Missing Sunspots Make Scientists Think Sun is Changing

[Aldini10 14]

Originally posted by: Meg

Originally posted by: Aldini10

I'm scared.quote>

The world has been "ending" one way or another since I was a kid.  I now have my AARP card.

You get used to it.

quote>

I don't think I will, thank you very much.

[benjames98 7]

Maybe the average temperature will go down again like in the 1400s?

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

Originally posted by: benjames98

Maybe the average temperature will go down again like in the 1400s?quote>

You had better hope not.  Wasn't that something to do with volcanic junk in the atmosphere?  A fimbul winter is one great way to thin out earth's overpopulation as crops fail all over.

[LILCHRIS5X 5]

Well, there is no point spending your life worrying about things like this. If something bad happens, we can't do anything about it and probably won't be around for much longer to see it end. Get on with your life and forget about it and you'll be fine.

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

Its a conversation piece.  Like the weather, everyone talks about it, but no one can do anything about it.  The behaviour of the sun is a weather phenomenon.

[Wrightguy0 40]

this really isn't anything new, there have always been doomsday screamers crying "The End is Nigh!" at the slightest jolt, it will always be something asinine, or serious, how many times since 1962 has the world supposed to have ended, or WWIII supposed to have broken out? it pretty much amounts to a real life allegory of the boy who cried wolf, or in these cases War, Solar Flare, or Computer Virus.

i'm sure we'll make it through all of this with no scars just like the last dozen times

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

And if not, then we won't really care, will we?

[nathanthemayor 1,262]

Here is my opinion on this: I don't think that this is an indication of something to come, but i am scared to death that it is. Now, I know that from the movie 2012 that a solar flare casued earthquakes and volcaneos, i don't think so. The reason is that it has never happened and that there have many solar flares ever since the Earth formed. But, again, it is that I am scared to death that it could happen. A flare like this may knock out satelittes and do some other damage, but I don't think this is going to be a flare where we get a global blackout. Although,I am afaid of that.

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

Originally posted by: nathanthemayor

Here is my opinion on this: I don't think that this is an indication of something to come, but i am scared to death that it is. Now, I know that from the movie 2012 that a solar flare caused earthquakes and volcanos, i don't think so. The reason is that it has never happened and that there have many solar flares ever since the Earth formed. But, again, it is that I am scared to death that it could happen. A flare like this may knock out satellites and do some other damage, but I don't think this is going to be a flare where we get a global blackout. Although,I am afraid of that.quote>

Aha!  An agnostic hiding in Mayor's clothing.  (quote spell checked with the rest of my scrawlings)

Solar flares we get all the time.  The real danger is a coronal expulsion, where a big chunk of the surface of the sun is ejected.  If that happens, we'd better hope that the earth is not in its orbit, and that it cools quickly.  A solar expulsion, by the way, is a solar prominence that has enough oomph to get away and it consists of whatever soup the sun is serving on the surface at that moment.  Probably mostly Helium, but there could be other interesting things, and you can bet there will be some hot gamma, beta and even alpha particles skittering around.  Lots of wild neutrons, too.  Anything touched by this will either be incinerated or degaussed.  So let's hope the sun's gravity well is deep enough to hang on to its fragments.

[warrior 169]

So that's where the whole aligning of the planets and galaxys comes from. If all the planets and our galaxy or somethign were to line the gravity would be stronger against the Sun so it any CME towards us would be pulled stronger.

How far south will people be able to see the lights ion the sky from this CME (or has it already happened), ie in the uK? 

[astronelson 339]

Originally posted by: warrior

So that's where the whole aligning of the planets and galaxys comes from. If all the planets and our galaxy or somethign were to line the gravity would be stronger against the Sun so it any CME towards us would be pulled stronger. quote>

The increase in gravitational force acting on any part of the sun from such an alignment would be miniscule.

The math is simple, but tedious if you want to be very precise. For each planet, divide its mass (in kilograms) by the square of the distance between it and the sun (in meters) and multiply the sum of all these by the gravitational constant to give you  the acceleration a particle would undergo disregarding the sun's gravitational pull.

Mercury, the closest to the sun, contributes all of 6.57*10^-9 m.s^-2. Jupiter contributes 5.7 times this amount. Acceleration due to gravity on the sun's surface is 274 m.s^-2.

So it would be pulled stronger, but compared to the forces you get just from the fact it is a giant swirling ball of plasma, the extra force is negligible.

As for Coronal Mass Ejections hitting Earth, there was one within the past 24 hours. The aurora borealis could be seen in Denmark.

[erbush 8]

I'll cover 2 views here...

1. If the earth has been around for millions of years and still has it's atmosphere, then the solar flares haven't blown it away obviously. (some believe that happened to mars) Then why do some people freak out and think that it's gonna happen during their lifetime.. It hasn't happened in millions of years!

2. If the earth was created by God.. and the above scenario hasn't happened in 6k years or so.. because God hasn't allowed it to happen.. then why do you think he will allow it to happen any time soon?!

Stop worrying about it.. I promise that if a solar flare was strong enough to take our atmosphere away you won't feel a thing.

[simmaster07 1,221]

Originally posted by: erbush

2. If the earth was created by God.. and the above scenario hasn't happened in 6k years or so.. because God hasn't allowed it to happen.. then why do you think he will allow it to happen any time soon?! quote>

I promise you that at least one person with different beliefs than you is going to argue that. And to repeat a bunch of other people's points, people have claimed the world was going to end too many times to remember in a 50-year period. And even if this does spell the end, you probably won't feel a thing.

[hmm 17]

I'm not worried at all. If I start seeing the Aurora down here in NYC, and I dont think it reaches that far down south, I'll just turn of my electronic equipment and join SimHoTToDDy with my seven and seven on the rocks at the bar.

 

If it ends up being something as drastic as the final scenes in that movie the Knowing then I guess we are all screwed.

BTW, when I went to wikipedia to find the link for the movie I stumbled on this, apparently this event or a CME has been hapening for the past few days. If ya'll dont trust the wiki, there were some credible links from NASA on the page that backs up this story.

EDIT: for all you astronomy buffs out there. People in the temporate latitudes between 45 and 50 degrees N. will be able to see the northern lights. I might just drive out upstate to see it since theres way to many streetlights in New York.

Heres the link

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

Originally posted by: erbush

I'll cover 2 views here...

1. If the earth has been around for millions of years and still has it's atmosphere, then the solar flares haven't blown it away obviously. (some believe that happened to mars) Then why do some people freak out and think that it's gonna happen during their lifetime.. It hasn't happened in millions of years!quote>

Mars' gravity well isn't strong enough to keep much of an atmosphere.  Lost it, if It ever had much, all by itself.

2. If the earth was created by God.. and the above scenario hasn't happened in 6k years or so.. because God hasn't allowed it to happen.. then why do you think he will allow it to happen any time soon?! quote>

Even if Bishop Ussher was right, we still don't know the length of God's day n the beginning.  Besides, why would God go to the trouble of creating all those fossils, and make carbon work so that we could use it for dating?

Stop worrying about it.. I promise that if a solar flare was strong enough to take our atmosphere away you won't feel a thing.quote>

Boomelay, boomelay, boomelay, BOOM!

[+Guest Gnarologist]

Archean-I cried, but only because that movie was so bad and spent a good amount of time in my hometown, thus insulting it haha.

I used to be freaked out about the end of the world when I was younger...but now I realize that pretty much everything in life isn't about what you've been given but what you do with what your given. And if I get to life another two years on this earth or another two-hundred, I know i'll be satisfied with how I spent each one of those years when I die.

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

Originally posted by: Gnarologist

Archean-I cried, but only because that movie was so bad and spent a good amount of time in my hometown, thus insulting it haha.

I used to be freaked out about the end of the world when I was younger...but now I realize that pretty much everything in life isn't about what you've been given but what you do with what your given. And if I get to life another two years on this earth or another two-hundred, I know i'll be satisfied with how I spent each one of those years when I die.quote>

A philosophical soul mate.

Welcome to our conversation/