Sorry, solar wrath believers....the sun is not going to harm us any time soon.

[FelixDeCat]

http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20100928/sc_afp/finlandenvironmentsciencearctic

HELSINKI (AFP) – The Northern Lights have petered out during the second half of this decade, becoming rarer than at any other time in more than a century, the Finnish Meteorological Institute said Tuesday.

The Northern Lights, or aurora borealis, generally follow an 11-year "solar cycle", in which the frequency of the phenomena rises to a maximum and then tapers off into a minimum and then repeats the cycle.

"The solar minimum was officially in 2008, but this minimum has been going on and on and on," researcher Noora Partamies told AFP.

"Only in the past half a year have we seen more activity, but we don't really know whether we're coming out of this minimum," she added.
The Northern Lights, a blaze of coloured patterns in the northern skies, are triggered by solar winds crashing into the earth and being drawn to the magnetic poles, wreaking havoc on electrons in the parts of the atmosphere known as the ionosphere and magnetosphere.

So a dimming of the Northern Lights is a signal that activity on the sun which causes solar winds, such as solar flares and sun sports, is also quieting down.

For researchers like Partamies, it is the first time they can observe through a network of modern observation stations what happens to this solar cycle when it becomes as badly disrupted as it is now.

"We're waiting to see what happens, is the next maximum going to be on time, is it going to be late, is it going to be huge?" Partamies said. During the cycle's peak in 2003, the station on Norway's Svalbard island near the North Pole, showed that the Northern Lights were visible almost every single night of the auroral season, which excludes the nightless summer months.

That figure has fallen to less than 50 percent, while the southernmost station, situated in southern Finland, has been registering only two to five instances annually for the past few years.

Sorry to burst your solar destruction bubbles. :'(

 

[zinfamous]

 

[coxmaster]

Can I get a definition of the word "rath"?

I'm not sure if I'm a rath believer or not

 

[destrekor]

Yet again, someone misinterprets the news.

It has been known, for the past year now, that the current solar minimum has lasted longer than usual. The sun is slowly waking up, but it has been taking a little longer to actually muster enough energy to climb out of it's deep slumber.

Don't worry, that hasn't rained one bit on the Solar Doom party. Why? Because the scientists who have actually studied and understood the cycle of solar cycles (you know, counting more than one cycle.. looking at the bigger picture), have almost in unison agreed the upcoming cycle, or the one after that, might bring one last huzzah! I'm Here! from the sun, before it enters a super slumber - one where even at solar maximum, it's like, "what the hell... I don't feel like doing this anymore."

It has a fairly predictable pattern of, what I like to refer to as, The Seasonal Depression Cycle... it just gets into so great of a rest, it feels depressed even thinking it wants to wake up, let alone actually do anything. It takes a lot of energy for it to even pretend to care about the universe, going only as far as necessary to blend in with the neighborhood stars... it doesn't want them to actually think it's depressed, even though it truly is suffering severe depression.

That cycle is a very long cycle, and like the 11 year cycle, is fairly predictable... not as predictable as the short cycle, but still fairly routine.

The big question: when it goes into hyper mode, throwing one last solar party, will any of its unruly hellspawn shoot a massive wad in our general direction?

The next cycle, the sun may just send out such a cataclysmic money shot... but will such massive Coronal Mass Ejection(s) actually be directed straight to Earth, or will it/they miss us?

The sun does occasionally produce such "Fuck You Earth" CMEs, but most miss us - we basically have to be staring down the barrel of the Solar Pistol to actually get hit.

It spits in our general direction quite frequently, we've had a couple direct and glancing blows just in the last few months... but they were relatively weak ejections. It doesn't often get around to pointing a loaded solar cannon directly at our dome.

 

[guyver01]

What if you're a solar WRATH believer? are we doomed?

 

[Whoozyerdaddy]

Can I get a definition of the word "rath"?

I'm not sure if I'm a rath believer or not

Maybe he meant solar raSh? Like a sunburn?

Personally I think the sun is taking us out slowly... one by one... one melanoma at a time...