The Flipping Sun

I didn't know that the Sun flipped - did you? Scientists have been monitoring and recording these flips since 1976.

It seems that the Sun's magnetic field flips every 11 years when the Sun's polarity changes caused by the magnetic dynamo inside the sun reorganising itself and it's about to do it again according to NASA. This coincides with the greatest solar activity in the "cycles" of the sun, known as "solar maximum" - with sunspots and "coronal mass ejections" on the surface of the sun.

This change will have ripple effects throughout the solar system and the effects are so powerful they will be felt beyond Pluto - and may affect phenomena such as cosmic rays, which some believe can alter the climate on Earth.

Could this explain why Global Warming was renamed Climate Change (as, apparently, the Earth is cooling rather than warming up)

http://uk.news.yahoo.com/sun-s-magne...4.html#sr7zXTE

Re: The Flipping Sun

I think the whole business of climate change is so complex the scientists don't really know what's happening.

Re: The Flipping Sun

I'd read something about this last year.
I don't think we need to worry about it though.

The earth does it too but takes hundreds of years - the last time it happened we had the ice age, I believe.

Re: The Flipping Sun

The reason I found it interesting Alan is that it does tend to fly in the face of recent arguments regarding human activity - also, why, when they've had this information for so long, why has it n ever been presented as a counter-argument that climate change is anything but controllable?

Re: The Flipping Sun

I didn't know that! Is it on the same principle do you know?