Sun's Three Years in Three Minutes

In this unusual video, NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory captures an image of the sun every 12 seconds in 10 different wavelengths, two images per day, for the past three years.

According to NASA:

"There are several noteworthy events that appear briefly in this video. They include the two partial eclipses of the sun by the moon, two roll maneuvers [by the observatory, as it changes position], the largest flare of this solar cycle, comet Lovejoy, and the transit of Venus. The specific time for each event is listed below, but a sharp-eyed observer may see some while the video is playing.” 

They appear at:

00:30:24 Partial eclipse by the moon

00:31:16 Roll maneuver

01:11:02 August 9, 2011 X6.9 Flare, the largest of this solar cycle

01:28:07 Comet Lovejoy, December 15, 2011

01:42:29 Roll Maneuver

01:51:07 Transit of Venus, June 5, 2012

02:28:13 Partial eclipse by the moon"

The music is violinist Martin Lass playing “Our Lady’s Errand of Love.”

'Spacequakes" Disrupting Earth's Magnetic Field

Spacequakes contribute to auroras in the night sky.

Called “spacequakes,” bursts of plasma flying off of the sun are disrupting Earth’s magnetic field with the strength of a sizeable earthquake, according to new scientific evidence.

“The total energy in a spacequake can rival that of a magnitude 5 or 6 earthquake,” Evgeny Panov of the Space Research Institute in Austria tells the Christian Science Monitor. He is first author of a paper reporting the results of a study on spacequakes in the April 2010 issue of Geophysical Research Letters.

NASA’s THEMIS space probes discovered the precursors of spacequakes in 2007. According to the Monitor: 

The action begins in Earth's magnetic tail, which is stretched out like a windsock by the million-miles-per-hour solar wind. Sometimes the tail can become so stretched and tension-filled, it snaps back like an over-torqued rubber band. Solar wind plasma trapped in the tail hurtles toward Earth. 

On more than one occasion, the five THEMIS spacecraft were in the line of fire when these “plasma jets” swept by. Clearly, the jets were going to hit Earth. But what would happen then? The fleet moved closer to the planet to find out. 

“Now we know," said THEMIS project scientist David Sibeck of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center. “Plasma jets trigger spacequakes.”

Research shows that the plasma jets crash into Earth’s geomagnetic field some 18,600 miles above the equator. The impact sets off a rebounding process, in which the incoming plasma actually bounces up and down on the reverberating magnetic field. The first bounce is a big one, followed by bounces of decreasing amplitude as energy is dissipated in the carpet.

Click here for the complete article.

NASA Sees Potential Solar Problems in 2012

A group of NASA researchers have added startling reinforcement to the gathering concerns about the year 2012. In a report entitled Severe Space Weather Events: Understanding Societal and Economic Impacts, they describe consequences of solar flares unleashing waves of energy capable of disrupting Earth’s magnetic field, overwhelming high-voltage transformers with vast electrical currents and short-circuiting the planet’s energy grids.

According to the report, the next period of intense solar activity is expected in 2012, and coincides with the presence of an unusually large hole in Earth’s geomagnetic shield. But, according to Wired magazine, the report has received relatively little attention, perhaps because of 2012’s supernatural connotations. Mayan astronomers supposedly predicted that 2012 would mark the calamitous "birth of a new era."

Whether the Mayans were on to something won’t be known for several years. But Lawrence Joseph, author of Apocalypse 2012: A Scientific Investigation into Civilization’s End, told Wired magazine: "I’ve been following this topic for almost five years, and it wasn’t until the report came out that this really began to freak me out."

Click here for the complete Wired article.
Click here to purchase a copy of the Severe Space Weather Events report.

NASA Finds Huge Breach in Magnetic Field

Artist’s concept of a THEMIS probe exploring the space around Earth.

NASA this week reported that spacecraft have discovered a breach in Earth's magnetic field 10 times larger than anything previously thought to exist. Solar wind can flow in through the opening to "load up" the magnetosphere for powerful geomagnetic storms.

But the breach itself is not the biggest surprise, NASA says. Researchers are even more amazed at the strange and unexpected way it forms, overturning long-held ideas of space physics.

"At first I didn't believe it," says THEMIS project scientist David Sibeck of the Goddard Space Flight Center. "This finding fundamentally alters our understanding of the solar wind-magnetosphere interaction."

Solar-Wind Protection Lessened

The magnetosphere is a bubble of magnetism that surrounds Earth and protects us from solar wind. Exploring the bubble is a key goal of the THEMIS mission, launched in February 2007. The big discovery came on June 3, 2007, when the five probes serendipitously flew through the breach just as it was opening.

"The opening was huge—four times wider than Earth itself," says Wenhui Li, a space physicist at the University of New Hampshire who has been analyzing the data.

The event began with little warning when a gentle gust of solar wind delivered a bundle of magnetic fields from the Sun to Earth. Like an octopus wrapping its tentacles around a big clam, solar magnetic fields draped themselves around the magnetosphere and cracked it open. The cracking was accomplished by means of a process called "magnetic reconnection."

Breach Unexpectedly Large

High above Earth's poles, solar and terrestrial magnetic fields linked up to form conduits for solar wind. Conduits over the Arctic and Antarctic quickly expanded. Within minutes they overlapped over Earth's equator to create the biggest magnetic breach ever recorded by Earth-orbiting spacecraft.

The size of the breach took researchers by surprise. "We've seen things like this before, but never on such a large scale," says physicist Jimmy Raeder, "The entire day-side of the magnetosphere was open to the solar wind."

Implications Are ‘Seismic’

The circumstances were even more surprising. Space physicists have long believed that holes in Earth's magnetosphere open only in response to solar magnetic fields that point south. The great breach of June 2007, however, opened in response to a solar magnetic field that pointed north.

"To the lay person, this may sound like a quibble, but to a space physicist, it is almost seismic," says Sibeck. "When I tell my colleagues, most react with skepticism, as if I'm trying to convince them that the sun rises in the west."

Click here for the complete NASA press release.

Solar Wind Drop Means More Cosmic Rays

NASA photo showing charged particles bursting from the sun’s surface. Temperatures are 1.8 million degrees Fahrenheit. The blue color enables the human eye to perceive the solar activity’s ultraviolet light.

It sounds like the plot of a sci-fi movie, but it could be serious: The sun’s solar wind is now blowing with less intensity than at any time since the mid-20th Century, exposing Earth to more cosmic rays.

According to an article today on Discovery News:

The sun is presently at the lowest point in its 11-year cycle of sunspot activity, but it's also 20 percent cooler and less windy than the last solar minimum in 1994-95, explained Karine Issautier, the Ulysses radio wave lead investigator at the Observatoire de Paris, Meudon, France. In other words, the sun is showing signs of other, much longer cycles which also affect its power output.

The sun is also hitting an all-time low for its wind speed and pressure, blowing at 25 percent less than at the last solar minimum, Southwest Research Institute's David McComas told Discovery News.

The bubble of charged solar particles that fills the solar system is shrinking, exposing Earth and other planets to the onslaught of needling galactic cosmic rays normally held at bay by the solar wind. Inside Earth's magnetic field the main effect of the cooler, less windy sun is the cooling and lowering of the outermost part of the atmosphere. 

Click here for the Discovery News article.