From the UK Telegraph – source link
The protective bubble around the sun that helps to shield the Earth from harmful interstellar radiation is shrinking and getting weaker, NASA scientists have warned.
By Richard Gray, Science Correspondent
Last Updated: 9:23AM BST 19 Oct 2008
New data has revealed that the heliosphere, the protective shield of energy that surrounds our solar system, has weakened by 25 per cent over the past decade and is now at it lowest level since the space race began 50 years ago.
Scientists are baffled at what could be causing the barrier to shrink in this way and are to launch mission to study the heliosphere.
The Interstellar Boundary Explorer, or IBEX, will be launched from an aircraft on Sunday on a Pegasus rocket into an orbit 150,000 miles above the Earth where it will “listen” for the shock wave that forms as our solar system meets the interstellar radiation.
Dr Nathan Schwadron, co-investigator on the IBEX mission at Boston University, said: “The interstellar medium, which is part of the galaxy as a whole, is actually quite a harsh environment. There is a very high energy galactic radiation that is dangerous to living things.
“Around 90 per cent of the galactic cosmic radiation is deflected by our heliosphere, so the boundary protects us from this harsh galactic environment.”
The heliosphere is created by the solar wind, a combination of electrically charged particles and magnetic fields that emanate a more than a million miles an hour from the sun, meet the intergalactic gas that fills the gaps in space between solar systems.
At the boundary where they meet a shock wave is formed that deflects interstellar radiation around the solar system as it travels through the galaxy.
The scientists hope the IBEX mission will allow them to gain a better understanding of what happens at this boundary and help them predict what protection it will offer in the future.
Without the heliosphere the harmful intergalactic cosmic radiation would make life on Earth almost impossible by destroying DNA and making the climate uninhabitable.
Measurements made by the Ulysses deep space probe, which was launched in 1990 to orbit the sun, have shown that the pressure created inside the heliosphere by the solar wind has been decreasing.
Dr David McComas, principal investigator on the IBEX mission, said: “It is a fascinating interaction that our sun has with the galaxy surrounding us. This million mile an hour wind inflates this protective bubble that keeps us safe from intergalactic cosmic rays.
“With less pressure on the inside, the interaction at the boundaries becomes weaker and the heliosphere as a whole gets smaller.”
If the heliosphere continues to weaken, scientists fear that the amount of cosmic radiation reaching the inner parts of our solar system, including Earth, will increase.
This could result in growing levels of disruption to electrical equipment, damage satellites and potentially even harm life on Earth.
But Dr McComas added that it was still unclear exactly what would happen if the heliosphere continued to weaken or what even what the timescale for changes in the heliosphere are.
He said: “There is no imminent danger, but it is hard to know what the future holds. Certainly if the solar wind pressure was to continue to go down and the heliosphere were to almost evaporate then we would be in this sea of galactic cosmic rays. That could have some large effects.
“It is likely that there are natural variations in solar wind pressure and over time it will either stabilise or start going back up.”
(hat tip to Dvid Gladstone)
OK, I’m talking through my hat here (no comments on that you…)
The fact that the probe is “listening” to some “signal” from the boundary indicates to me that a physical limit exists between the solar wind and the cosmic rays. We may not be able to see it or touch it, but a “sound” exists when the two meet.
Interesting. Leif, your illumination would help here. I’m an engineer. Worked with microwaves (which behave something like water – surprisingly) and fiber optics. Which leads me to postulate that such a boundary could exist.
Please, remember, – engineer – , words of two sylables or less please….
TNX
Mike (with a grin – never did like those erzats emoticons…)
Brett
the following sites have a description of the latest(I think) cosmic ray and cloud formation information.
http://www.junkscience.com/Greenhouse/influence-of-cosmic-rays-on-the-earth.pdf
http://www.junkscience.com/Greenhouse/sky-experiment_2.pdf
http://www.junkscience.com/Greenhouse/Cosmic_rays_and_climate.html
Leon Brozyna (21:51: “I can accept variations in the solar wind, but down to virtually nothing? Come on now. That seems to take it out of the realm of science.”
Why? That would certainly be out of the realm of science for those who e.g. say that Svensmark is a Flat Earth Society scientist. That’s almost the conclusion in the report by Laut and Damon. Laut was a person who has had order from IPCC and the document was refered by IPCC:
http://translate.google.com/translate?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.berlingske.dk%2Farticle%2F20071215%2Fdanmark%2F712150037%2F&hl=sv&ie=UTF-8&sl=da&tl=en
There is nothing which legitimate the positive feedbacks in the AGW theory, which I think is out of the realm of good science. Complain about that makes AGW ppl say one has no idea of good science, but shall put all trust in IPCC. The feedback assumption is (or was; now it’s falsified) anyway stupid.
IPCC has been and are very much a political show.
Tom in ice free Florida (19:04:34) :
‘I have read that it takes Earth approx 300,000 years to complete one orbit of the galaxy. Are there any Earth events that have a 300,000 year patter?’
You are not far out Tom. It is actually 250 million years. You must have read your figure in The New Scientist. While I am here, perhaps the shrinking protective bubble occurs every 100,000 years, thereby allowing such an increase in cosmic rays that we rapidly enter a full ice age due to an increase in cloud cover.
Tom in ice free Florida (19:04:34) :
I have read that it takes Earth approx 300,000 years to complete one orbit of the galaxy. Are there any Earth events that have a 300,000 year pattern?
I think the current “agreed” galaxy orbit timescale is around 226 million years.
I would be looking closer….our solar system has much shorter patterns that line up with solar minima.
“Or is the ‘bubble’ so expansive that it could shrink by, say 75% and Earth would still reside within it’s protective sphere of influence?”
I don’t believe that is the correct way of thinking of it. A certain number of cosmic rays always penetrate to Earth. As the stream of particles from the Sun weakens, we see more of them penetrating to the inner solar system. It isn’t a matter of “shrinking” so much as it is a matter of “weakening” the way I understand it. And as it weakens, we get hit with more cosmic rays.
This could have happened many times in the past. It could result in more cancers or genetic mutations of various sorts. It could be an event that triggered periods of evolution of new species as some of these mutations would prove beneficial and allow that species to eat more or evade predators better. These events might have also caused mass extinctions in the past or mass extinctions along with large numbers of genetic mutations. We just don’t know and only 5000 years of recorded history just isn’t enough time to know what happens on geological time spans of millions of years.
Point taken on the normality of the solar wind variations Leif and thank you for the correction and clarification.
Apologies for the speculation on the tipping points into Ice ages,.
Looks like you didn’t have much success in hosing down a lot of other speculation either.
Dendrochronologists have been in the firing line here so a couple of questions which relates to their profession.
Are the byproducts of cosmic ray collisions within the atmosphere of sufficient quantity and of sufficient difference to be able to be readily identified in soil and / or water samples?
If they are and can be readily detected can these byproducts of the cosmic ray collisions be taken up by trees and identified and the levels of take-up be measured in individual annual tree rings or is this beyond the current technology ?
The trees would probably need to come from very high altitudes where the cosmic ray effects would be most marked.
Living in Queensland Australia, from recent observations, the spring storms are getting more intense and becoming more like they were 1982-1990. I wonder in Svensmark’s theory is being proven in this micro-environment, that is more cosmic rays are getting threough and affecting lower cloud build up such as typical cumulus nimbus.
The suns “bubble” could be reacting to a lack of stimulas, very much the way Earth’s “bubble” has been reacting to lessened solar activity. We have no idea what forces blast our solar system. What is outside the bubble is an even bigger mystery. The Voyager I and II have passed through this, lets call it a barrier for grins. http://voyager.jpl.nasa.gov/ Geeze Im dating myself, I remember when they were launched:) Well given what we knew then, to what we know now, I would say that we still have a long way to go in figuring out all of the factors that influence not only our sun but our planetary system as well.
I also think I read some where that our entire galaxy has its own bubble.. that our merry go round trip around its center sometimes brings us out of the bubble…….bubble, in a bubble, in a bubble 🙂 It may have been one of those sites that predicts the end of the world at the end of the Myan callendar tho.. so I cant quote you a source. But what I do know, is that a great deal of space science involves a lot of guess work, building a theory, and then getting shot down once technology surpasses the guesswork. My personal fav black holes, which supposedly suck everything in.. so why do they have emissions.. maybe … http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/chandra/news/07-139.html
something similar could happen to us.. or not.. face it folks theres a zillion ways to end life on Earth. You will go nuts if you worry about them all:)
Either way, looks like cap and trade is coming to the USA in full force. Nancy is gonna save us all for the greater good with acceptable losses:) Isnt that comforting?
To ROM:
The CLOUD experiment at CERN is not delayed by the technical problems of the LHC, as it is not linked to LHC. It is however delayed by the financial problems related to LHC overspending (because of various technical problems).
The CLOUD experiment could be carried out at ten other places in the world. You may ask, why is there no other place picking it up? At CERN, personalities like Carlo Rubbia, the Nobel laureate, have convinced the CERN scientific council to spend the money (of order 10 – 20 Million Euro). At this level of spending, CERN is still an independent institution. The National Lab.s in Europe, Japan, and the USA are no longer that independent from political influence, even at this level of project size.
The cosmic rays which get modulated by the solar influence have relatively low energy, up to 20 Giga-electronVolt. They are predominantly influenced by the solar magnetic filed, the ‘open solar flux’, a field where Leif Svalgaard is actively working on. Collisions with solar wind protons are not important for screening the cosmic rays, in contrast to the statements in the article. The screening during active solar times is sigificant:http://ulysses.sr.unh.edu/NeutronMonitor/images/0_1950-2006.GIF
Looks like we may be in for global cooling after all–just as the juggernaut of co2-based warming theory is let into our diminishing national coffers! Thank you for this excellent site, I’m not a scientist but I appreciate proper scientific skepticism
A question often asked of AGWers is this. How much longer would global temps need to remain flat in order for the GCM results to be falsified.
So, for all those who believe that recent ‘changes’ in the behaviour of the sun will result in plunging temperatures on earth, I’ll rephrase this question
How much longer would global temperatures need to remain at current relatively high levels for you to be convinced that the sun is not, in fact, a major factor in short-term climate shifts?
@Alfred Ledner Annonson,
About the clouds-cosmic rays theory: have there been any attempts to quantify the effect of cosmic rays on the climate, or do the three documents you link to reflect the current level of understanding on the subject?
Oh gosh! Is this another result of man-made global warming? It’s bad enough that we are mucking up Earth’s atmosphere….but now it seems we are mucking up the sun’s atmosphere too!
Maybe if we all hold our breaths long enough, we can reduce CO2 emissions!
John Finn,
You played a little rhetorical trick in your quetion there. You slipped in the phrase “short term” when mentioning climate shifts. By my own reckoning, the Sun would have to put in a series of below average, or late, sun spot cycles; or several, say 6, decades of low output to impact climate.
It’s a Sun thing.
I’m confused! This news release was issued as a “warning” by NASA scientists. What action(s) do I take? Can I or should I venture outdoors today? Will congress legislate corrective measures to protect my family? Help, I’m almost paralyzed with fear!
Oh you guys do like a good yarn. Stop all the theorising & realise that it’s the CO2 casing all these ills & woes, don’t let science get in the way of agreat money makeing deal. Liked the idea about selling solar credits, I’ll buy share in that one.
After all that the news of colling global temperatures, the news about the sun in shutdown mode, low solar magnetic field, low heliosphere, arctic ice in potential recovery, & what do WWF come out with? A report about Climate Change being even faster than was previously thought & eco disaster around the corner, The Royal Society with a report about deadly destructive ozone as a new scare story to tag on to CO2.
BTW, we in the UK have just celebrated the 50th anniversary of a wonderful long-running childrens’ programme called Blue Peter. It was wonderful watching all those fashion, science, technology, & lifestyle stories, of what & how the world would be like by the Y2K, just like ALL those other things predicted in their day, the movies, the futuristic tv shows, etc., absolutely hillarious, but none of it ever happened!
However, this news realy is serious if one is serious about real science,. as oppsoed to AGW believers being really about serious scienctists!
How much longer would global temperatures need to remain at current relatively high levels for you to be convinced that the sun is not, in fact, a major factor in short-term climate shifts?
That right there is another argument… some of us here have experienced some pretty chilly weather conditions this past summer and due to the political nature of some of the scientists in charge of the data sets we question the accuracy of the data being presented. If the scientific consensus were not “settled” in spite loud opposition and if certain parties hadn’t been busted fixing the numbers, and if a proper discussion could be fostered between the believers and the heretics resulting in a return of scientific methods over blind belief.. perhaps we could all benefit.
Oh, I’m sorry, I overreacted. I didn’t realize the source of this story was the UK Telegraph. I feel better now – think I’ll take a walk.
Michael J. Bentley (21:59:42) :
Which leads me to postulate that such a boundary could exist.
There is, indeed, a very marked boundary, called the heliopause, marked by a ‘termination shock’. The boundary occurs where the solar wind pressure falls below [it decreases by the square of the distance] the pressure in interstellar space. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heliosphere has a decent explanation.
Mike Dubrasich (19:03:44) :First the dot com bubble, then the housing bubble, and now the heliosphere bubble. I’m about bubbled out.
You forget the South Seas Outbubbling Fizzy CO2 Bubble
ROM; Dendroclimatologists not dendrochronologists have been taking stick.
Dave.
ROM (23:47:33) :
Are the byproducts of cosmic ray collisions within the atmosphere of sufficient quantity and of sufficient difference to be able to be readily identified in soil and / or water samples?
Generally yes. The isotope 10Be created by cosmic rays can be readily found in ice in Greenland and Antarctica.
If they are and can be readily detected can these byproducts of the cosmic ray collisions be taken up by trees and identified and the levels of take-up be measured in individual annual tree rings or is this beyond the current technology ?
14C can be measured in individual tree rings. But the so-called ‘Carbon cycle’ smoothes out variations of short duration, so one has to model the cycle to try to extract short-term variations, so 14C data is usually a mean over several years.
How does the earth’s magnetic field fare in all this?
Ever since I found the solar system barycentre material, I’ve been utterly convinced that here lies the real (cyclic) key to climate change. Here are the predictors whose predictions have a semblance of matching the reality.