This is unusual. A live media teleconference on the sun. Even more unusual is this statement:
The sun’s current state could result in changing conditions in the solar system.
As you may recall, I posted an entry about the Ulysses mission back on June 16th and the findings of a lowered magnetic field in the sun, from the JPL press release then:
Ulysses ends its career after revealing that the magnetic field emanating from the sun’s poles is much weaker than previously observed. This could mean the upcoming solar maximum period will be less intense than in recent history.
We live in interesting times.
Dwayne Brown
Headquarters, Washington
202-358-1726
DC Agle
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
818-393-9011
MEDIA ADVISORY : M08-176
http://www.nasa.gov/home/hqnews/2008/sep/HQ_M08176_Ulysses_teleconference.html
NASA To Discuss Conditions On And Surrounding The Sun
WASHINGTON — NASA will hold a media teleconference Tuesday, Sept. 23, at 12:30 p.m. EDT, to discuss data from the joint NASA and European Space Agency Ulysses mission that reveals the sun’s solar wind is at a 50-year low. The sun’s current state could result in changing conditions in the solar system.
Ulysses was the first mission to survey the space environment above and below the poles of the sun. The reams of data Ulysses returned have changed forever the way scientists view our star and its effects. The venerable spacecraft has lasted more than 17 years – almost four times its expected mission lifetime.
The panelists are:
— Ed Smith, NASA Ulysses project scientist and magnetic field instrument investigator, Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
— Dave McComas, Ulysses solar wind instrument principal investigator, Southwest Research Institute, San Antonio
— Karine Issautier, Ulysses radio wave lead investigator, Observatoire de Paris, Meudon, France
— Nancy Crooker, Research Professor, Boston University, Boston, Mass.
Reporters should call 866-617-1526 and use the pass code “sun” to participate in the teleconference. International media should call 1-210-795-0624.
To access visuals that will the accompany presentations, go to:
http://www.nasa.gov/topics/solarsystem/features/ulysses-20080923.html
Audio of the teleconference will be streamed live at:
– end –
h/t to John Sumpton
“He just tells you what in his opinion [possibly colored a bit by his co-author Mike Lockwood] the data shows.”
Concerning global temperatures, what is “the” data? GISS, HADCRUT3, UAH, RSS?
“You just told us what he used…”
I didn’t ask you what he used, I asked what is *the* data, GISS or UAH? Is UAH not data? UAH Not “official” enough? Do you think Spencer flies a kite satellite around in his spare time?
But, please acknowledge, Pamela, sometimes it’s hard to be a woman; giving all your love to just one man…
I have that on CD so it cannot be wrong.
Gavin (13:28:33) :
I read through a sample of one of the books you linked to but it didn’t have much
I could hold up.
Your Valle Marineris note represents the sort of stuff that makes me roll my eyes. I don’t know much about Martian tectonics except that it’s pretty much over. A crack in the surface as that cools faster than the core sounds good to me. Once we get there and have a real look around it may not be too hard to figure out. However, until then there’s uncertainty. So someone suggests a lightning strike. Well okay, lightning strikes on Earth don’t do much other creating small steam explosions and make fulgerites. One that creates a 3,000 Km canyon would be, umm, pretty big. Too big for a thunderstorm. Okay, how about from a moon? The Martian moons are tiny – they’d fit inside Valle Marineris. Well, okay, how about a planet? Have you looked at Mars from Earth? Earth is bigger when seen from Mars, but still it’s a tiny speck. So let’s move enough energy over a plasma thread that forms from Earth to Mars. If that actually happens, there ought to be traces left behind on Earth, there ought to be something more than a plasma thread to conduct that much power. Shouldn’t there be examples between Mercury and Venus if it’s a solar effect? How about Saturn and Jupiter since they’re larger? What’s the mechanism for building up that sort of charge? There is none.
That’s one of the problems with pseudo-science – the proponents can keep coming up with new ideas and concepts, but skip the years of work to show things “work out of the lab”. If a “real scientist” dismisses it cursorily, he’s labeled closed-minded. If he takes the time to come up with a complete reply, then a new hypothesis pops up. You can’t win – the best you can do is waste a lot of time, so why not take the easy way out and don’t sweat the closed-minded label?
Leif (13:57:58)
It is, indeed, a fact needing an explanation that something must be heating the corona because the photosphere is only 6000 K. It is not that we don’t ‘know’ what the mechanism is. It is that there are plenty of good explanations for this, we just don’t know which is the correct one. Part of the explanation is that the corona is so THIN.
If the sun is powered by a nuclear furnace why is it that there is even a corona around the sun in the first place? As I understand it coronas should only form around the surface of a charged conductor and this is an electrical phenomenon.
Regarding your comment and selected quote on the negative charge… – The negative charge continually explodes electrically in the photosphere as solar wind which never stops….
… I looked a little further and found your quote at this url: http://www.the-electric-universe.info/the_electric_sun.html
In addition to what you quoted the paper also states that:
– 11-yearly, positively charged matter appears on the solar surface (as ” footpoints “). Its concentrated charge overbalances the electrons and emits itself into the space as positive filaments, corona, flares, mass ejections. This positive matter contains ions and no mysterious heating produces these ions. The corona is not heated! An emitted filament contains the same e.g.
Fe+9 -ions from begin up to end of the filament. It contains no follow of ions as:
Fe+1 -, Fe+2 -, Fe+3 – .. Fe+9 -ions as if it would be heated!
• The high velocity of matter in the filament of e.g. 1500km/s would need 96million Kelvin to be emitted thermally.
• The emitted positive and negative matter forms filaments via pinch effect. No mysterious “magnetic tubes” are necessary.
Leif, you said… “taken at face value it says [somewhat obscurely ‘explodes’?] that the solar wind should be negatively charged, i.e. electrons. We send spacecrafts out into the solar wind and they find that it is neutral, the number of protons just matches the number of electrons [there are some other stuff as well, but in small quantities only]. So an observational refutation.” Forgive me if I’ve misunderstood here but according to the electric universe model (and the url you got this info from) positive matter is also ejected from the sun.
Furthermore, I believe mainstream scientists still do not understand well what causes the solar wind to be accelerated, or “blown” into space. I might be wrong but if you put any charged particle in an electrically charged field shouldn’t those particles speed up regardless of whether they are protons, electrons or whatever?
Glen raises an interesting point that doesnt seem to have been answered by the good doctor?
Surely ANY report using GISS records should be looked on with a lot of skepticism.
Svensmark and Christensen do offer some valid arguments in response to Lockwood and Frohlich.
Glenn (20:19:26) :
I didn’t ask you what he used, I asked what is *the* data, GISS or UAH? Is UAH not data? UAH Not “official” enough? Do you think Spencer flies a kite satellite around in his spare time?
I guess you lost me here. Flying a kites? What has that to do with what Froehlich thought was the right data set? The one with the most kites? The Wikipedia that you like so much shows HADCRU in their Global Warming article. IMHO the various data sets show almost the same thing so what do the details matter? Since Froelich indentifies which set he used, any conclusions will naturally pertain the that set.
nobwainer (23:49:11) :
Surely ANY report using GISS records should be looked on with a lot of skepticism.
So you do that, and then what’s your problem? Can’t you apply your skepticism to other records as well? The ‘skepticism’ that I see applied is simply that ‘if it disagrees with what I think, then I’m skeptical’. A very human attitude that will die with the human carrying it. science is self-correcting and the ‘right’ data set will emerge in due time. In the mean time you work with what you have got, and maybe sometimes you make a choice based ‘practicality’: e.g. “I already have that data handy”. If your conclusions depends on which data set you used, then they simply just apply to that data set.
Ric Werme (21:58:57) :
Then you could ignore it and take a look at other aspects of this theory rather than dismiss it because one part does not seem to make sense. I’m no expert but if planets/moons/asteroids and the like are charged bodies in an electric universe then I don’t see why something like this is not possible.
Planetary scars like the Valle Marineris are not the only evidence of possible electrical discharge/activity on Mars and other planets. If you’re still interested the following video and article might help to shed a bit more light on the topic. The video appears to be a work in progress as part 3 has not been posted yet.
http://www.thunderbolts.info/tpod/2005/arch05/050516marineris.htm
http://video.google.com.au/videosearch?q=Electric+universe+mars&emb=0#q=Electric%20mars&emb=0&start=0
Gavin (22:25:36) :
As I understand it coronas should only form around the surface of a charged conductor and this is an electrical phenomenon.
No, a corona is simply a crown [like in ‘coronation’] and anything that looks like a crown can be called a corona, no matter what causes it. The Sun’s corona was so named long before people knew there was such a thing as ‘an electrical phenomenon’.
In addition to what you quoted the paper also states that:
– 11-yearly, positively charged matter appears on the solar surface (as ” footpoints “). Its concentrated charge overbalances the electrons and emits itself into the space as positive filaments, corona, flares, mass ejections.
First, these things are transient so are not there all the time [even though the word ‘corona’ was carefully put in there as well], yet the solar wind is always neutral. The “concentrated charge overbalances the electrons” is just pure nonsense. I think that not even Glenn would go along with that 🙂 Positive and negative charges attract each other; the positive charge not ‘overpowering’ that attraction turning it into a strong repulsion. The attraction between opposite charges is 1000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 times stronger than the force of gravity [the latter is what keeps the Sun from flying apart].
But, all this is really just a waste of time. There are two approaches you can take to this:
1) you learn about physics so that you yourself can judge the merit of the Electrical Universe [this is hard work, so you might want to take the advice from people that have already put in that hard work]
2) you disregard science as it is known and practiced and believe what you want [this is the more fun approach as there is no end to the flights of fancy you can join and it’s all without effort and pain]
Take your pick.
Glenn (20:19:26) :
And what has Froehlich’s choice of temperature data to do with the best effort on constructing a useful solar index (TSI or what have you). That work has NOTHING to do with the Earth’s temperature. If your opinion on temperature [or whatever] drives your reconstruction of TSI, then that is bad science, something we all can be guilty of from time to time. Examples of that abound: Solanki’s reconstruction [carefully fitted to match Lockwood’s doubling of the Sun’s magnetic field], Lean’s reconstruction that was carefully adjusted to reproduce the perceived temperature change since the Maunder Minimum, Numerous paper that still use obsolete data, because they fit better, etc, etc.
leebert (19:54:31) :
but the TSI peak of the 1970’s & 1980’s might account for the apparent “hockey stickness” of the 1990’s.
The record-book cycle 19 [1955-1964] was cold and followed by more cold until the warming began in the late 1970s.
TSI [and the solar wind – as NASA will tell you] is as low as it was 100 years ago, and solar activity is forecast to be the lowest in a 100 years. I don’t think the same can be said about temperatures. Now, I don’t care for the AGW debate [people have taken leave of their senses a long time ago on this] and have no agenda. I do think that CO2 is good for us and wish we could have some more of it. That viewpoint does not color my work on the solar data.
wonder wich the next step will be
Leif (01:25:32) :
I’m afraid I’d have to disagree with you on point 2. If people had just followed along like sheep and not ‘disregarded science as it is known’ then we would still be on a flat earth and the sun would be revolving around the earth.
As with yourself it seems the electric universe theorists have also done the hard work and their efforts do not revolve around some new pie-in-the-sky theory, or flight of fancy as you put it. I am sure there are flaws in their model, but then again the same can be said about conventional science too so I’m not sure why you so readily dismiss something as complex as this. Anyway, thanks for advice and for taking the time to comment.
Remembering Hannes Alfven’s Admonition
@Gavin:
At the time of Columbus’s first voyage, most learned individuals felt the Earth was round and the debate was over the circumference.
Columbus agreed with the small circumference camp and accidentally found the new world. This did nothing to dispel his belief in the small circumference and consequentially he believed he had arrived in Cathy.
I recommend you review the premise of Occam’s razor which basically states “All other things being equal, the simplest solution is the best.” The electric universe does not even meet the first test of being equal as an explanation of the physical universe and for it to work, it would contradict much well-established science.
Wikipedia: Occam’s Razor
Gavin (05:48:10) :
so I’m not sure why you so readily dismiss something as complex as this.
It is dismissed because it does not make sense, e.g. the notion that positive charges can overpower negative charges and move away from the negative charges. Progress happens because of the insistence that things make sense. And the Electric Universe does not make sense as I have illustrated. The lure of E.U. is not that it is complex [which real science is], but that it is simple [too simple].
Leif,
Can you conceive of two possibilities here, one where there is a long term secular change in temperature, the causes of which are uncertain (and not easily, if at all, attributable to solar variation), and more short term variations in the rate of change in temperature (i.e. not absolute temperatures) that are possibly related to solar variation?
I’m not asking you to agree that the latter exist (yet). I’m merely asking if you can see the distinction I’m drawing here. As you surely will agree, there is so much “noise” in these discussion of solar attribution that finer distinctions, like the one I’m trying to make here, are easily drowned out by the noise.
Gavin,
Science fiction is fun. I enjoy greatly the books by Terry Pratchet about an alternate universe with a flat world carried on the back of four elephants by a cosmic turtlee, where light pours down the mountains every dawn filling up the crevices and chasing the dark.
Metaphysics is fun too. At times I have delved into consciousness theories, metaphysical esoterics like ether etc. It is fun.
BUT one has to have a very clear understanding of what is current physics and the most economical/elegant way of describing the world as we know it now, with data we have now.
It is possible that the people who are pushing this electrical universe know a lot about electromagnetism. But they do not seem to know much about the world as physics has been describing it the last century.
Cosmic electrical forces of the type they posit would make the universe go boom or pft immediately, not just some lightnings between planets. As Leif said, the electric force is enormously stronger than the gravitational force.
Quantum mechanics was discovered because of this : why the electrons do not spiral into the nucleus and go boom ( or pft). Nobody who has any real understanding of physics can accept this EU hypothesis.
Have fun with science fiction, if you do not want to make the effort to learn physics. After all, some of the science fiction of two centuries ago, became the science of the twentieth century, so who knows. I would not hold my breath though.
Is NASA playing it ‘close to the vest,’ or is this normal?
Just 30 minutes before the Ulysses media-teleconference and the graphics and audio links are still not up yet
http://www.nasa.gov/home/hqnews/2008/sep/HQ_M08176_Ulysses_teleconference.html
Basil (08:13:34) :
Can you conceive of two possibilities here, one where there is a long term secular change in temperature, the causes of which are uncertain (and not easily, if at all, attributable to solar variation), and more short term variations in the rate of change in temperature (i.e. not absolute temperatures) that are possibly related to solar variation?
I can conceive of rather the opposite: that short-term are not solar, but that very long-term [millennia] may be. There are stars that change luminosity as a result of internal structural changes [Mira or Delta Chephei, come to mind]. And we don’t know enough about the interior of the Sun [yet] to exclude such possibilities, although we also do not have good reasons to include them.
John-X
Maybe a huge solar burst has knocked out the Internet in North America as Solar cycle 24 gets into it’s stride ?
Or else they forgot…..
Regards
Andy
NASA audio link is live (with elevator music as of 12:20 EDT)
http://www.nasa.gov/news/media/newsaudio/index.html
The NASA audio is Real Audio, so if you don’t have Real Player, get it quick if you want to listen in
http://www.real.com/
Audio is now up !
Bruce Willis must have saved the day by injesting the solar wind so dampening down the huge flare…..
Regards
Andy
This is just like being at work except this time I am not writing emails after getting bored after 10 mins. 😀
Regards
Andy
teleconference has begun as of 12:35 EDT
new URL for graphics & stuff
http://www1.nasa.gov/topics/solarsystem/features/ulysses-20080923.html