The Sun's Magnetic Field is about to Flip

http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2013/05aug_fieldflip/

by rms • 13 years ago

197 95 13 years ago

science.nasa.gov

dm25• 13 years ago

Do I need to change any settings on my computer?

mapleoin2• 13 years ago

Take out the power socket and plug it back in upside down.

haakon• 13 years ago

There are people who do this for others for a living.

Nux• 13 years ago

That won't work in the UK. :-D

deletes• 13 years ago

This statement "This change will have ripple effects throughout the solar system" will sound like an doomsday event to an average reader, in reality there nothing that would affect you.

At least they almost immediately mention that it is a common event.

dm25• 13 years ago

Just to be safe I upgraded my tinfoil hat to Mylar.

AsymetricCom• 13 years ago

If you're still using magnetic platters, it would be a good idea to take them apart and flip the disks to reduce data corruption. There are also tools that will do this for you in software by flipping every bit on the disk and using 1 for 0 and vice versa. You can also do this with dd in Linux, just make sure you flip the binary description bit in the Disk Parameter Table.

VLM2• 13 years ago

That's pretty easy, imagine the fun the NMR/MRI people are about to have. Those suckers are heavy.

Also my wife is a member of the "interior decoration means covering your fridge with magnets" tribe, so now I have to flip all of them over. Someone, please create a startup for online classes for interior decorating.

snorkel• 13 years ago

If you're using a tablet you should face away from the sun and turn the screen facing away from you. You can then use a mirror to see the screen.

i_cannot_hack• 13 years ago

    > Wow, our sun is BIG...

Even bigger. The solar system you linked to is not even near to having the correct proportions.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/82/Solar-sys...

chakalakasp• 13 years ago

Although that would make for an interesting sunrise. "Here comes the su- POOF"

fhars• 13 years ago

That one is not to scale, either. That one is: http://mishkahenner.com/filter/works/Astronomical

acchow• 13 years ago

This is pretty misleading. The sun's diameter is much less than 1 AU.

sidcool2• 13 years ago

Yes, delete system32.

P.S. Just kidding, don't do it.

dm25• 13 years ago

Isn't that just for cached files anyways? I don't see any documents in there that I actually use.

return02• 13 years ago

Our firm can ensure your computers are free of SMR-related effects for a modest fee. Please call 1-800-SUNWANTSTOKILLME

Yuioup2• 13 years ago

Will this undo the horrible decade we've had since 9/11 ?

mythealias• 13 years ago

probably.

last time it flipped was in 2001 [1].

[1] http://science1.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2001/a...

ccozan• 13 years ago

Actually, this looks more interesting than at first look. The previous flip was around '89, which saw the Eastern Europe wave of 'change'. Then 9/11. Now we have the 'Arab Spring'.

But, correlation is not causation so all remains just pure coincidences.

andrewingram• 13 years ago

Yes, it's well-documented that the polarity of the Sun's magnetic field is highly correlated with the prevalence of evil in the world.

voodoo1232• 13 years ago

If we stop doing evil, important solar processes will stop, leading to the collapse of the sun.

VLM2• 13 years ago

For ham radio HF propagation above 20 meters? Well, not really. Enjoy 10M while you can... I hope the next cycle in about a decade has better flux numbers. Es on 6M is fun, but I want some months long round-the-world F2 propagation modes.

(Seriously its interesting the article didn't mention how unusually weak the latest cycle has been. Usually the peak is much higher leading to happier ham radio operators. So the "news" or "journalism" is the unusual weakness of this cycle, but instead we get human interest story...)

Aside from the stereotypical "this individual cycle is weak" most recent solar coverage has contemplated Maunder Minimum effect and stuff like that. The wiki article is pretty good, summary is every time a cycle is wimpy everyone temporarily jumps on the bandwagon that its a semi-permanent long term decline etc etc.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maunder_Minimum

In these ways, its a somewhat atypical solar news story. Which is cool.

Yuioup2• 13 years ago

What an awesome answer to my facetious question :-) I know nothing about ham radios or frequencies but it sounds interesting nonetheless.

grandalf• 13 years ago

+1 for ham radio!

Gravityloss• 13 years ago

Here's a good page with total solar irradiance measurements. The peak has been quite low so far indeed. http://spot.colorado.edu/~koppg/TSI/

anigbrowl• 13 years ago

Let's hope it merely correlates with a nicer one. I liked the 90s a lot better than the last decade in many respects.

sidcool2• 13 years ago

Apparently this happens every 11 years. Nothing to panic, but an interesting astronomical phenomena nevertheless.

stephengillie• 13 years ago

So this is an alternating current, but with a cycle time of 22 years instead of a fraction of a second?

Thrymr• 13 years ago

No, it's a chaotic system that is quasistable for an average of 11 years at a time before it flips to the opposite orientation with respect to the spin axis. The Earth's magnetic field, generated by currents in the liquid outer core, is a similar magnetohydrodynamic system that has no apparent periodicity.

thomasjames• 13 years ago

Part of me kind of wishes that this had some trivial, totally safe and innocuous consequence that you could still appreciate somehow with a Mr. Wizard type experiment.

sev• 13 years ago

The last time a geomagnetic reversal occurred on Earth was 780,000 years ago (with a possibility of a brief one occurring 41,000 years ago) [1]. I wonder what it will feel like when it happens again...

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geomagnetic_reversal

boothead2• 13 years ago

So the Myans were right all along!

rabino• 13 years ago

Nope.

boothead2• 13 years ago

What about homoeopathy - will that still work?

daigoba66• 13 years ago

Just wait until it happens again here on Earth.

dm25• 13 years ago

Birds and people who haven't adopted GPS will be screwed... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:NASA_54559main_comparison1...

return02• 13 years ago

Great, now we can market our app as "solar magnetic field reversal-proof".

draven• 13 years ago

... and you have a BOFH-style excuse in case something goes wrong!

elorant• 13 years ago

Some comments in this thread are completely surreal.

jamesk_au• 13 years ago

The article includes the following quotation:

"The sun's north pole has already changed sign, while the south pole is racing to catch up," says Scherrer.

Does that not suggest that the sun is currently a magnetic monopole? Or is that too simplistic?

kmm• 13 years ago

Of course it's not a monopole, but the dipole idea is also too simplistic, as is the idea of "poles". Presumably, the dipole moment of the Sun has become very small but there are still higher orders at work. Thus, the field of the Sun will look very much more complex than the simple dipole field [0].

A possible configuration would be that both geographicals poles of the same sign, but the field around the equator is of a different sign, like a quadrupole perhaps.

Disclaimer: I'm a physicist but not an astrophysicist.

0: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/17/Earths_Ma...

el_zorro2• 13 years ago

Correct. I'll do some digging around to find the polarity maps we have around the lab here and post them if I find them. At times, there really isn't a clear 'pole' of the sun, and octopoles can sometimes be found.

E: Here's a link to one of those maps. I'll see if I can find any better.

http://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/imagenes_ciencia/ciencia_s...

muloka• 13 years ago

I know I'm stating the obvious though these comments are hilarious. Keep'em coming.

arc_of_descent• 13 years ago

Is this due to our Sun's rotation or because it revolves around the center of the Galaxy?

el_zorro2• 13 years ago

It's caused by the sun's rotation, mostly. There are some complex magnetics that go on inside the sun, but the gist of it is that there is a differential in rotation rates between the poles and the equator of the sun. This causes field lines to be dragged along the equator, which then get knotted up and form coronal holes and other phenomena. Eventually, along an 11-year cycle, the field flips orientation.

Source: I work in a solar research lab at the University of New Hampshire

Groxx• 13 years ago

There's evidence it happens to the Earth too: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geomagnetic_reversal seems like it's probably a fairly common thing with any spinning core.

easytiger• 13 years ago

How do they measure it? There was nothing in the article about how this is observed?

fsckin• 13 years ago

It's an inset picture and link[0]. They collect quite a bit of data[1] (that you can ask for[2]).

"Astronomers at the Wilcox Solar Observatory (WSO) monitor the sun's global magnetic field on a daily basis."

[0] http://wso.stanford.edu/

[1] http://wso.stanford.edu/words/plots.info

[2] http://wso.stanford.edu/forms/prsyn.html

laumars• 13 years ago

They fired a load of iron filings at the sun.

gngeal• 13 years ago

Observing the behavior of plasma around the Sun is probably one of the indicators. Also, the Zeeman effect in the Sun's spectrum measures the absolute intensity quite directly; I'd assume that the zero transition could be observable this way.

mturmon3• 13 years ago

Once they observe the photospheric magnetic field, they use it as a boundary condition for models that project upward into the corona. They can't observe the field directly in the corona (this might be an experimental capability somewhere, but it is not done observationally anywhere).

They do observe the movement of plasma in the corona, to check the field lines predicted by the models.

mturmon3• 13 years ago

Good question.

The light spectrum emitted by the Sun has "spectral lines", or emission features (deep dips or strong peaks) that are determined by light-absorption or light-emission from specific elements (e.g., Nickel, Iron, and of course Hydrogen) in the Sun's atmosphere.

If the little packet of stuff that was absorbing light is moving toward or away from you, the characteristic frequencies of all its spectral lines will be Doppler shifted. So, you can measure the velocity of that packet of stuff by seeing how much the line is shifted. Since you have a lot of photons, you can do this independently across the Sun's surface and get a spatially-resolved map of velocity ("Dopplergram", http://solar-center.stanford.edu/dopplergram.html).

If the little packet of stuff was in a magnetic field, its spectral lines will be split into sub-lines due to the Zeeman effect. So, you can also measure the spatially-resolved magnetic field of the Sun, and this is called a "magnetogram".

It is kind of surprising that this measurement can be made at all.

brittohalloran• 13 years ago

Doppler shift. One of the simplest and most deeply useful physics principles. Things you learned in high school that are actually useful way down the road. Basic trigonometry (Sohcahtoa) falls in the same category for me.

codereflection• 13 years ago

(╯°□°)╯︵ pʃǝıɟ ɔıʇǝuƃɐɯ

biot• 13 years ago

This entire thread has turned into 2005 Slashdot.

SmokyBorbon• 13 years ago

Nothing to do with global warming people. That's still cow farts. Move along. Nothing to see here.

The Sun's Magnetic Field is about to Flip

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