http://solarscience.auditblogs.com A blog of solar physics Sat, 31 Oct 2009 11:02:04 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en I'm not going to add much more than to say that its enjoyable and refreshing to see a senior scientist admit that they were wholly wrong in their predictions. How Long Will Our Sun Remain Quiet and Cosmic Rays Increase? What Happened to 2006 Predictions of Huge Solar Cycle 24? ISN’T IT ESPECIALLY STRANGE ... http://solarscience.auditblogs.com/2009/10/31/david-hathaway-mea-culpa/ Folks The Solar Science blog is on hiatus for the forseeable future. I have other commitments and a different focus which is causing me to cut out marginal uses of my time like maintaining this blog. In the meantime, I recommend Solarcycle24.com and Watts Up with That for their coverage of solar ... http://solarscience.auditblogs.com/2009/10/03/solar-science-blog-to-go-into-extended-minimum/ This just in from NASA: New, three-dimensional imaging of Martian north-polar ice layers by a radar instrument on NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter is consistent with theoretical models of Martian climate swings during the past few million years. Alignment of the layering patterns with the modeled climate cycles provides insight about how ... http://solarscience.auditblogs.com/2009/09/23/climate-change-on-mars-its-all-about-the-sun/ Just when I thought we'd get to watch a single sunspot make its weary way across the surface of the Sun, a new sunspot group appears in the Northern Hemisphere. We haven't seen a sight like this in a long time Of course the Sun has surprised us before - one ... http://solarscience.auditblogs.com/2009/09/23/sc24-sunspots-appear-in-both-hemispheres/ After being starved of any significant solar activity for so long, any detection of a sunspot very nearly becomes headline news. Therefore when a significant spot is detected on the solar farside, people start writing furiously. So what to do? The first detection of a potential (and substantial) sunspot in more ... http://solarscience.auditblogs.com/2009/09/16/it-comes-from-the-far-side/ Just a couple of interesting articles that I think deserve wider readership. Henrik Svensmark on the coming global cooling: "enjoy global warming while it lasts" (this is a Google translation from Danish, so the English is a little crazy) While the sun sleeps HENRIK SVENSMARK, Professor, DTU, Copenhagen Indeed, global warming stopped and a ... http://solarscience.auditblogs.com/2009/09/11/solar-climate-linkages/ This just in from NASA: September 3, 2009: The sun is in the pits of the deepest solar minimum in nearly a century. Weeks and sometimes whole months go by without even a single tiny sunspot. The quiet has dragged out for more than two years, prompting some observers to wonder, ... http://solarscience.auditblogs.com/2009/09/03/nasa-on-the-disappearing-sunspots/ Looking back into the archives, there are many many predictions of the start and size of solar cycle 24 given on the highest possible scientific authority that turned out to be flat out wrong. Here's one March 10, 2006: It's official: Solar minimum has arrived. Sunspots have all but vanished. Solar flares ... http://solarscience.auditblogs.com/2009/08/29/failed-predictions-of-solar-cycle-24-1-dikpati-and-hathaway-2006/ On Anthony Watts' blog, he's testing his apparent paranormal power to cause the Sun to break out into sunspots by writing about how blank the Sun is. On this blog, I don't believe in the paranormal, and it looks like the Sun is still slumbering, with no end in sight. Here is ... http://solarscience.auditblogs.com/2009/08/28/testing-the-watts-effect/ It's difficult sometimes to carry on a blog when the primary focus of your discussion doesn't do anything. That's the nature of solar minima, I guess, but particularly true when you have an apparent regime change in the solar cycle. The latest news is that SOHO is back online after a ... http://solarscience.auditblogs.com/2009/08/22/soho-back-online-sun-still-blank/