Sun Sheds Skin And Flips

[Shyriath]

http://www.spacedaily.com/news/solarscience-03zm.html

Research with the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) spacecraft has revealed the process that may implement the reversal in the direction of the Sun's magnetic field that is known to occur every 11 years. This newly recognized factor in the Sun's magnetic flipping is the cumulative effect of more than a thousand huge eruptions called Coronal Mass Ejections (CMEs).

The CMEs blast billions of tons of electrified gas into space, carrying away the Sun's old magnetic field and allowing a new one with a flipped orientation to form.

Reversal of the solar magnetic field is a major event in the Sun's 11-year cycle of stormy activity, when the Sun goes from quiet to active and back again, and the study is the first evidence linking the reversal to CMEs. Since CMEs occasionally disrupt satellites, radio communication, and power systems, solar scientists hope this link will eventually help them better forecast the powerful eruptions.

"The Sun is like a snake that sheds its skin," comments Dr. Nat Gopalswamy of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md., lead author of the new report, which appears in the Astrophysical Journal. "In this case, it's a magnetic skin. The process is long, drawn-out and it's pretty violent. More than a thousand coronal mass ejections, each carrying billions of tons of gas from the polar regions, are needed to clear the old magnetism away. But when it's all over the Sun's magnetic stripes are running in the opposite direction."

Freaky.

[jus_the_facts]

1. this *cycle* is unprecidented....not the 11 year norm.....

....it's now blowin' and goin' 3 years beyond the normal cycles that've been observed...freaky indeed :scared:

[happyslug]

2. Do you want to really get scared?

Here is some information on when the EARTH’s fields reverses (and it is believed to be tied in with the suns, through not as frequent or regular.

http://observer.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,6903,837058,00.html

http://www.sciam.com/askexpert_question.cfm?articleID=00010D87-BB04-1C71-9EB7809EC588F2D7
http://www.psc.edu/science/Glatzmaier/glatzmaier.html

[emad]

3. Sun 'sheds its skin like a snake'

BBC News Online science editor
Astronomers have discovered a key fact required to understand the Sun's 11-year cycle of activity. Sunspots and flares on the Sun's surface follow the cycle, but expelled gas clouds do not. It seems that these ejections trail the sunspot peak - they peaked in 2002, two years after sunspots. The expelled gas takes away the Sun's old magnetic skin allowing a new one to emerge to start a new cycle.
The Sun's 11-year cycle of activity - as recognised by the coming and going of sunspots - has been known since 1843, when Heinrich Schwabe, a German astronomer, noticed the pattern. Years later the activity was recognised as being of magnetic origin by George Ellery Hale, the American astronomer, who, in 1908, saw that sunspots were intensely magnetic.

More: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/3226844.stm