Vague_Boy Posted January 19, 2014 Share Posted January 19, 2014 Those of you of a certain age" will remember that the prevalent meteorological obsession in the 1970s was the prospect of a new ice age. The 1970s Ice Age Scare (The very severe winter of 1978/79 just added fuel to the flame as it were.) Well we oldies can indulge in a bit of nostalgia as the threat of a new "Little" ice age is once again current news. Is our Sun falling silent? "I've been a solar physicist for 30 years, and I've never seen anything quite like this," says Richard Harrison, head of space physics at the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory in Oxfordshire. He shows me recent footage captured by spacecraft that have their sights trained on our star. The Sun is revealed in exquisite detail, but its face is strangely featureless. "If you want to go back to see when the Sun was this inactive... you've got to go back about 100 years," he says. This solar lull is baffling scientists, because right now the Sun should be awash with activity. It has reached its solar maximum, the point in its 11-year cycle where activity is at a peak. This giant ball of plasma should be peppered with sunspots, exploding with flares and spewing out huge clouds of charged particles into space in the form of coronal mass ejections. But apart from the odd event, like some recent solar flares, it has been very quiet. And this damp squib of a maximum follows a solar minimum - the period when the Sun's activity troughs - that was longer and lower than scientists expected. "It's completely taken me and many other solar scientists by surprise," says Dr Lucie Green, from University College London's Mullard Space Science Laboratory. The drop off in activity is happening surprisingly quickly, and scientists are now watching closely to see if it will continue to plummet. LINK [bBC News, 18 January 2014] Maybe it's time to boost our carbon emissions to avoid what happened the last time this occured: Some scientists are even hinting the slowdown could be as bad as in the 17th century in a solar time known as the Maunder Minimum, when bitter, freezing cold swept through Europe. The River Thames froze and there were bitterly cold winters during that time. LINK After all, fuel ain't as cheap as it was. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Maz3 Posted January 19, 2014 Share Posted January 19, 2014 Armageddon is upon us. It's gays getting married what's done it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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