THE SUN -- Friend Or Foe? What's Coming - The Effects on Earth - Current Happenings

[maryals]

Hey VO, do you or your HAM friends pick up those radio waves?
About the sunburn....I have very fair skin, so all my life I would feel that "prickle" before the skin color changed. If I waited till pink actually appeared before covering up or going inside I would be "boiled lobster red" a few hours later.
As something is happening....stronger sun rays....weaker Ozone......take my advice about wearing sunscreen, keeping covered up if only in light weight cotton gauze. When you feel that "prickle" cover up or go inside, don't wait for a change in color. If you do wait it will be too late and sunburn is hellish. It can also make you physically ill if you get too much sun.

Mary and Bessie

[VOguy]

Hey VO, do you or your HAM friends pick up those radio waves?

Much of the sun's effects translate into two distinct effects. Thermal noise, and ionospheric altering.

Thermal noise can be somewhat of a problem because unlike lightning crashes it's a constant "hiss". In space communications, (yes, some hams do moon bounce, orbiting satellite communications and e-skip), it can make or break communications.

The level of ionization of the atmosphere can also change distances. Normally the HF communications will bounce off the sky, but if the sun's effects cause a loss of ionization then typically you're left with only ground wave communications limited to 500-1,000 miles. When the sun is operating normally, it's no problem to talk to any portion of the globe, depending on frequencies.

[maryals]

Thanks VO What I meant was, do SW Radio receivers on planet Earth pick up those radio waves from the sun?

Mary and Bessie

[VOguy]

Thanks VO What I meant was, do SW Radio receivers on planet Earth pick up those radio waves from the sun?

Mary and Bessie

Sometimes. It's usually just broadband noise, and manifests in the frequencies above SW. However, when the Aurora Borealis is active, that will tend to muddy up the SW/HF bands.

Are you familiar with an S-Meter on a radio? That's the meter that's calibrated in decibels of signal. If you and I would talk, a typical 15 or 20 meter transmission from AK to OH might be S7 or so. That is a good readable signal. But when the Aurora Borealis occurs, you get a hiss in the whole band of frequencies which may, or may not, cover up the transmission. Being in AK you would probably have the worse end of it.

Another cause and effect on my end is when the Aurora Borealis occurs, it will cause a distortion in the atmosphere changing the angle of transmission, especially on lower frequency SW. For example, I have a buddy up in Sarnia Ontario (across from Port Huron). We'll talk often on 7.2 MHz SW. His signal, and mine is about S9. When the Aurora Borealis really kicks in, I don't hear squat from the north, and Central American and Caribbean signals will drown him out even with the antenna pointed at him. For him, he can't hear me, but gets about S30 of Central America coming at him. And those guys down there don't here us at all!

So, yes, SW is affected. I can get around it by changing bands and finding something that works better, or if it's a case of sending you a Radiogram. BTW, well have to try that sometime. It takes a while to get there, but it's kind of fun to have a ham show up at your door with a message in hand like the old Western Union guy.

[maryals]

That is very interesting and informative, but, my question still is: can you with your receiver hear the sounds made by the sun?? The article talks about radio waves sent out BY the SUN and can you hear THOSE radio transmissions FROM the SUN? I mean, can you hear the difference between Sun Noise and just static?
Thanks!

Mary and Bessie

[VOguy]

Sound of Morse Code which is normally a series of clear beeps off the Aurora.

Note the hiss, and how the raspyness of the normally musical code note is turned to a hash. It's still copyable, but it's annoying.

[maryals]

The following is from http://spaceweather.com/

The M-flare also produced a Type II radio burst. "Although the sun was setting here in New Mexico, I was able to record the burst at 28 MHz and 24 MHz," says amateur radio astronomer Thomas Ashcraft. "Here is an Audio File. The slow swoosh you just heard is radio noise from the sun!" Another radio astronomer, Dick Flagg of Hawaii, used a radio spectrograph at Windward Community College in Oahu to record the burst's dynamic spectrum.

VO, have you ever picked up that radio noise from the sun? The way this guy Thomas Ashcraft has?
Thanks

Mary and Bessie

[VOguy]

The following is from http://spaceweather.com/

VO, have you ever picked up that radio noise from the sun? The way this guy Thomas Ashcraft has?
Thanks

Mary and Bessie

Yep. But I never recorded it. I think it's interesting because it demonstrates that there are physics to the way our earth and universe works. But yes, if you're on 21 MHz talking and this happens, it can disrupt all communications in that segment.

If I recall, you did some weather stuff in the military. The ones that really facinate me are "whistlers". Whistlers are common to the VLF, below the AM broadcast band, and they are a quick whistle, high to low, or low to high, lasting only a 1/2 second. They can disrupt VLF communications, such as the comms for a submarine. They can get up into the SW band if intense. But here's the kicker.... science really doesn't know for sure what causes them. We know the effects of the sun, but whistlers are still a mystery.

I side with some who feel that they are the reminents of a lightning strike or a sprite, and it's the plasma from the burst being radiated across radio frequencies. Sort of like how a pebble in a pond will make waves radiating outward. The pitch being the ripple passing by the radio receiver.

[Alpha]

When NASA starts talking about all of this, it should make us all more than very nervous

Nasa warns solar flares from 'huge space storm' will cause devastation

Britain could face widespread power blackouts and be left without critical communication signals for long periods of time, after the earth is hit by a once-in-a-generation “space storm”, Nasa has warned.


National power grids could overheat and air travel severely disrupted while electronic items, navigation devices and major satellites could stop working after the Sun reaches its maximum power in a few years.




Senior space agency scientists believe the Earth will be hit with unprecedented levels of magnetic energy from solar flares after the Sun wakes “from a deep slumber” sometime around 2013, The Daily Telegraph can disclose.



In a new warning, Nasa said the super storm would hit like “a bolt of lightning” and could cause catastrophic consequences for the world’s health, emergency services and national security unless precautions are taken.



Scientists believe it could damage everything from emergency services’ systems, hospital equipment, banking systems and air traffic control devices, through to “everyday” items such as home computers, iPods and Sat Navs.



Due to humans’ heavy reliance on electronic devices, which are sensitive to magnetic energy, the storm could leave a multi-billion pound damage bill and “potentially devastating” problems for governments.



“We know it is coming but we don’t know how bad it is going to be,”Dr Richard Fisher, the director of Nasa's Heliophysics division, told The Daily Telegraph in an interview.




“It will disrupt communication devices such as satellites and car navigations, air travel, the banking system, our computers, everything that is electronic. It will cause major problems for the world.


“Large areas will be without electricity power and to repair that damage will be hard as that takes time.”



Dr Fisher added: “Systems will just not work. The flares change the magnetic field on the earth that is rapid and like a lightning bolt. That is the solar affect.”
A “space weather” conference in Washington DC last week, attended by Nasa scientists, policy-makers, researchers and government officials, was told of similar warnings.


While scientists have previously told of the dangers of the storm, Dr Fisher’s comments are the most comprehensive warnings from Nasa to date......


Full Article

[pyrite]

so do i need to wear my tinfoil wingnut hat for this, or do i need to take it off...i get so confused....Attachment 6820

[Judee]

so do i need to wear my tinfoil wingnut hat for this, or do i need to take it off...i get so confused....Attachment 6820

Tinfoil goggles would probably help too pyrite!

[Judee]

Sun's Strange Behavior Baffles Astronomers
By Denise Chow
SPACE.com Staff Writer
14 June 2010


The sun's temper ebbs and flows on what scientists had thought was a pretty predictable cycle, but lately our closest star has been acting up.

Typically, a few stormy years would knock out a satellite or two and maybe trip a power grid on Earth. Then a few years of quiet, and then back to the bad behavior. But an extremely long stretch of low activity in recent years has scientists baffled and scrambling for better forecasting models.

An expected minimum of solar activity, between 2008 and 2009, was unusually deep. And while the sun would normally ramp up activity by now, heading into its next cycle, the sun may be on the verge of a weak solar cycle instead, astronomers said at the 216th meeting of the American Astronomical Society in Miami last month.

"We're witnessing something unlike anything we've seen in 100 years," said David Hathaway of NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala.

The sun's constant interaction with Earth makes it important for solar physicists to keep track of solar activity. Stormy periods can force special safety precautions by satellite operators and power grid managers, and astronauts can be put at risk from bursts of radiation spat out by solar storm. Scientists need to more reliably predict what's in store.

At the conference, four solar physicists presented four very different methods of measuring and tracking solar cycles.

The sun has spots

Sunspots are areas of concentrated magnetic activity that appear as dark dots on the solar surface. The ebb and flow of the sun's magnetic activity, manifested in the appearance of sunspots, make up the solar cycle.

Typically, a cycle lasts about 11 years, taking roughly 5.5 years to move from a solar minimum, a period of time when there are few sunspots, to peak at the solar maximum, during which sunspot activity is amplified.

The previous cycle 23's extraordinary minimum recorded the highest number of days without sunspots that researchers had seen since 1913, said Hathaway.

Hathaway and his team of researchers measured what is called the meridional flow, which is the circulation of stellar material from the sun's equator toward the poles and back again. This flow can often influence a cycle's strength.

The scientists examined the changes in the structure of the flow, and the levels of geomagnetic activity, as they corresponded to the minimums and maximums of the previous solar cycles.

"We found that there were variations in the strength of that flow," Hathaway said. "The last minimum in 1996, that velocity was about 11 meters per second (about 22 miles an hour), which is pretty slow for an object as big as the sun. That flow slowed down as we went to maximum in 2001."

The meridional flow then quickly increased again, and by 2004, it was faster than it was at the last maximum, said Hathaway. This flow continued to stay fast on the approach to this most recent minimum.

"My suspicion is that this sunspot cycle 23 was a weaker cycle than the last two, with fewer sunspots and weaker magnetic fields. These may feed into what happens with the meridional flow that is going to lead to another weak cycle."

Hathaway predicts that cycle 24 should reach its peak in mid-2013 at about half the size of the last three cycles.

The sun's out of sync

In a different approach, Sushanta Tripathy of the National Solar Observatory used the frequencies of acoustic oscillations to look for signatures of changes in the solar activity cycle.

Tripathy found that changes in acoustic frequencies were, for the most part, in phase with solar activity. But, during the extended minimum, he noticed that the frequencies of waves that cover a large portion of the solar interior became out of sync with solar activity.

"We find that the frequencies of sound waves that travel to the deep interior show an early minimum during late 2007, while the waves that are confined to near the surface show the signature of minimum in late 2008, nearly coinciding with solar activity minimum."

The two seismic lulls detected using acoustic oscillation have not been seen before in previous cycles, said Tripathy, leading researchers to conclude that the extended minimum between cycles 23 and 24 is quite unusual.

Jet streams on the sun

Frank Hill, also of the National Solar Observatory, took a separate approach, attempting to predict the sunspot cycle based on a phenomena on the sun that can be likened to solar jet streams.

This east-west flow on the surface of the sun was first discovered in 1980, and is known as "torsional oscillation."

The jet stream exists at a depth of at least 65,000 miles (about 105,000 kilometers) below the solar surface, and Hill and his team of researchers were able to examine its behavior at a depth of 600 miles (966 km).

"The position of the magnetic field is very highly correlated with the position of this flow," Hill said. "From helioseismology, we see the flows for two prominent cycles – Cycle 23, the cycle that we're coming out of, and Cycle 24, the cycle that we're in now."

It turns out that the flow appears well before the level that solar activity spikes. This led the researchers to conclude that there is some sort of triggering mechanism that appears before the onset of activity.

While observations of the solar jet could one day be useful for predicting the timing of the solar cycles, a larger data set is still required to ensure the method's accuracy.

"We're definitely going to need several cycles to improve the predictions," Hill said.

Further investigation will also be needed to determine whether the jet stream is a cause or effect of the solar cycle.

Our magnetic star
In yet another approach, Julia Saba of SP Systems and NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., used X-ray and magnetic field strength indicators in order to predict the precise time mark for the onset of solar cycles.

Saba used magnetic maps of the sun, called synoptic charts, to observe solar cycles 21 through 23 and into 24. By evaluating trends in X-ray activity, Saba was able to predict the onset approximately 18 months ahead of time, and was accurate to within two months.


Full Story:
http://www.space.com/scienceastronom...+Headline+Feed)

Just my opinion, but I think things are really going to heat up in more than one way on this tiny planet. By fall, we will be seeing very severe storms/hurricanes, quakes, and unusual weather around the globe.

[Alpha]

What's wrong with the sun?

SUNSPOTS come and go, but recently they have mostly gone. For centuries, astronomers have recorded when these dark blemishes on the solar surface emerge, only for them to fade away again after a few days, weeks or months. Thanks to their efforts, we know that sunspot numbers ebb and flow in cycles lasting about 11 years.

sun..jpg

But for the past two years, the sunspots have mostly been missing. Their absence, the most prolonged for nearly a hundred years, has taken even seasoned sun watchers by surprise. "This is solar behaviour we haven't seen in living memory," says David Hathaway, a physicist at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama.


The sun is under scrutiny as never before thanks to an armada of space telescopes. The results they beam back are portraying our nearest star, and its influence on Earth, in a new light. Sunspots and other clues indicate that the sun's magnetic activity is diminishing, and that the sun may even be shrinking. Together the results hint that something profound is happening inside the sun. The big question is what?..............


Full Article & video

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