Stories tagged sun
The Sun in more active times: Sunspot activity, which is linked to weather and other phenomena on Earth, peaked in 2001. But for the last two years there’s been almost nothing.
Courtesy NASA
Occasionally, intense magnetic activity in the Sun creates sunspots, dark regions on the surface of the Sun. Sunspot activity rises and falls roughly every 11 years – the last maximum was in 2001, and activity slowly fell off to zero by 2006.
And since then…almost nothing. Scientists had expected sunspot activity to start increasing by now, but it hasn’t. No one knows why, or when the cycle will pick up again.
Why is this important?
Sunspots, created by intense magnetic activity, are associated with solar flares, enormous streams of high-energy particles sent shooting out into the Solar System. These play havoc with satellites and other electronic communication. So, no sunspots in this case would be a good thing.
Solar flares also create the beautiful northern and southern lights. In this case, no sunspots is a bad thing.
Perhaps most important, sunspots seem to be an indicator of solar activity. And low activity can mean lower temperatures here on Earth. The Sun once went 50 years without producing any spots – from 1650 to 1700 – and these years were some of the coldest in recorded history. Today they are known as the little Ice Age.
Are we on the brink of a new Ice Age? It’s wayyyy to early to tell. But scientists are keeping an eye on the Sun, to see if it reveals any clues.
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The big D: Research continues to shed light on the role vitamin D plays in our bodies.
Courtesy Leo Reynolds
We've talked beforeon Science Buzz about the link between sunlight, vitamin D and cancer. Well, the story just won't go away...
Here's more evidence that sunlight = vitamin D = a healthier life.
And research that shows vitamin D can reduce the risk of diabetes.
And also reduce risk of a heart attack.
But, just to keep things balanced, here's a report that vitamin D doesn’t do everything – some of the health benefits claimed for the vitamin don’t stand up to research
And here’s a summary of the pros and cons of vitamin D and sun exposure.
Australian scientists studying albedo--the amount of sunlight reflected off the Earth—have created a flat cardboard kangaroo 105 feet tall. Photographing the image from space will give clues to how the Earth’s atmosphere heats up and cools down.
NASA Science website is an awesome resource
NASA Science website
Courtesy NASA To show how useful this site can be, here are links to pages I found as I dug deeper into just one of the many areas on the NASA Science website.
Science for different levels of learning
The NASA Science website provides learning opportunities for four learning groups.
Earth, sun, planets, and astrophysics
The NASA Science website is divided into these parts.
Coronal Mass Ejection: View of solar event taken in ultraviolet light by the SOHO spacecraft.
Courtesy NASACheck out the first footage of a gigantic “tsunami” captured plowing through our Sun’s atmosphere. The event was triggered by some sort of explosion on the Sun such as a solar flare or coronal mass ejection (CME). The outward-spreading wave spanned the nearly one million kilometers (600,000 miles) of the solar disk in just half an hour. But it’s the amount of energy released that is truly mind-boggling. According to one of the researchers, these explosions release “about two billion times the annual world energy consumption in just a fraction of a second.”
Here comes the Sun: Scientists announce new breakthroughs in solar energy technology. Photo by S4N7Y from Flickr.com
A company in Massachusetts has developed a process for producing solar power cells using inkjet printers. This could drastically reduce the cost of producing the cells, and increase the number of ways they are used.
Meanwhile in Atlanta, Lonnie Johnson – the man who invented the Super Soaker squirt gun – is working on a solar-powered electrical generator that would be twice as efficient as current models.
Today’s article is brought to you by the letter D
Courtesy Leo Reynolds
Hard to do this time of year. And lots of people shun the sun to avoid skin cancer. But science now says sun avoidance is bad for you. It can lead to vitamin D deficiency.
Your skin produced vitamin D naturally when it is struck by sunlight. Too little vitamin D can lead to some nasty diseases, such as rickets, a softening or weakening of the bones.
Vitamin D has been in the news a lot lately. Canadian researchers have found that non-whites are especially prone to vitamin D deficiency. (Dark skin evolved in sunny areas as a way to keep the body from producing too much vitamin D, which also causes problems. When dark-skinned people move to less sunny areas, their anti-sun defense actually starts to work against them.)
A doctor in Buffalo, NY has linked low levels of vitamin D to high incidence of cancer.
Doctors at the Children's National Medical Center in Washington note that a lack of milk and sunshine is leading to is preventing children from developing strong, healthy bones.
A study at King's College in London suggests that vitamin D may slow aging.
Looks like we may not need such a big thermometer after all: Despite ever-increasing levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, global temperatures have not gone up in nine years. What gives?
Courtesy arbyreed
Y’know, it’s been a while since we’ve had a good dust-up over global warming here at the Buzz. Last month, 10,000 delegates attended the UN’s climate conference in Bali (most of them traveling by jet and producing more of the carbon they’re supposed to be reducing), and there was hardly a peep. Even when 100 scientists signed a letter poking holes in the popular conception of global warming, nobody here said a word.
Oh well, what can I say? Holiday rush, end-of-the-year malaise…we had other things on our minds. But today, as the Midwest in experiencing record-shattering warmth (62° in mid-Michigan on January 7!), comes news that global warming…has stopped! It seems that global temps peaked in 1998, settled down a bit, and have been basically unchanged since 2001. So, for the past nine years, while humans continue to pump more and more carbon into the atmosphere, global temperatures have… done nothing.
How to explain this phenomenon? Well, there are a couple of wacky European scientists who argue that climate is driven by the Sun rather than by humans, but that’s obviously just crazy talk. The mystery of the missing warming continues.
Red alert: Based on what they've seen at the star V 391, astronomers say there is a possibility that Earth could survive a red giant phase expansion of our Sun. (Photo courtesy of NASA)Not that any of us reading this have to really worry about this personally, but there’s new evidence that the Earth could be able to survive should our Sun start to balloon into a red giant. That’s estimated to happen in a few billion years.
Astronomers have found a planet in a similar position as Earth’s relative to its star that continues to exist as the star has become a red giant. The star in question, V 391, was much like our Sun, but as it aged, its core ran out of hydrogen. That triggered a reaction where it began to burn helium and its outer surface expanded out about 100 times wider. It’s believed the same thing will happen to our Sun in about 5 billion years.
The planet in question has about three times the mass of Jupiter and orbits V 391 at about the same distance as Mars is from our Sun. However, the red giant action of V 391 is considered highly unusual and may be just representative of 2 percent of the red giant actions that happen to stars. Astronomers are continuing to watch what’s happening there, but say that it’s too small of a data sample to project what will happen to Earth when the Sun go to a red giant phase. The common thinking is Mercury and Venus will be vaporized in a red giant transition of the Sun while Earth would be on the borderline of the safety zone.
Anybody see the eclipse last night? It looked something like this.
Looking ahead, Charles Deehr of the University of Alaska sends word of a great meteor shower coming on the night of August 31 / September 1. Unfortunately, by the time it hits, the eastern and Midwestern US will already be in daylight. This shower will only be visible on the West Coast, Hawaii and similar places. It's expected to start around 4:00 am PDT, plus or minus 20 minutes, so Californians need to get out there around 3:30 and look east.
He also tells us we may see some aurora activity around the equinox (September 22). The Sun is not particularly active this year, so it won't be a spectacular display -- though he expects next year to start getting better. Anyway, readers in Canada, Alaska, Scandinavia, and the very northern US (northern Minnesota, the UP, places like that) might get lucky and see some.
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