?
http://www.volker-doormann.org/images/ghi_23_ghi2_patzelt_sp1.jpg
V.
@george E Smith
“An interesting EM antenna comparison, is the typical marine antennas used on small private vessels for Marine VHF communications (line of sight) and the old, now seldom seen Loran-C navigation system….”
> Great analogy and great Teaching tool for the concepts, George, thank you! I’m not likely to forget that story 🙂
A question to both you and Vukcevic, though perhaps a little more in his ‘bailiwick’, about Wiki: –
@ Vukcevic –
> I’m still lost regards what’s being illustrated by your graph (the geomagnetic storm measured at Tromso), but I found this at Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geomagnetically_induced_current and wonder if I can use it as a starting point for my explorations. I know Wiki has become a bit of a ‘byword’, w/questions of neutrality of data abounding, and will say myself that some of their political and historical pages (more my area) make me want to tear my teeth out (dentures, not too painful ;-)), but I definitely don’t want to ‘learn something’ and then have to ‘unlearn it’, later – that’s always twice as long a process, for anyone. If you or anyone has something ONLINE which comprehensively walks through these complexities of interactions, the known and unknown, without too much resort to math and formulas (I know I’ll have to face that, eventually), please do link me to such. So far, I’ve found reading Donald E. Scott’s (PhD Electrical Engineering) overview http://electric-cosmos.org/indexOLD.htm to be saluatory, but realize I’m looking through a very controversial lens in doing so (howevermuch it ‘feels’ right to me). Hope you catch this as this post is getting stale…
Great volcanic lightning photo, btw. Might end up awhile on my desktop.
@ 1phobosgrunt
“A cool discovery about the Sun’s next-door twin
20 Feb 2013
One of the great curiosities in solar science is that our Sun’s outer atmosphere – the corona – is heated to millions of degrees when its visible surface is ‘only’ about 6000 degrees. Even stranger is a curious temperature minimum of 4000 degrees lying between the two layers, in the chromosphere. Now, using ESA’s Herschel space observatory, scientists have made the first discovery of an equivalent cool layer in the atmosphere of the Sun-like star, Alpha Centauri A.
http://sci.esa.int/science-e/www/object/index.cfm?fobjectid=51395
And..
NASA’s IRIS Spacecraft Is Fully Integrated
1.18.13
..Scheduled to launch in April 2013, the Interface Region Imaging Spectrograph (IRIS) will make use of high-resolution images, data and advanced computer models to unravel how matter, light, and energy move from the sun’s 6,000 K (10,240 F / 5,727 C) surface to its million K (1.8 million F / 999,700 C) outer atmosphere, the corona.”
>If I’m not mistaken, I believe the Thunderbolts gang have some coherent (developing) and most important falsifiable postulates (theories?) about how all this is working. Hopefully the data will be open source and the ‘computer models’ not embedded so as to compromise examinations and interpretations. Exciting Times!
@Volker Doorman
> Also Fascinating – but well above my paygrade. Astronomy Domine?
“Large solar proton event explains 774-775 CE carbon-14 increase
Tree ring records indicate that in 774-775 CE, atmospheric carbon-14 levels increased substantially. Researchers suggest that a solar proton event may have been the cause. In solar proton events, large numbers of high-energy protons are emitted from the Sun, along with other particles. If these particles reach Earth’s atmosphere, they ionize the atmosphere and induce nuclear reactions that produce higher levels of carbon-14 … ”
Yes and the (scientific) question is what the cause is of these events. The gap is also to be found in the excellent reconstructed high frequency temperature function of A. Moberg et al. :
http://www.volker-doormann.org/images/moberg_vs_ghi6.gif
In my above posting I have shown that there is a connection of solar tide functions and the sea level oscillation and a connection of solar tide functions and the global climate function over some millennia.
But comparing the A. Moberg et al. data with the solar tide functions of the couples Jupiter and beyond, it becomes clear that also the gap in the temperature function in the years of 774 AD, 775 AD, can be linked to solar tide functions.
V.
Ref.:
– Ching-Cheh Hung, ‘Apparent Relations Between Solar Activity and Solar Tides Caused by the Planets’, NASA/TM—2007-214817
– Anders Moberg et al., Nature, Vol. 433, No. 7026, pp. 613 – 617, 10 February 2005
Leif,
So, on a 360 degree rotational basis, what is the probability of a solar flare with extinctive capability (or even chaotic infrastructure damage ability) being aimed such as to impact the Earth, ie how wide is the “window” through which it must be aimed to hit us really hard? This probability then multiplied by the probability of the occurance of such an event of that strength (which I doubt we actually know very accurately but we could perhaps estimate from other sun like stars mentioned above) would give us the probability of us feeling a severe impact of same.
Jim G says:
March 14, 2013 at 12:42 pm
how wide is the “window” through which it must be aimed to hit us really hard?
About 30 degrees
This probability then multiplied by the probability of the occurance of such an event of that strength
WEhat we observe is the result, so the calculation goes the other way. From the resulting frequency and the window we can calculate the occurrence frequency, if we had the data, which we do not. But is should be clear that the occurrence is low.
Tiburon says:
March 14, 2013 at 9:59 am
@Volker Doorman
> Also Fascinating – but well above my paygrade. Astronomy Domine?
It’s difficult. Astronomy is the law of the moving stars described by J. Kepler. The name of astro comes from the name of Astarte (A_star_te) which is the name of the planet Venus. An important point is that the movement of the moving stars is without any loss and or without any load of energy mostly over millions of years. Some planet are locked as Jupiter and Saturn in a stable 5:2 resonance or locked as Neptune and Pluto in a stable 3:2 resonance. But without any visible causality, which follows what, it is not a case of domine. On the other side it is obvious, that in tide processes there are forces acting which do move fluids on the surface of bodies. This behaviour makes it difficult to describe a causal physical mechanism. But the strong correlation of the solar tide functions with the global sea level oscillations suggest that there must be an (unknown ?) mechanism which in not only connected to the sea level, but also to the terrestrial global temperature, because of the know connection of the volume of water and its temperature. It is also sure, that the mechanism is located on the sun or the sun’s surface, because the tide function of Mercury and Sun to the Earth would very different to the tide function to the Sun.
However, it’s science and no fiction. Thanks.
V.
Tiburon says:
March 14, 2013 at 9:59 am
……..
For Geomagnetic components see
http://wdc.kugi.kyoto-u.ac.jp/element/eleexp.html
also
http://flux.phys.uit.no/cgi-bin/plotgeodata.cgi?Last24&site=tro2a&
Graph shows deviation from mean
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/SO.htm
1phobosgrunt says:
March 14, 2013 at 5:07 am
=====================================
Perhaps the million degree layer is the part of the Sun where the fusion of hydrogen is taking place.
The Sun is not solved.
Gotcha, vukcevic – (finally) – ‘deviation from mean’. Thanks for links, got my homework. Found the youtube Yale lectures on maxwell’s equations & electromagnetic waves, and related. (will be tough slogging, but I can seek a mentor). Also a very basic overview from NASA on the EM spectrum.
Big full halo CME on the way, filimentary eruption from SS 1692 at about 8 AM UT (M 1.2 – SDO eclipsed by earth mid-event, figures), but said to be arguably equivalent of X-class flare (due “magnetic reconnection” – of which I’m not so sure…). Enlil spiral’s been updated, http://www.solarham.net/cmewatch2.htm we’re square in the crosshairs, so I’m watching the local weather since I’m at 42.423 N latitude and if clear I’ll try and get out of the light pollution to watch the (likely) show tomorrow night (will hit around 22:00 UT, peak at midnight – about 8 PM here, I guess)
Speaking of Mercury, Volker Doormann here’s a nice ‘Tribute to Messenger’ with great photos showing clearly the fulgamites in many craters and dendritic ridges http://www.universetoday.com/100733/a-tribute-to-messenger/
Thanks all for help
@Kajajuk
“….The Sun is not solved.”
no indeed.
http://www.ptep-online.com/index_files/2013/PP-32-05.PDF
“””””……Perhaps the million degree layer is the part of the Sun where the fusion of hydrogen is taking place……”””””
Fusion of hydrogen requires a lot more than simply Temperature. Temperature simply means that atoms or molecules are running around, and into each other at very high collision velocities.
You also have to have that happen a whole lot of times for the reactions to take place (often enough). So that requires high pressures at the same time as high Temperatures. Last time I heard, the coronal regions of the sun, were closer to a vaccuum than to anything very dense.
Fusion takes place in the cores of stars where both high Temperature and high pressure occur together.
And you have to maintain those conditions for some time, which is why it can’t be done on earth, because such plasmas are unstable.
Mother Gaia knows how big and hot and dense you have to build a thermo-nuclear reactor; and she also knows how far you have to put it away from humans for safety reasons; about 93 million miles is safe enough.
Kajajuk says:
March 15, 2013 at 5:12 am
Perhaps the million degree layer is the part of the Sun where the fusion of hydrogen is taking place. The Sun is not solved.
No, there are many reasons that the fusion takes place in the core. E.g. otherwise the Sun would collapse because of lack of internal pressure, and the corona is also not hot enough [even at a couple of million degrees], and the corona is to thin, etc. That part of solar physics has been solved almost a century ago.
Tiburon says:
March 15, 2013 at 7:08 am
no indeed. http://www.ptep-online.com/index_files/2013/PP-32-05.PDF
That is a piece of pseudo-scientific nonsense. For example, the density of the solar photosphere is a thousand times smaller than the air you breathe. The density and internal structure of the Sun has been accurately measured using helioseismology and found to fit closely the standard gaseous models.
Hi Dr Svalgaard.
“That is a piece of pseudo-scientific nonsense”
OK, I can take that at face value, but bearing in mind my Lilluputian status in regards to understanding these phenomena, can you explain to me the “Wilson Effect” in sunspots, in a manner a lay person might comprehend? (I mean the visible depressions of the photosphere easily seen on the Limb when sunspots rotate in and out of sight) Given it’s happening in a gas
“a thousand times (less dense) than the air (we) breathe”?
The EU folks see (as in, “observe in the visible spectrum”) structures akin to Birkland currents (vortexes or ‘tornadoes’ ‘transmitting’ (sorry) electrical current) in the spicules surrounding these spots, but I don’t by any means understand how this might be related, if at all, and I’m aware that you have severe opprobrium for their work and will not (respectfully: – apparently) engage in any form of debate regards their central postulates and extrapolations of the work of Irving Langmuir, Hans Alfven and Anthony Peratt.
Also, I’m a little taken aback at the vociferousness implicit in your use of the term “pseudo-scientific”, as evidently the theory of condensed matter (liquid sun?) was entertained by great astrophysical scientists in the past who are responsible for many of the ‘basic principles’ of solar science – I know you’re not implying THEY were charlatans, howevermuch their ideas may have been supplanted by the contemporary mainstream model of solar physics…
Also, to what level of ‘statistical certainty’ (if that’s the appropriate term), has the density and internal structure of the sun been found to “closely fit”, “using helioseismology to (explain) the standard gaseous models”. Could you recommend to me some abstracts (that’s really all I’d have a hope of understanding, complex math – forget it) dealing with actually observed events and phenomena on the solar surface, that could help me visualize what’s occuring?
Also, regards the upcoming lauch on April 2013 of the Interface Region Imaging Spectrograph (IRIS) satellite, why are they wasting what I assume to be hundreds of millions of dollars given that the physics are largely well-understood? Don’t we have better things to spend our money on here on Earth?
This may be relevant: – {I’ll note, autobiographically, that I have a constant internal battle with a proclivity to solipsistic synchronicity, but I’m giving into that, a little, herein}
March 15, 2013
Is Cassiopeia A (Cas A) dying or just changing her fashion?
Bio 1:
In the beginning was an artist’s illustration of the consensus theory of stellar evolution. Thermonuclear fusion reactions at the center of the star transformed hydrogen into helium. After a time, the growing core of helium contracted enough under its own gravity to heat up to the stage where the helium transformed into oxygen and carbon. Successive contractions and transformations built up shells of neon, magnesium, silicon, and sulfur.
Finally, a core of iron began to grow. Iron is the dead-end of transformation succession: fusion reactions beyond iron absorb more energy than they release. The core can never balance it’s contracting with a new source of energy.
Three hundred years ago, the iron core of Cas A collapsed. The layers above imploded and blew themselves into space as a supernova.
R.I.P.
But now the autopsy reveals something surprising: the guts of the star—the iron and silicon and sulfur that should have been on the inside, that should have collapsed into a neutron star—are on the outside. The coroner reports, “Surprisingly, there is no evidence…for iron near the center…. Also, much of the silicon and sulfur, as well as the magnesium, is now found toward the outer edges…. [Something] somehow turned the star inside out.” He found in the outer layers “clumps of almost pure iron, [which] must have been produced by nuclear reactions near the center….”
Let’s examine this casual admission of surprise more closely. If the coroner was surprised, it must be because he was expecting something else. He was expecting something else because his theory predicted something else. Now a standard test procedure in science is to deduce some particular phenomenon from the theory to be tested and then to look for whether or not the phenomenon occurs. If it does, one proclaims that the theory has been validated (although this is a logically suspect exaggeration). If the phenomenon doesn’t occur…. Well, the matter is often simply hushed up. But logically the theory has been falsified, which means it’s not true, which means that only a fool would continue believing in it. Now, I don’t wish to cast aspersions on astronomers’ motley; I’ll just mention that they’re wearing it.
Furthermore, the coroner remarked that “[o]xygen, which according to theoretical models is the most abundant element in the remnant, is difficult to detect…because almost all the oxygen ions have had all their electrons stripped away.” It takes an astronomical amount of heat to smack oxygen atoms together hard enough to knock off all their electrons. The alleged explosion was long ago and far away. One might expect the debris to cool off a bit.
On the other hand (to foreshadow Bio 2), it takes only a modest amount of electricity to publicly embarrass an oxygen nucleus like that. A double layer capable of accelerating protons to cosmic-ray energies will strip electrons off oxygen atoms as easily as a bartender pops caps off beer bottles at happy hour.
Bio 2:
In the beginning was an analogy between the observed properties of plasma discharges in a lab and the observed characteristics of stars. A Bennett pinch in a galactic-scale Birkeland current squeezed the ambient plasma into a glowing balloon. High-energy discharges to the glowing skin generated light and x-rays, fused hydrogen into heavier elements, and sorted the elements into clumps and layers of like materials.
Three hundred years ago, an instability in the discharge current triggered a star-encompassing double layer to expand catastrophically. It carried not only the elements but also the processes that fused and sorted them into space.
Now, what’s on the outside of the nebula is merely a more distant version of what was originally on the outside of the star. The guts are still on the inside; we needn’t be nauseated or surprised; we still don’t know anything about them.
But we do know that the star is as much electrically alive as it always was; it just switched to a different mode of operation. Mourning is unnecessary.
The coroner would better spend his time on an autopsy of his theory than of his star.
Mel Acheson
Nice X-ray of Cassiopeia A from NASA/CXC/GSFC/U.Hwang & J.Laming, today, viewable here: – http://www.thunderbolts.info/wp/2013/03/14/the-biographies-of-cas-a-3/
Oh…the Coroner: – http://chandra.si.edu/photo/2012/casa/
Tiburon says:
March 15, 2013 at 9:15 am
can you explain to me the “Wilson Effect” in sunspots,
First of all, only about half of sunspots show the Wilson effect, the other half are too irregular to show any clear effect.
Second, the gas in which the sunspots are found is more transparent in the spot [the temperature is lower] and we thus can see deeper into the Sun [about a thousand km] giving the impression of a ‘depression’.
in the spicules surrounding these spots
The Sun is full of electric currents created by the neutral solar plasma moving in magnetic fields, as the great plasma physicists of the past have shown. And science does move forward. E.g. we don’t believe anymore that the sunspots are holes in a solar cloud layer allowing us to see the cool interior and follow the activity of the inhabitants of that world.
Also, I’m a little taken aback at the vociferousness implicit in your use of the term “pseudo-scientific”
The arguments in the article are so wrong that it is hard to know where to begin. Perhaps the simplest one is the density of the photosphere. But, you see, nonsense is sometimes hard to refute. Here is an example: “Beyond metallic hydrogen itself, dense hydrogen could play an important role in the Sun, since the photosphere appears to be less metallic in nature than sunspots. The author has advanced arguments that the photosphere adopts a layered lattice resembling graphite while the lattice in sunspots has more metallic character. This is presumably due to slightly decreased inter-atomic distances within the layered lattice of sunspots..”. This is first-class nonsense. There is a concept of something ‘wronger than wrong’ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wronger_than_wrong
Also, to what level of ‘statistical certainty’ (if that’s the appropriate term), has the density and internal structure of the sun been found to “closely fit”, “using helioseismology to (explain) the standard gaseous models”.
To better than 1%. Here is a good link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helioseismology and this one http://sun.bao.ac.cn/hsos_datas/Meeting_report/2012_MINIMEETING_on_Helioseismology/Leibacher/Leibacher_Helioseismology_Beijing_Handouts.pdf
Also, regards the upcoming lauch on April 2013 of the Interface Region Imaging Spectrograph (IRIS) satellite, why are they wasting what I assume to be hundreds of millions of dollars given that the physics are largely well-understood? Don’t we have better things to spend our money on here on Earth?
We always learn more by further study, that would help us, perhaps, to better predict what goes on. That is money well spent. Here on Earth we tend to squander money.
Volker Doormann says:
March 14, 2013 at 5:58 am
. . . This all is shown in this graph:
http://www.volker-doormann.org/images/sea_level_vs_solar_tide_1.gif
What ever is the real ’cause’ of the increasing linear trend of the seal level data adjustments of the University of Colorado; the questions remain, why is the sea level oscillation frequency in phase with the solar tide function of the couple of the most dense objects in the solar system ?
There is another possible connection between the solar neutrino rate and the Ocean Niño Index ONI on Earth:
http://www.volker-doormann.org/images/solar_neutrino_vs_oni.gif
Check yourself.
V.
Tiburon says:
March 15, 2013 at 10:04 am
Is Cassiopeia A (Cas A) dying or just changing her fashion?
It is long dead. The findings just show that explosions are very messy. A nice layered structure just blows to kingdom come and one should, perhaps, not assume that it stays nice and layered.
Tiburon says:
March 15, 2013 at 9:15 am
Also, to what level of ‘statistical certainty’ (if that’s the appropriate term), has the density and internal structure of the sun been found to “closely fit”, “using helioseismology to (explain) the standard gaseous models”.
Instead of long [mathematical] explanations, the following plot may give you an idea of what I meant by ‘close’: http://www.leif.org/research/Precision-Helioseismology.png
The red data points show the frequency of solar vibrations [‘quake waves’] as function of size. The blue symbols show the error bar multiplied by a thousand.
OK, thank you Dr. Svalgaard. I’m going to ruminate on what you’ve kindly shared with me awhile, and check out your links, best I can. I’ve heard about the ‘optical’ explanation for the apparent Wilson effect. Makes some sense, for sure.
To philosophize a bit though, I’m called to mind a quote I came across by Professor Jay Pasachoff, of the Department of Astronomy at Williams College, puzzling over the manner in which the heating of the solar corona defies “everyday physics.” How could this be? he asks. What events are “transporting energy from the cold part to the hot part?” Pasachoff’s wry assessment is refreshing. “The problem has been solved,” he states. “It’s been solved a dozen times over, and there are a dozen different answers. So of course that means it really hasn’t been solved…”
From an interview in the National Geographic Channel documentary, “Easter Island Eclipse” (2010).
I guess I’m still just mystified as why the Sun doesn’t just blow the hell up, given that even small variations in core temperature would magnify the likelihood of of a runaway reaction a couple of orders of magnitude.
K, I’m off to ruminate and do some housekeeping, thanks again.
Tiburon says:
March 15, 2013 at 11:10 am
“It’s been solved a dozen times over, and there are a dozen different answers. So of course that means it really hasn’t been solved…”
What it means is that it is not a ‘mystery’. There are many ways it can happen, perhaps in combination. The problem is to discover which one(s) is the dominant one [if any].
I guess I’m still just mystified as why the Sun doesn’t just blow the hell up, given that even small variations in core temperature would magnify the likelihood of of a runaway reaction a couple of orders of magnitude.
The Sun’s gravity is strong enough to keep everything together.
Tiburon says:
March 15, 2013 at 11:10 am
the manner in which the heating of the solar corona defies “everyday physics.” How could this be? he asks. What events are “transporting energy from the cold part to the hot part?”
It actually does not defy physics. Something like that happens every time you strike a match, make fire by rubbing sticks together, brake your car [brake pads become hot], bore a hole, etc. It is all about converting one form of energy into another [mechanical to heat].
lsvalgaard says:
March 15, 2013 at 1:04 pm
Tiburon says:
March 15, 2013 at 11:10 am
the manner in which the heating of the solar corona defies “everyday physics.” How could this be? he asks. What events are “transporting energy from the cold part to the hot part?”
It actually does not defy physics. Something like that happens every time you strike a match, make fire by rubbing sticks together, brake your car [brake pads become hot], bore a hole, etc. It is all about converting one form of energy into another [mechanical to heat].
Can we say the external heating is happening during an expansion process? And expansion is necessary? Do the distances change during solar cycle? polarity?
I can’t wrap my head around that hollow sun thingy, makes my head collaspe, must be a sign. (sarc)
The Cas A image looks like it got smacked from the other side by a large solar diving space object or maybe not a hollow core, but blew out a chamber(s)?
1phobosgrunt says:
March 15, 2013 at 5:35 pm
Can we say the external heating is happening during an expansion process? And expansion is necessary? Do the distances change during solar cycle? polarity?
There is some agreement that waves of various kinds heat the corona, much as when you crack a whip. An important point is that the material gets thinner and thinner and so the same energy has larger and larger effect.
I can’t wrap my head around that hollow sun thingy, makes my head collaspe, must be a sign. (sarc) …The Cas A image looks like it got smacked from the other side by a large solar diving space object or maybe not a hollow core, but blew out a chamber(s)?
The Sun is, of course, not hollow. If it were, it would collapse instantly. This is close to what happens in a supernova: the internal pressure generated by the fusion process falls away once iron is reached and with no internal support the star collapses [to become a much smaller neutron star] in a very short time, about one second. The collapsing material when hitting the neutron star bounces back out and that is the explosion we see. This is a messy process and can easily be lopsided and irregular.
@Lsvalgaard
Please forgive my ignorant question but I hope you’ll answer it anyway. If one could touch the surface of the sun what would the density feel like? Also, what is the density/pressure at the core believed to be?
Thanks,
Mike says:
March 15, 2013 at 9:20 pm
If one could touch the surface of the sun what would the density feel like?
It would be more than a thousand times thinner than the air we breathe; something like the air at an altitude of 50 km, thus a pretty good vacuum.
Also, what is the density/pressure at the core believed to be?
The density is about 150 times the density of water or 13 times denser than Lead or more than 100,000 times that of air at the ground. The pressure is enormous: about 300 billion times the pressure of the Earth’s atmosphere at its surface.
Thank you
lsvalgaard says:
March 15, 2013 at 7:14 pm
There is some agreement that waves of various kinds heat the corona, much as when you crack a whip. An important point is that the material gets thinner and thinner and so the same energy has larger and larger effect.
Waves back at you Dr. S.
A Major Step Forward in Explaining the Ribbon in Space Discovered by NASA’s IBEX Mission
02.05.13
..Indeed, since the discovery of the ribbon, over a dozen competing theories seeking to explain the phenomenon have been put forth. The new theory builds on one that was first published along with the discovery of the ribbon in 2009 and then quantitatively simulated in 2010. This theory posited that the ribbon exists in a special location where neutral hydrogen atoms from the solar wind cross the local galactic magnetic field. Neutral atoms are not affected by magnetic fields, but when their electrons get stripped away they become charged ions and begin to gyrate rapidly around magnetic field lines. This process frequently aims ions back toward the sun. So those ions that pick up electrons at the right time might explain the extra boost of neutral atoms that create the ribbon. The problems were that physical processes might break down the distribution needed for it to work and that models based on this process showed a ribbon narrower than IBEX observed.
The new theory adds a key process: That rapid rotation creates waves or vibrations in the magnetic field, and the charged ions then become physically trapped in a region by these waves, which in turn would amplify the ion density and produce the broader ribbon seen.
“Think of the ribbon as a harbor and the solar wind particles it contains as boats,” says Nathan Schwadron, the first author on the paper and scientist at The University of New Hampshire, Durham. “The boats can be trapped in the harbor if the ocean waves outside it are powerful enough. This is the nature of the new ribbon model. The ribbon is a region where particles, originally from the solar wind, become trapped or retained due to intense waves and vibrations in the magnetic field.”
Models done with these waves taken into account agree with the available observations, and the mathematical modeling results look remarkably like what the ribbon actually looks like, says Schwadron..
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/ibex/news/ribbon-explained.html
Thank you for your replies Dr. S..
You’re a gem. Keep on shinin’ on!!
@ George e. smith “””””…..You also have to have that happen a whole lot of times for the reactions to take place (often enough). So that requires high pressures at the same time as high Temperatures. Last time I heard, the coronal regions of the sun, were closer to a vaccuum than to anything very dense…….”””””
And waking up after reading Dr S, I realize that what is rquired is high density and high Temperature; the high pressure is simply a means to get that high density from gravitation,but the high density is what gives you lots of collsions, at high enough energies due to the Temperature.
Words have meaning; we really do need to use the right words.
And of course we do know that earth’s atmosphere at high enough altitudes, also gets much hotter than at lower altitudes, although probably for different reasons from the solar corona heating.
lsvalgaard says:
March 15, 2013 at 7:15 am
==========================
ok, but the ‘solution’ doesn’t match the evidence…physicist should stop checking since the model has been established so well?
“recent discovery that the Sun contains about half as much oxygen as previously thought, an issue some scientists have dubbed the solar oxygen crisis
Read more at: http://phys.org/news97326842.html#jCp”
http://phys.org/news97326842.html
Where are all the neutrinos hiding?
http://www.cora.nwra.com/~werne/eos/text/neutrino.html
http://www.physics.uc.edu/~sitko/Astrophysics-II/21-SSM.pdf
Kajajuk says:
March 16, 2013 at 11:37 am
ok, but the ‘solution’ doesn’t match the evidence…physicist should stop checking since the model has been established so well?
We do not stop checking. But you apparently stop looking for newer evidence. Both of those ‘problems’ have been resolved, by more recent data. The Oxygen problem has been partly resolved by refining the abundances of Neon and other elements as they all contribute to the opacity. The Neutrino problem has been solved by the discovery of neutrino oscillations using data from man-made neutrinos from reactors on the Earth. Discrepancies are where we learn to refine our models. Your comment [sadly] says more about your anti-science attitude than about the science.
Nice touch with the dig…Leif, you are clearly in a class of your own.
No reference for the solutions to the solution or is attitude sadly enough.
You must be quite the professor to the questioning student or at least label-or.
Kajajuk says:
March 16, 2013 at 6:22 pm
No reference for the solutions to the solution or is attitude sadly enough.
Your problem is not knowledge [or lack there of], but, as I said, ‘attitude’.
Your own reference http://www.physics.uc.edu/~sitko/Astrophysics-II/21-SSM.pdf
says: “The THREE Solar Neutrino Problems:
There were actually 3 solar neutrino problems now solved!”
No need for me to provide you with further, is there? You found it on your own [you just had to look].
“Quantitatively, the disagreement is less severe because the new abundances have slightly higher CNO abundances and a somewhat larger Ne abundance. The changes, however, do not help much neither in restoring the agreement with helioseismology nor in facilitating the way for alternative solutions in the form of modi- fied input physics for solar models. We have described with some detail the effect of the new composition in opacities and the required change to recover good helio- seismic properties. Changes of order 15% are needed, which are still much higher than currently estimated uncertainties in radiative opacities for the solar interior.”
http://arxiv.org/pdf/0910.3690v1.pdf
Exploring models with the Standard Solar Model “done” is curious to this anti-science observer. And so my attitude persists, that the Sun is not solved, as my anti-arrogance continues to wonder…
Kajajuk says:
March 16, 2013 at 7:06 pm
Exploring models with the Standard Solar Model “done” is curious to this anti-science observer. And so my attitude persists, that the Sun is not solved, as my anti-arrogance continues to wonder…
You just look for confirmation of your bias by citing older papers. The Oxygen abundance [as most of them] are deduced from modelling the line formation in the solar photosphere. Old models were 1D LTE models. The most recent calculations [e.g. http://www.leif.org/EOS/1302-1048-Oxygen-Abundance.pdf ]with a full 3D non-LTE model resolve most of the discrepancies. It seems we need to adjust several other abundances too. This is fine as we learn from discrepancies. Your assertion was that solar physicists don’t look anymore and that is clearly wrong. You can stop wondering and rest assured that problems are being attacked vigorously and not swept under the rug as you insinuate. The question is not is the ‘Sun is solved’ [it will never be – as the solutions can always be improved], but if it is solved well enough that we can have confidence in what we infer and conclude.
My sarcasm was not an assertion.
Lief,
The article i last cited was of 2009, solar physics must be cutting edge if that is an old work.
Your link comes up ‘404’; file not found.
Kajajuk says:
March 16, 2013 at 7:44 pm
My sarcasm was not an assertion.
Sarcasm is even worse than just being wrong. It has no place in a reasonable debate.
Kajajuk says:
March 16, 2013 at 7:50 pm
The article i last cited was of 2009, solar physics must be cutting edge if that is an old work.
This particular subject is under intense scrutiny and progress is swift. 404 is fixed if you would care to look. The point is that physicists NEVER stop looking. And that the problems you initially saw or imagined HAVE been solved or are being vigorously investigated.
anti-science, unreasonable debater, and unwarranted skeptic…well, thanks for helping with the physics (no sarc here) and helping with my personal evolution (sarc).
Kajajuk says:
March 16, 2013 at 8:18 pm
anti-science, unreasonable debater, and unwarranted skeptic…well, thanks for helping with the physics (no sarc here)
You see, the solar Neon abundance is very uncertain because Neon cannot be measured spectroscopically in the solar photosphere, but has to be inferred from other stars. Even back in 2005 this was clearly a problem, but with a solution:
E.g. Nature 436, 525-528 (28 July 2005) ‘The ‘solar model problem’ solved by the abundance of neon in nearby stars’ by Jeremy J. Drake & Paola Testa:
“The interior structure of the Sun can be studied with great accuracy using observations of its oscillations, similar to seismology of the Earth. Precise agreement between helioseismological measurements and predictions of theoretical solar models1 has been a triumph of modern astrophysics. A recent downward revision by 25–35 per cent of the solar abundances of light elements such as C, N, O and Ne (ref. 2) has, however, broken this accordance: models adopting the new abundances incorrectly predict the depth of the convection zone, the depth profiles of sound speed and density, and the helium abundance. The discrepancies are far beyond the uncertainties in either the data or the model predictions. Here we report neon-to-oxygen ratios measured in a sample of nearby solar-like stars, using their X-ray spectra. The abundance ratios are all very similar and substantially larger than the recently revised solar value. The neon abundance in the Sun is quite poorly determined. If the Ne/O abundance in these stars is adopted for the Sun, the models are brought back into agreement with helioseismology measurements”
Sometimes it helps to listen to people who know what they are talking about.
and helping with my personal evolution (sarc).
You personal evolution and attitude I cannot help with, so no sarc needed [as it does not belong in reasonable discussion between gentlemen]
Lief,
The point was missed; name calling in a discussion is childish and of little consequence, unless the intent is to insult…hence the sarc. Your labels of my character are meaningless and your personal attacks silly. Perhaps your anti-science is showing as is the ego on your sleeve.
A tangent for the experts:
“Trust me I know”
Kajajuk says:
March 16, 2013 at 9:11 pm
The point was missed
So you missed the point. Well, I have tried to explain the physics to you and you respond with sarcasm. That says it all, don’t you think?
Kajajuk says:
March 16, 2013 at 9:24 pm
“Trust me I know”
If you don’t know anything, everything is possible, and every solution is valid. Is this what the science illiterate public has sunk to?
lsvalgaard says:
March 16, 2013 at 9:25 pm
========================
I initiated a discussion related to the unsolved Sun and was told that i was anti-science, an unreasonable debater, and an unwarranted skeptic as well that, “Sometimes it helps to listen to people who know what they are talking about.”
And that i do think says it all.
Kajajuk says:
March 16, 2013 at 9:33 pm
I initiated a discussion related to the unsolved Sun and was told that i was anti-science, an unreasonable debater, and an unwarranted skeptic…
You asserted that “physicist should stop checking since the model has been established so well”. That was your sin, plus the not-called-for sarcasm.
Funny that the “assertion” was punctuated as a question => sarcasm.
That was the “not-called for sarcasm”, all other dastardly sarcasm was a direct result of personal attacks…let’s review professor…(paraphrased; hope your wit can deal)
kjjk: “Sun is not solved” and a non Standard Solar Model (SSM) alluded too. Viz: http://www.thunderbolts.info/tpod/2006/arch06/060120solar1.htm
(just for fun with the Sun, hehehe)
ls: oh yes it is!
kjjk: sarc question (boo hoo hooo), What about the Oxygen Crisis and the Neutrino Problem
ls: Those irritations have been solved, the SSM still rules, you anti-science moron
kjjk: sarc response to anti-science dig and subtle counter ‘attitude’ dig
ls: “Your problem is not knowledge [or lack there of], but, as I said, ‘attitude’.” Neutrino problem solved by modification of the Standard Model of particle physics, Neutrino Oscillations (aside…where does the differences in mass go, or come from, when neutrinos are oscillating between electron, muon, and tau?)
kjjk: quote from a 2009 paper that admits problems in the SSM and explores three models and a subtle arrogance dig at Lief
ls: “Trust me I know”
kjjk: the admission that the question was not an assertion but sarcasm
kjjk: 3 year old paper is old and link no good
ls: “Sarcasm is even worse than just being wrong. It has no place in a reasonable debate.”
ls: link fixed if you care to look (i did, thx); “The point is that physicists NEVER stop looking. And that the problems you initially saw or imagined HAVE been solved or are being vigorously investigated.” or paraphrased…Trust me I know!
kjjk: Thanks for the physics…Lief is a bully.
ls: Science explanations (thx again), “Sometimes it helps to listen to people who know what they are talking about.”…paraphrased “Trust me I know” and restated dig plus kjjk is not a gentlemen
kjjk: It is not nice to personally attack someone during a discussion.
ls: yes it IS, don’t you think? (no i do not think i leave it up to the experts ((sarc)))
ls: “If you don’t know anything, everything is possible, and every solution is valid. Is this what the science illiterate public has sunk to?” (oh ouchy)
kjjk: It is not nice to personally attack someone during a discussion.
ls: Yes it IS! and Lief hates sarcasm unless it is called for.
WTF
PS “Last word Lief” => this is not the last word…
Leif,
Though we may not have good data on the probability of a large flare occurance, since the event and the direction in which it is “aimed” are independent, the probabilies are still multiplicative. Therefore if one can make an estimate of liklihood of the event based upon observations of sun-like stars, then using your 30 degree window, .0833 x (the estimated probability of occurance)= the probability of a destructive result here, ie .001 x .0833=.0000833 if the probability of the event is one in 1000 in say a 100 year time frame or approximately 1 in 10,000 at any given time. Better some ranges of probabilities than nothing. And how do such estimates fit with geological evidence per the article? What does the geological evidence say about the historical freqency of impacts of such events here? How does it compare to observations of sun-like stars? Some various ways to look at the situation.