I should point out that thanks to the Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO), we can see things that we’ve never seen before. So while this event is unprecedented in the history of science, it is likely “business as usual” for old Sol. h/t to Dr. Leif Svalgaard. – Anthony
From NASA Science News: On August 1, 2010, an entire hemisphere of the sun erupted. Filaments of magnetism snapped and exploded, shock waves raced across the stellar surface, billion-ton clouds of hot gas billowed into space. Astronomers knew they had witnessed something big.
It was so big, it may have shattered old ideas about solar activity.
“The August 1st event really opened our eyes,” says Karel Schrijver of Lockheed Martin’s Solar and Astrophysics Lab in Palo Alto, CA. “We see that solar storms can be global events, playing out on scales we scarcely imagined before.”
For the past three months, Schrijver has been working with fellow Lockheed-Martin solar physicist Alan Title to understand what happened during the “Great Eruption.” They had plenty of data: The event was recorded in unprecedented detail by NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory and twin STEREO spacecraft. With several colleagues present to offer commentary, they outlined their findings at a press conference today at the American Geophysical Union meeting in San Francisco.
Explosions on the sun are not localized or isolated events, they announced. Instead, solar activity is interconnected by magnetism over breathtaking distances. Solar flares, tsunamis, coronal mass ejections–they can go off all at once, hundreds of thousands of miles apart, in a dizzyingly-complex concert of mayhem.
“To predict eruptions we can no longer focus on the magnetic fields of isolated active regions,” says Title, “we have to know the surface magnetic field of practically the entire sun.”
This revelation increases the work load for space weather forecasters, but it also increases the potential accuracy of their forecasts.
“The whole-sun approach could lead to breakthroughs in predicting solar activity,” commented Rodney Viereck of NOAA’s Space Weather Prediction Center in Boulder, CO. “This in turn would provide improved forecasts to our customers such as electric power grid operators and commercial airlines, who could take action to protect their systems and ensure the safety of passengers and crew.”
In a paper they prepared for the Journal of Geophysical Research (JGR), Schrijver and Title broke down the Great Eruption into more than a dozen significant shock waves, flares, filament eruptions, and CMEs spanning 180 degrees of solar longitude and 28 hours of time. At first it seemed to be a cacophony of disorder until they plotted the events on a map of the sun’s magnetic field.
Title describes the Eureka! moment: “We saw that all the events of substantial coronal activity were connected by a wide-ranging system of separatrices, separators, and quasi-separatrix layers.” A “separatrix” is a magnetic fault zone where small changes in surrounding plasma currents can set off big electromagnetic storms.
Researchers have long suspected this kind of magnetic connection was possible. “The notion of ‘sympathetic’ flares goes back at least three quarters of a century,” they wrote in their JGR paper. Sometimes observers would see flares going off one after another–like popcorn–but it was impossible to prove a link between them. Arguments in favor of cause and effect were statistical and often full of doubt.
“For this kind of work, SDO and STEREO are game-changers,” says Lika Guhathakurta, NASA’s Living with a Star Program Scientist. “Together, the three spacecraft monitor 97% of the sun, allowing researchers to see connections that they could only guess at in the past.”
To wit, barely two-thirds of the August event was visible from Earth, yet all of it could be seen by the SDO-STEREO fleet. Moreover, SDO’s measurements of the sun’s magnetic field revealed direct connections between the various components of the Great Eruption—no statistics required.
Much remains to be done. “We’re still sorting out cause and effect,” says Schrijver. “Was the event one big chain reaction, in which one eruption triggered another–bang, bang, bang–in sequence? Or did everything go off together as a consequence of some greater change in the sun’s global magnetic field?”
Further analysis may yet reveal the underlying trigger; for now, the team is still wrapping their minds around the global character of solar activity. One commentator recalled the old adage of three blind men describing an elephant–one by feeling the trunk, one by holding the tail, and another by sniffing a toenail. Studying the sun one sunspot at a time may be just as limiting.
“Not all eruptions are going to be global,” notes Guhathakurta. “But the global character of solar activity can no longer be ignored.”
As if the sun wasn’t big enough already….
Author: Dr. Tony Phillips | Credit: Science@NASA
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eureka!!!!!!!!!!!!
Wow! We are clearly upsetting the Sun God with our use of fossil fuels.
It’s funny if they think that they have a chance in hell of predicting this type of event.
The plural of separatrix ….”separatrices” words you don’t hear often.
Fascinating stuff.
Chris
Norfolk, VA, USA
Great video.
Off-topic, this article shows what really happened to the billions the EU spent to eliminate GHG. $650 was taken by Chinese government in taxes. Increased GHG production in China to get increased GHG payments from EU. Black market in US for cheap GHG surplus produced by China.
http://e360.yale.edu/feature/perverse_co2_payments_send_flood_of_money_to_china_/2350/
[ This kind of “tip” is best put in “Tips and Notes” (see the tab up top) -MOD ]
Jimmy Haigh says:
December 14, 2010 at 8:48 pm
“Wow! We are clearly upsetting the Sun God with our use of fossil fuels.”
*Sigh*
There is no such thing as fossil fuels Jimmy.
http://www.gasresources.net/
http://www.thunderbolts.info/forum/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2150
http://trilogymedia.com.au/Thomas_Gold
Shane;
Good one!
And for another peek into the world of heresy, holistic magnetized plasma analysis of the sun is probably gonna get some support from the plasma cosmologists, sort of. 😉 Lief will be frazzled defending the ramparts of fusion orthodoxy.
Ooooo and that was a massive C2 flare.
I wonder what it looked like back when C flares were background levels and M or X flares were going off almost daily.
“So while this event is unprecedented in the history of science, it is likely “business as usual”
Exactly. And absolutely fascinating. Very different than the models we grew up with. This is more like a piece of dry wood thrown in a camp fire while a bit of wind has come up. And the fact that it had virtually no impact on the Earth is a welcome relief.
The “related posts” widget is no longer functioning, so it is worth noting that WUWT first covered this story back in August:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/08/03/earth-braces-for-solar-storm-tonite/
Where did all the “stuff” go?
————————————–
“One commentator recalled the old adage of three blind men describing an elephant . . . ”
This is an old story with many attempts:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blind_men_and_an_elephant
However, there is version of Saxe’s poem here:
http://www.noogenesis.com/pineapple/blind_men_elephant.html
It starts:
It was six men of Indostan
To learning much inclined,
Who went to see the Elephant
(Though all of them were blind),
A peer-reviewed paper, Astronomy Letters, 2005:
ELECTRON ACCELERATION BY ELECTRIC FIELDS NEAR THE FOOTPRINTS
OF CURRENT-CARRYING CORONAL MAGNETIC LOOPS
V. V. ZAITSEV
Institute of Applied Physics, Russian Academy of Sciences
Abstract: “We analyze the electric fields that arise at the footpoints of a coronal magnetic loop from the interaction between a convective flow of partially ionized plasma and the magnetic field of the loop. Such a situation can take place when the loop footpoints are at the nodes of several supergranulation cells. In this case, the neutral component of the converging convective flows entrain electrons and ions in different ways, because these are magnetized differently. As a result, a charge separating electric field emerges at the loop footpoints, which can efficiently accelerate particles inside the magnetic loop under appropriate conditions. We consider two acceleration regimes: impulsive (as applied to simple loop flares) and pulsating (as applied to solar and stellar radio pulsations).We have calculated the fluxes of accelerated electrons and their characteristic energies. We discuss the role of the return current when dense beams of accelerated particles are injected into the corona. The results obtained are considered in light of the currently available data on the corpuscular radiation from solar flares.”
http://www.springerlink.com/content/d32j212710843216/
“INTRODUCTION
Much of the energy in solar and stellar flares is released in the form of energetic particles. The bulk of the electrons and ions in impulsive solar flares are accelerated to energies of 100 keV and 100 MeV, respectively (Miller et al. 1997) and produce hard X-ray and gamma-ray line emission.”
Many of these “energetic particles” eventually interact with the Earth’s magnetosphere and potentially effect Earth’s energy balance, one expression of which is climate.
Another peer-reviewed paper published in Solar Physics (1991):
TOWARDS THE CIRCUIT THEORY OF SOLAR FLARES
V. V. ZAITSEV
Institute of Applied Physics, Nizhny Novgorod, U.S.S.R.
and
A. V. STEPANOV
Crimean Astrophysical Observatory, U.S.S.R.
“Abstract. It has been shown that the main problems of the circuit theory of solar flares – unlikely huge current growth time and the origin of the current interruption – have been resolved considering the case of magnetic loop emergence and the correct application of Ohm’s law. The generalized Ohm’s law for solar flares is obtained. The conditions for flare energy release are as follows: large current value, > 1011 A, nonsteady-state character of the process, and the existence of a neutral component in a flare plasma. As an example, the coalescence of a flare loop and a filament is considered. It has been shown that the current dissipation has increased drastically as compared with that in a completely ionized plasma. The current dissipation provides effective Joule heating of the pIasma and particle acceleration in a solar flare. The ion-atom collisions play the decisive role in the energy release process. As a result the flare loop resistance can grow by 8-10 orders of magnitude. For this we do not need the anomalous resistivity driven by small-scale plasma turbulence. The energy release emerging from the upper part of a flare loop stimulates powerful energy release from the chromospheric level.”
http://www.springerlink.com/content/nr8k36ln0w6525u1/
The introductory passage from the body of the paper:
“1. Introduction
The circuit model for solar flares proposed more than twenty years ago by Alfven and Carlqvist (1967) is still attractive among the numerous flare models. Following the idea of Alfven and Carlqvist the problem of flare energy release is equivalent to the problem of electric current interruption in the solar corona-photosphere circuit…”
Another passage from the body of the paper:
“2. The Current-Carrying Flare Loop: Circuit Analog
Consider an equivalent electric circuit composed of a coronal magnetic arch with resistance R c and inductance L and a photospheric section with resistance Rph and electromotive force (e.m.f.), o ~, (see, e.g., Alfven and Carlqvist, 1967; Henoux, 1987). The photospheric e.m.f., g, is caused by the Lorentz force (e/c) (v x H), which in turn is created by the photospheric material motion. For this dynamo mechanism to work, the plasma must not be frozen-in. Such conditions do exist in the photosphere where the ion-neutral collision frequency is much more than the ion gyrofrequency (Sen and White, 1972). A quite opposite relation is true for the electrons. Therefore the ions follow the neutral component of the photospheric plasma, a charge imbalance arises, and an e.m.f, sets up:”
And here is a more recent 2009 peer-reviewed paper published in the Central European Astrophysics Bulletin
GENERATION OF LARGE SCALE ELECTRIC FIELDS IN CORONAL FLARE CIRCUITS
Önel, H. & Mann, G.
Astrophysical Institute Potsdam
Abstract: “A large number of energetic electrons are generated during solar flares. They carry a substantial part of the flare released energy but how these electrons are created is not fully understood yet. This paper suggests that plasma motion in an active region in the photosphere is the source of large electric currents. These currents can be described by macroscopic circuits. Under special circumstances currents can establish in the corona along magnetic field lines. The energy released by these currents when moderate assumptions for the local conditions are made, is found be comparable to the flare energy.”
This paper presents the electric circuit theory championed by Hannes Alfven.
A passage from the body of the above paper:
“Currently several different electron acceleration mechanisms in the solar corona are known. All of these mechanisms have the principle of acceleration due to electric fields in common, but differ in the processes leading to the generation of the electric field. In the present paper the generation of a large scale DC electric field is discussed in terms of electric circuits, which is related to a current generated due to photopheric plasma motion (e.g., Alfven and Carlqvist, 1967; Sen and White, 1972; Martres et al., 1973; Heyvarts, 1974; Obayashi, 1975; Akasofu, 1979; Kan et al., 1983; Melrose, 1997; Zaitsev et al., 1998; Yang et al., 2004; Zaitsev, 2005). Motivated by these papers, the electric currents are investigated in order to obtain a mechanism for acceleration of electrons to high energies. The basic idea of this mechanism is to generate the flare energy by photopheric plasma motion in active regions. This is in contradiction to the reconnection model in which the magnetic field energy in the corona is taken for the flare.”
http://adsabs.harvard.edu/full/2009CEAB…33..141O
Several peer-reviewed published papers discussing electric fields and electric currents in the solar environment.
“The country that controls magnetism, controls the universe.” Chester Gould’s Dick Tracy
In reply to : ShaneCMuir at December 14, 2010 at 9:21 pm
Oh dear.
Just think, once they are able to prevent just about every known possible environment-related disaster that can happen on this planet, by achieving complete domination and control of the Earth’s climate system through the regulating and taxing of the emissions of an otherwise-beneficial trace atmospheric gas that has or will be tied to causing all of those problems due to its absolute and direct linkage to the global average temperature, then they’ll be all set to start preventing the above disruptions on the Sun by controlling it as well.
It’ll be a straightforward and proper application of the Precautionary Principle, since despite the large body of peer-reviewed work put forth by Climate Science™ showing that the Sun has nothing to do with climate with long-term solar output variations yielding no statistically-significant global average temperature changes and thus no environment deviations, they can’t rule out such solar disruptions and fluctuations having some effect, therefore…
Gee, I wonder… Since the term “global climate” is tied to controlling the worldwide average surface atmospheric temperature on Earth, what climate term will they use when they can control the average surface temperature of the Sun, the big glowing globe?
Brian H says: “Lief will be frazzled defending the ramparts of fusion orthodoxy.”
Tonight, I was watching Cosmos, a series I enjoyed 30 years ago and found it to be just as intriguing now as then. Carl Sagan made a comment about Johannes Kepler that struck me as impossible to find in today’s scientific communities. Kepler could have glossed over the minor variations. He didn’t. Instead, Sagan said, “When he found that his long cherished beliefs did not agree with the most precise observations, he accepted the uncomfortable facts. He preferred the hard truth to his dearest allusions. That is the heart of science.”
Today, the heart of science is the federal grant, fame and the prideful ego, wound up into an ugly ball that prevents the service to humanity that it once did so well.
Science has yet to come to terms with the fact that there are more unknown unknowns than there are known unknowns. One event can create many new known unknowns, such as this little normal event. Solar science is in its infantcy before any real progress can be made the basic ingredients of electricity, magnetism , gravity etc must be explained and understood. They can be modelled and manipulated but as yet no real idea as to what they are, what they are made of or indeed why they exist at all.
The understanding of the basics will give us the keys to the universe.
Brian H says: (December 14, 2010 at 9:31 pm) Lief will be frazzled defending the ramparts of fusion orthodoxy.
You know another Lief, Brian?
The 560,000 mph solar tsunami:
http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2009/24nov_solartsunami/
OK, I can’t help it. What of all this interconnectedness speaks to the phenomenon known colloquially as the ‘Livingston and Penn Effect’?
=======================
James F. Evans says:
December 14, 2010 at 11:20 pm
Several peer-reviewed published papers discussing electric fields and electric currents in the solar environment.
As these papers demonstrate and as you have been told many times, all exciting stuff happens when electric currents are generated by movement of neutral plasma across a magnetic field.
Relevant to the topic of the posting, the ‘global’ eruption shows that the regions are connected through the magnetic fields in the corona. When one region becomes unstable, the eruption disturbs the nearby regions by reorganizing the coronal fields and they may erupt as well.
Laurie says:
December 15, 2010 at 12:22 am
“When he [Kepler] found that his long cherished beliefs did not agree with the most precise observations, he accepted the uncomfortable facts.”
Just as the modern fusion-deniers should, since the modern theory of energy generation of the Sun and the stars agrees very well with the ‘most precise observations’.
@Carr, @Brian H
Not Lief. LEIF.
There.
Wonders to behold!
The desire in some men/women to understand takes us all forward.
John
“Arguments in favor of cause and effect were statistical and often full of doubt.”
Climate science take heed.
kim says:
December 15, 2010 at 4:24 am
OK, I can’t help it. What of all this interconnectedness speaks to the phenomenon known colloquially as the ‘Livingston and Penn Effect’?
The L&P effect [we still need to have it firmly established – extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, so we have to wait a bit more to be sure] has to do with the magnetic fields in the photosphere and has no real impact on the interconnectedness in the corona. The magnetic fields will reconnect and order themselves regardless.