08-11-2009, 11:45 AM
Extraterrestrial Dust to explain bouts of extinction on Earth
Posted: 10 Aug 2009 06:14 PM PDT
Until ten years ago, most astronomers did not believe stardust could enter our Solar System. Then ESA’s Ulysses spaceprobe discovered the stardust particles leaking through the Sun’s magnetic shield, into the realm of Earth and the other planets. Now, the same spaceprobe has shown that a flood of dusty particles is heading our way.
Scientists have discovered that stardust can actually approach the Earth and other planets, but its flow is governed by the Sun’s magnetic field, which behaves as a powerful gate-keeper bouncing most of it away.
A Doubling of the Sun’s Magnetic Field during the Last 100 Years
One recent study by Dr. Mike Lockwood from Rutherford Appleton National Laboratories in California has been investigating the Sun activity for the last hundred years. He reports that since 1901 the overall magnetic field of the Sun has become stronger by 230 percent. Scientists do not understand what that means for us.
Some of the sunspot activity in this last cycle was greater than anything ever recorded before in history. But scientists claim that they don’t understand what means either. “Obviously, the sun is Earth’s life blood,†said Richard Fisher, director of the Heliophysics division at NASA. “To mitigate possible public safety issues, it is vital that we better understand extreme space weather events caused by the sun’s activity.â€
Earth’s Magnetic Field is rapidly Weakening
The strength of the Earth’s magnetic field has decreased 10 percent over the past 150 years, raising the remote possibility that it may collapse and later reverse, flipping the planet’s poles for the first time in nearly a million years, scientists said. At that rate of decline, the field could vanish altogether. All this while the Suns Magnetic Field is increasing.
Magnetic reluctance, or magnetic resistance, is a concept used in the analysis of magnetic circuits. It is analogous to resistance in an electrical circuit (although it does not dissipate magnetic energy). In likeness to the way an electric field causes an electric current to follow the path of least resistance, a magnetic field causes magnetic flux to follow the path of least magnetic reluctance. It is a scalar, extensive quantity, akin to electrical resistance.
What is surprising in this discovery is that the amount of stardust has continued to increase even after the solar activity calmed down and the magnetic field resumed its ordered shape.
Scientists believe that this is due to the way in which the polarity changed during the last solar maximum. Instead of reversing completely, flipping north to south, the Sun’s magnetic poles have only rotated at halfway and are now more or less lying sideways along the Sun’s equator. This weaker configuration of the magnetic shield is letting in two to three times more stardust than at the end of the 1990s. Moreover, this influx could increase by as much as ten times until the end of the current solar cycle in 2012.
Assuming the cosmic dust follows the rules of magnetism then with the Sun having a strong magnetic field and the Earth having a weak field as our Solar system drifts into the Galactic Space Dust Field the charged cosmic dust will follow the path of least resistance?
Two Gamma Ray Bursts - Buckled Magnetopause - Earthquakes - July 15th 2009
A Giant Breach in Earth’s Magnetic Field
Dec. 16, 2008: NASA’s five THEMIS spacecraft have discovered a breach in Earth’s magnetic field ten 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. 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.â€
“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. Li’s colleague Jimmy Raeder, also of New Hampshire, says “1027 particles per second were flowing into the magnetosphere—that’s a 1 followed by 27 zeros. This kind of influx is an order of magnitude greater than what we thought was possible.â€
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.
Is this a common Solar event?........
http://www.doomdaily.com/2009/extraterre...-on-earth/
Posted: 10 Aug 2009 06:14 PM PDT
Until ten years ago, most astronomers did not believe stardust could enter our Solar System. Then ESA’s Ulysses spaceprobe discovered the stardust particles leaking through the Sun’s magnetic shield, into the realm of Earth and the other planets. Now, the same spaceprobe has shown that a flood of dusty particles is heading our way.
Scientists have discovered that stardust can actually approach the Earth and other planets, but its flow is governed by the Sun’s magnetic field, which behaves as a powerful gate-keeper bouncing most of it away.
A Doubling of the Sun’s Magnetic Field during the Last 100 Years
One recent study by Dr. Mike Lockwood from Rutherford Appleton National Laboratories in California has been investigating the Sun activity for the last hundred years. He reports that since 1901 the overall magnetic field of the Sun has become stronger by 230 percent. Scientists do not understand what that means for us.
Some of the sunspot activity in this last cycle was greater than anything ever recorded before in history. But scientists claim that they don’t understand what means either. “Obviously, the sun is Earth’s life blood,†said Richard Fisher, director of the Heliophysics division at NASA. “To mitigate possible public safety issues, it is vital that we better understand extreme space weather events caused by the sun’s activity.â€
Earth’s Magnetic Field is rapidly Weakening
The strength of the Earth’s magnetic field has decreased 10 percent over the past 150 years, raising the remote possibility that it may collapse and later reverse, flipping the planet’s poles for the first time in nearly a million years, scientists said. At that rate of decline, the field could vanish altogether. All this while the Suns Magnetic Field is increasing.
Magnetic reluctance, or magnetic resistance, is a concept used in the analysis of magnetic circuits. It is analogous to resistance in an electrical circuit (although it does not dissipate magnetic energy). In likeness to the way an electric field causes an electric current to follow the path of least resistance, a magnetic field causes magnetic flux to follow the path of least magnetic reluctance. It is a scalar, extensive quantity, akin to electrical resistance.
What is surprising in this discovery is that the amount of stardust has continued to increase even after the solar activity calmed down and the magnetic field resumed its ordered shape.
Scientists believe that this is due to the way in which the polarity changed during the last solar maximum. Instead of reversing completely, flipping north to south, the Sun’s magnetic poles have only rotated at halfway and are now more or less lying sideways along the Sun’s equator. This weaker configuration of the magnetic shield is letting in two to three times more stardust than at the end of the 1990s. Moreover, this influx could increase by as much as ten times until the end of the current solar cycle in 2012.
Assuming the cosmic dust follows the rules of magnetism then with the Sun having a strong magnetic field and the Earth having a weak field as our Solar system drifts into the Galactic Space Dust Field the charged cosmic dust will follow the path of least resistance?
Two Gamma Ray Bursts - Buckled Magnetopause - Earthquakes - July 15th 2009
A Giant Breach in Earth’s Magnetic Field
Dec. 16, 2008: NASA’s five THEMIS spacecraft have discovered a breach in Earth’s magnetic field ten 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. 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.â€
“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. Li’s colleague Jimmy Raeder, also of New Hampshire, says “1027 particles per second were flowing into the magnetosphere—that’s a 1 followed by 27 zeros. This kind of influx is an order of magnitude greater than what we thought was possible.â€
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.
Is this a common Solar event?........
http://www.doomdaily.com/2009/extraterre...-on-earth/
