Nevermind global warming and rising seas, kiddies. The sun’s protective bubble around the solar system has lost twenty-five percent of its size in the past decade and it’s still weakening.
You can cap and trade carbon dioxide until you know what freezes over, but unless this heliospheric shrinking is cyclical, the knowledge of which is just out of our reach, we’ve got a big problem, Houston. Can you say DNA-destroying radiation?
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Posted in Science/Engineering, Space
Tagged NASA, shrinking heliosphere, Watts Up With That
NASA says observers are seeing the birth of a true sunspot on the sun’s face, the first of its kind since the solar minimum began in January. That should alleviate any concerns about a new Ice Age coming in the years ahead. But some worriers say it’s really too soon to tell if this spot will grow and last or merely fade like others of its class have done.
UPDATE: The Seablogger prefers to call it a "sun-sputter," and, indeed, the day after the announcement, it’s almost gone. Meanwhile, NASA held a presser to announce the sun’s output of solar wind is at a fifty-year low. What that means for us, they didn’t say, except that more cosmic rays will get into the inner solar system. There is a theory about the rays, however, which calls global warming into question.
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Posted in Science/Engineering, Scribbles, Space, Weather/Climate
Tagged NASA, sunspots, Watts Up With That
The robot made a gentle, five mph landing on Mars about 6:53 p.m. CDT and all looks good:
"…we’ve found that the lander is tilted only one quarter of a degree, which means we’ve landed nearly perfectly level. The next step for Phoenix is surface initialization during which the solar arrays, Surface Stereo Imager (SSI), Biobarrier (which has been protecting the robotic arm from contamination since it was sterilized on Earth) and meteorological mast will deploy."
Stay with NASA’s Phoenix blog for updates, and reports as the robot gets to work analyzing its site on the Arctic Plain of the Red Planet.
Just five days from now, the Phoenix will land on Mars’ icy northern plains. NASA has a new blog up in prep for the event, word of which could come as soon as 6:53 p.m. Sunday CDT. Should be exciting. Worth remembering: fewer than half the international attempts to land on Mars have been successful. Phoenix could crash and not be heard from again–nor arise from the ashes.
One of the spectacular benefits of a journey into the black, even if it is thirty million light years away.
One of a series, this NASA ultraviolet image of Saturn was taken when the rings were at maximum tilt of 27 degrees toward Earth. Saturn has seasonal tilts away from and toward the sun, much the same way the home planet does.
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Posted in Space
Tagged NASA, Saturn at maximum tilt to Earth, ultraviolet view
It’s quiet on the sun these days. Too quiet. No sun spots of note. Some scientists regard that as possibly the cause of much of the late snow this spring and say it could be forecasting colder days ahead. But, theoretically, that won’t stop another brief super flare from our nearest star like the one that disrupted telegraph communications, caused auroras as far south as Cuba and surprised English solar astronomer Richard Carrington, in September, 1859. Imagine what another one would do to our electronic-dependent world. It could become known as the Day Silicon Died.
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Posted in Science/Engineering, Space
Tagged Carrington Super Flare, Global Cooling, global warming, NASA
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