{"id":33269,"date":"2021-06-12T19:00:29","date_gmt":"2021-06-13T00:00:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/?p=33269"},"modified":"2021-06-12T19:00:29","modified_gmt":"2021-06-13T00:00:29","slug":"something-new-on-the-sun","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/2021\/06\/12\/something-new-on-the-sun\/","title":{"rendered":"Something New On The Sun"},"content":{"rendered":"

Spaceweather.com<\/strong><\/em> has something new<\/a> – at least to me:<\/p>\n

Something big may be about to happen on the sun. “We call it the Termination Event,” says Scott McIntosh, a solar physicist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), “and it’s very, very close to happening.”<\/p>\n

If you’ve never heard of the Termination Event, you’re not alone. Many researchers have never heard of it either. It’s a relatively new idea in solar physics championed by McIntosh and colleague Bob Leamon of the University of Maryland – Baltimore County. According to the two scientists, vast bands of magnetism are drifting across the surface of the sun. When oppositely-charged bands collide at the equator, they annihilate (or “terminate”). There’s no explosion; this is magnetism, not anti-matter. Nevertheless, the Termination Event is a big deal. It can kickstart the next solar cycle into a higher gear.<\/p>\n

“If the Terminator Event happens soon, as we expect, new Solar Cycle 25 could have a magnitude that rivals the top few since record-keeping began,” says McIntosh.<\/p>\n

This is, to say the least, controversial. Most solar physicists believe that\u00a0Solar Cycle 25 will be weak<\/a>, akin to the anemic Solar Cycle 24 which barely peaked back in 2012-2013. Orthodox models of the sun’s inner magnetic dynamo favor a weak cycle and do not even include the concept of “terminators.”<\/p>\n

“What can I say?” laughs McIntosh. “We’re heretics!”<\/p>\n

The researchers outlined their reasoning in\u00a0a December 2020 paper<\/a>\u00a0in the research journal\u00a0Solar Physics<\/em>. Looking back over 270 years of sunspot data, they found that Terminator Events divide one solar cycle from the next, happening approximately every 11 years. Emphasis on\u00a0approximately<\/em>. The interval between terminators ranges from 10 to 15 years, and this is key to predicting the solar cycle.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

One wonders if a strong cycle means strong events as well. One more challenge for the world, eh?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Spaceweather.com has something new – at least to me: Something big may be about to happen on the sun. “We call it the Termination Event,” says Scott McIntosh, a solar physicist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), “and it’s very, very close to happening.” If you’ve never heard \u2026 Continue reading → <\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-33269","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33269","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=33269"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33269\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":33270,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33269\/revisions\/33270"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33269"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=33269"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=33269"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}