Is the Sun dying?

[wd40]

Is there anything here that is/may be correct?
http://beforeitsnews.com/story/1452/...SplittedPage=0

Or is it all someone's blog fantasy?

[Cobra1597]

Many thing in this article ring my "baloney" alarm. Least of all among these things is its elementary school level writing style. It's definition of the jobs of astronomers and cosmologists is laughable.

Here are a few other nice tidbits:

Second, astrophysicists discovered an unknown type of solar particle was mutating matter on Earth. What is this strange new particle? What are its properties? Why is the sun suddenly spitting them out?

No one has a clue.

How can we know that a particle is mutating matter on Earth if we do not know any of the particle's properties? The ability to "mutate matter" would be a property of said particle. How can we even detect the particle without knowing some of its properties? What does "mutate matter" mean?

Worst of all, recent observations of other stars with the Hubble Space Telescope, and several European Space agency telescopes, have confirmed that some stars like our sun suddenly begin exhibiting inexplicable behavior—and then, with little warning, they rapidly swell into Red Giants swallowing any nearby planets.

I don't know of any Hubble observations of a star actually becoming a Red Giant.

While the world was hoodwinked with global warming nonsense, the sun began cooling. It's continued to cool for the past 32 years. Now it's poised to cool much faster as it approaches the Maunder Minimum.

Here's where I stopped reading. The Maunder Minimum as a counter to global warming has been discounted so many times, including by the scientists who themselves first proposed that it might have any impact on global climate. Those very scientists claim that it would only slow global warming, not reverse it.

This is dreck.

[Van Rijn]

I didn't get past the title. I'm quoting it as written:

Shocked Scientists Ask: Is The Sun Is Dying?

[astromark]

'wd 40' Somebodies or a group of them's fantasy blog... ( nobodies ) and ( wonabe's )

The Star at the Centre of mass of this solar system is not

exhibiting any such indication of it doing anything it does not normally do... IT is NOT dying.

Whatsoever you imagine can be found to be a blog or page some place on the Internet...

That does not make it true... This is a big fat 'NO.'

[JustAFriend]

Of course the Sun is dying..... in 5 or 10billion years.

I wouldn't hide under the bed and hold my breath....

[Trakar]

Of course the Sun is dying..... in 5 or 10billion years.

I wouldn't hide under the bed and hold my breath....

Some see it as a "death," other perspectives might perceive it as an evolution beyond the main sequence.

[Tobin Dax]

Some see it as a "death," other perspectives might perceive it as an evolution beyond the main sequence.

I like calling it "retirement." I get too much of a kick out of referring to the Giant Branch as "Florida."

[AGN Fuel]

That the article is fantasy was established fairly early on with this comment:

"That question settled, the scientists ate well, slept well, and collected handsome honorariums for speaking engagements."

I know a lot of astronomers & several cosmologists. Flashy clothes, cars & houses is not one of their collective attributes!

[R.A.F.]

Or is it all someone's blog fantasy?

Yes...it is a flog bantasy...er, blog fantasy...


Sorry, I'm a tad "distracted"...waiting for my Xbox live update to download.


Oh, boy, oh boy, oh boy, oh boy...

[wd40]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sun

"Present Anomalies
The Sun is currently behaving unexpectedly in a number of ways.
It is in the midst of an unusual sunspot minimum, lasting far longer and with a higher percentage of spotless days than normal; since May 2008.
It is measurably dimming; its output has dropped 0.02% at visible wavelengths and 6% at EUV wavelengths in comparison with the levels at the last solar minimum.
Over the last two decades, the solar wind's speed has dropped by 3%, its temperature by 13%, and its density by 20%.
Its magnetic field is at less than half strength compared to the minimum of 22 years ago. The entire heliosphere, which fills the Solar System, has shrunk as a result, thereby increasing the level of cosmic radiation striking the Earth and its atmosphere."

Does any of the above portend any change to our lifestyles?

[swampyankee]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sun

"Present Anomalies
The Sun is currently behaving unexpectedly in a number of ways.
It is in the midst of an unusual sunspot minimum, lasting far longer and with a higher percentage of spotless days than normal; since May 2008.
It is measurably dimming; its output has dropped 0.02% at visible wavelengths and 6% at EUV wavelengths in comparison with the levels at the last solar minimum.
Over the last two decades, the solar wind's speed has dropped by 3%, its temperature by 13%, and its density by 20%.
Its magnetic field is at less than half strength compared to the minimum of 22 years ago. The entire heliosphere, which fills the Solar System, has shrunk as a result, thereby increasing the level of cosmic radiation striking the Earth and its atmosphere."

Does any of the above portend any change to our lifestyles?

No. "Unexpected" just means that the Sun isn't behaving in ways predicted by our models. I also would try looking at some more reputable sources than Wikipedia for solar behavior, like the mainstream refereed journals.

[wd40]

I also would try looking at some more reputable sources than Wikipedia for solar behavior, like the mainstream refereed journals.

The Wikipedia article gives these sources:


120.^ Robert Zimmerman, "What's Wrong with Our Sun?", Sky and Telescope August 2009
121.^ Deep Solar Minimum – NASA Science. Science.nasa.gov. Retrieved on 2011-08-30.
122.^ NASA, "The Sun's Sneaky Variability", October 27, 2009
123.^ Sarah Gibson; Janet Kozyra, Giuliana de Toma, Barbara Emery, Terry Onsager and Barbara Thompson (2009). "WHI vs WSM and comparative solar minima: If the Sun is so quiet, why is the Earth still ringing?". International Astronomical Union. p. 3. Retrieved 2010-01-06. "Ulysses during polar passes: lower magnetic field (35%), density (20%), speed (3%)(McComas et al., 2008; Balogh and Smith, 2008; Issaultier et al., 2008)"

[HenrikOlsen]

Those sources are all more than 2 years old, it's gotten back to fairly normal since then, so it was more a case of late start. Current (10. December) sunspot number is 90 and so far 2011 has had just 2 days without spots while 2010 had 51.

Note that many sources of sunspot numbers don't have data after 2010, which if plotted by someone not knowing what they're doing (or with an agenda) can made it look like they stopped entirely. They didn't.

Note also that since those cycles haven't been observed for long, it's difficult to say what amount of variability is normal.

[Swift]

There have been other periods with low sunspot counts, look up the Maunder Minimum from 1645 to 1715. There are other periods like that too (the Dalton Minimum and the Spörer Minimum). They seem to have some impact on solar output and Earth's climate, but it is nothing close to the death of the sun, but more likely normal, longer cycle fluctuations.

[Tensor]

There is a thread here in the Astronomy fora titled Sunspot Cycle 24. It was started in 2008 and this page has posts from April 2010 until Aug of 2011. The last post (#573)is from 2 December, 2011. I started to answer post #573(I had corrected information in an earlier post, that is reposted in #573), but things got away from me. I should have my post up within the next day or two.

[Van Rijn]

No. "Unexpected" just means that the Sun isn't behaving in ways predicted by our models.

And this isn't the first time that's happened. Starting in the '60s, researchers started looking for solar neutrinos, and weren't finding nearly as many as models predicted. Possible solutions were:

(1) Something was wrong with the experiments.

(2) Something was wrong with the solar models (the sun's composition was different than we thought, etc.)

(3) Something was wrong with theory.

(4) Something was wrong with the sun.

It took decades for the missing neutrino problem to be resolved. Detecting neutrinos wasn't easy, so scientists often argued there was a problem with the experiments. It was only in the late '90s that experiments that could detect different flavors of neutrinos made a fairly solid case for a theoretical problem. It took a few more years and the SNO experiments before the problem was considered resolved.

Option 4 got a lot of play in science fiction stories and was popular with folks looking for an excuse to believe the end of the world was at hand. But there isn't geological evidence for major variability, so it's very unlikely we would just happen to be seeing a big problem right now.

Anyway, the lessons are: We are going to find unexpected things (that's why we do research!) and there will always be people who will try to turn every unexpected thing into predictions of doom, no matter how little supporting evidence there is.

[Swift]

<snip>
Anyway, the lessons are: We are going to find unexpected things (that's why we do research!)

As I always tell my technician, if we knew what we were doing, it wouldn't be called research.

[AGN Fuel]

120.^ Robert Zimmerman, "What's Wrong with Our Sun?", Sky and Telescope August 2009

The answer, my friend, is blowing in the solar wind.

[m1omg]

Actually, if the Sun was dying, we would not see a slight cooling of the corona, but a big increase in brightness. We would see boiling oceans like what is predicted to occur 2.5 billion years from now, not "cooling Sun". Anyone who is not a total layman in astronomy knows that "dying" stars get brighter, not fainter.

[artsygirl]

I believe that one day all science will be done on blogs because we bloggers are natural skeptics, disbelieving the mainstream and accepting the possibility of any alternative idea. We stand unimpressed by "textbooks", "peer review journals" and so-called "facts". There are no facts, just dissenting opinion. We are infinitely small compared to nature and can't grasp anything as certain as a fact.

[Swift]

I believe that one day all science will be done on blogs because we bloggers are natural skeptics, disbelieving the mainstream and accepting the possibility of any alternative idea. We stand unimpressed by "textbooks", "peer review journals" and so-called "facts". There are no facts, just dissenting opinion. We are infinitely small compared to nature and can't grasp anything as certain as a fact.

Hi artsygirl, welcome to CQ.

Now I need to put on my moderator hat - if you want to discuss such a broad topic, and not just "Is the Sun dying", please start your own thread about that topic.

[m1omg]

Science is a matter of evidence and fact, not "opinion".

[swampyankee]

As I always tell my technician, if we knew what we were doing, it wouldn't be called research.

When I was a test engineer, one of the mantras was "there is no such thing as a failed experiment," with the unspoken "that has been properly planned and executed."

Cue the Stones.

[danscope]

I like that mantra, and it's so true . Always a good idea to check that arresting gear.

[Noclevername]

Always a good idea to check that arresting gear.

That's true whether you're a pilot or a cop.