20 ms·
The Sun's Magnetic Field is about to Flip
- dm2 13y agoDo I need to change any settings on my computer?
- mapleoin 13y agoTake out the power socket and plug it back in upside down.
- haakon 13y agoThere are people who do this for others for a living.
- Nux 13y agoThat won't work in the UK. :-D
- mapleoin 13y agoSorry for you, you'll have to take out the whole socket and mount it again upside down.
- ithkuil 13y agoAt least you can mount the light bulb "the other way" with the bayonet mount while screw light bulbs are screwed
- harrytuttle 13y agoIt does if you smash the earth pin enough times with a hammer first :)
- alexhawdon 13y agoNope, because you won't get any current to live. Our UK household plugs and sockets really are a fine piece of engineering.
- voodoo123 13y agoas long as you don't step on one barefoot
- erichurkman 13y agoEven worse than stepping on a LEGO brick.
- hef19898 13y agoReally? Happy to be only threatened by LEGO then. Postive side effect, I'm also driving on the right side of the road! ;-) EDIT: this has to change now, too, right?
- alexhawdon 13y agoCome on, this is Hacker News - stepping on an upturned PCB in the dark has to be some sort of prerequisite of membership? ;)
- harrytuttle 13y agoYou overestimate the quality of most of them.
- mietek 13y agoA common trick to insert a EU-style plug into a UK-style socket is to temporarily insert something in the ground pin socket. An ordinary house key works well, and has the added bonus of shocking bystanders. Granted, UK-style plugs really are excellent pieces of engineering, best appreciated when upturned and trod upon in the dark.
- danellis 13y agoThe earth pin is needed to open the covers of the other two holes.
- harrytuttle 13y agoThat actually only happens on reasonable quality ones. Old and cheap shitty ones usually get stuck open or break off very rapidly. The BS spec is only good until 1 insertion after the point of sale. Source: I was a part time sparky for a few years.
- deletes 13y agoThis statement "This change will have ripple effects throughout the solar system" will sound like an doomsday event to an average reader, in reality there nothing that would affect you. At least they almost immediately mention that it is a common event.
- dm2 13y agoJust to be safe I upgraded my tinfoil hat to Mylar.
- eksith 13y agoNo good. You need to line your walls with at least 2mm thick aluminum sheets with welded seams and 5cm overlap at the doors. Edit: I guess it's true, HN is forever meant to be devoid of humor.
- H3g3m0n 13y agoPersonally I prefer a humorless HN. A culture of humur on the internet devolves fairly quickly into 4chan themed cat pictures and nothing but funny pics.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- AsymetricCom 13y agoIf you're still using magnetic platters, it would be a good idea to take them apart and flip the disks to reduce data corruption. There are also tools that will do this for you in software by flipping every bit on the disk and using 1 for 0 and vice versa. You can also do this with dd in Linux, just make sure you flip the binary description bit in the Disk Parameter Table.
- snorkel 13y agoIf you're using a tablet you should face away from the sun and turn the screen facing away from you. You can then use a mirror to see the screen.
- VLM 13y agoThat's pretty easy, imagine the fun the NMR/MRI people are about to have. Those suckers are heavy. Also my wife is a member of the "interior decoration means covering your fridge with magnets" tribe, so now I have to flip all of them over. Someone, please create a startup for online classes for interior decorating.
- workbench 13y agoUnfortunately it wont do any good because you can't buy taste
- i_cannot_hack 13y ago> Wow, our sun is BIG... Even bigger. The solar system you linked to is not even near to having the correct proportions. http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/82/Solar-system.png http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/82/Solar-sys...
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- chakalakasp 13y agoAlthough that would make for an interesting sunrise. "Here comes the su- POOF"
- fhars 13y agoThat one is not to scale, either. That one is: http://mishkahenner.com/filter/works/Astronomical http://mishkahenner.com/filter/works/Astronomical
- 0x006A 13y ago404
- acchow 13y agoThis is pretty misleading. The sun's diameter is much less than 1 AU.
- taproot 13y agoIm pretty sure the sun is bigger than 1 Australia. Sorry had to, for the confused: http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astronomical_unit http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astronomical_unit
- dm2 13y agoFinally found a good version: http://www.scalesolarsystem.66ghz.com/ http://www.scalesolarsystem.66ghz.com/
- sidcool 13y agoYes, delete system32. P.S. Just kidding, don't do it.
- dm2 13y agoIsn't that just for cached files anyways? I don't see any documents in there that I actually use.
- return0 13y agoOur firm can ensure your computers are free of SMR-related effects for a modest fee. Please call 1-800-SUNWANTSTOKILLME
- Yuioup 13y agoWill this undo the horrible decade we've had since 9/11 ?
- mythealias 13y agoprobably. last time it flipped was in 2001 [1]. [1] http://science1.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2001/ast15feb_1/ http://science1.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2001/a...
- ccozan 13y agoActually, this looks more interesting than at first look. The previous flip was around '89, which saw the Eastern Europe wave of 'change'. Then 9/11. Now we have the 'Arab Spring'. But, correlation is not causation so all remains just pure coincidences.
- panacea 13y agoNot that I think that geopolitical happenstance is affected by solar magnetism, but I'm getting a bit fed up with the 'correlation is not causation' police. No it's not, but nor is it a blanket reason not to investigate apparent parallels. Just because the 'correlation = causation' is used to dis-infrom through findings that are bolstered by correlations, doesn't mean there's no reason to try and explore a reasonable case as to why the correlation reflects actual causation. Correlation can infer causation in many instances.
- mkartic 13y agoBut the GP's mention of the 'correlation is not causation' is completely warranted in this case. He doesn't think 'geopolitical happenstance is affected by solar magnetism' either. And that's exactly what is said. Though there seems to be a correlation, politics is not actually affected by the phenomenon.
- crpatino 13y ago
- sidcool 13y agoApparently this happens every 11 years. Nothing to panic, but an interesting astronomical phenomena nevertheless.
- stephengillie 13y agoSo this is an alternating current, but with a cycle time of 22 years instead of a fraction of a second?
- Thrymr 13y agoNo, it's a chaotic system that is quasistable for an average of 11 years at a time before it flips to the opposite orientation with respect to the spin axis. The Earth's magnetic field, generated by currents in the liquid outer core, is a similar magnetohydrodynamic system that has no apparent periodicity.
- contingencies 13y agoSo astronomical objects are classifiable under a magnetic AC/DC onotology? Wow. Seems like dualism dies hard.
- OGC 13y agoHow can you get that from that reply? He specifically said they are not.
- contingencies 13y agoErr, I'm not sure how your brain works but it's obviously different to mine. Fear not, in heterogeneity lies strength!
- ced 13y agoDisclaimer: I worked on the solar magnetic field for two summers. Whether the sun is chaotic in the technical sense (i.e. the butterfly effect) is still open to question [1]. The solar magnetic field is poorly understood. In the 1980s, everybody thought that a particular model (mean-field dynamos IIRC) had it all figured out, but new observations from helioseismology showed them wrong. Wikipedia has a good article on the solar cycle: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_cycle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_cycle My advisor wrote a more technical overview: http://solarphysics.livingreviews.org/Articles/lrsp-2010-3/articlese5.html#x29-500005 http://solarphysics.livingreviews.org/Articles/lrsp-2010-3/a... [1] See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaos_theory#Distinguishing_random_from_chaotic_data https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaos_theory#Distinguishing_ra...
- boothead 13y agoSo the Myans were right all along!
- rabino 13y agoNope.
- boothead 13y agoWhat about homoeopathy - will that still work?
- raverbashing 13y agoYes, but you'll have to shake it upside down
- daigoba66 13y agoJust wait until it happens again here on Earth.
- dm2 13y agoBirds and people who haven't adopted GPS will be screwed... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:NASA_54559main_comparison1_strip.gif http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:NASA_54559main_comparison1...
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- return0 13y agoGreat, now we can market our app as "solar magnetic field reversal-proof".
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- draven 13y ago... and you have a BOFH-style excuse in case something goes wrong!
- elorant 13y agoSome comments in this thread are completely surreal.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- coldarchon 13y agoI had no idea NASA writes news on such a low level. How can they write about this without calling it even once the Schwabe-cycle, without mentioning that is in fact a 22 year Hale-cycle when the magnetic field switches back again? They don't even describe this cycle exists because the mass of the sun rotates faster at the equator than at the poles. Unbelievable ..
- jamesk_au 13y agoThe article includes the following quotation: "The sun's north pole has already changed sign, while the south pole is racing to catch up," says Scherrer. Does that not suggest that the sun is currently a magnetic monopole? Or is that too simplistic?
- kmm 13y agoOf course it's not a monopole, but the dipole idea is also too simplistic, as is the idea of "poles". Presumably, the dipole moment of the Sun has become very small but there are still higher orders at work. Thus, the field of the Sun will look very much more complex than the simple dipole field [0]. A possible configuration would be that both geographicals poles of the same sign, but the field around the equator is of a different sign, like a quadrupole perhaps. Disclaimer: I'm a physicist but not an astrophysicist. 0: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/17/Earths_Magnetic_Field_Confusion.svg http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/17/Earths_Ma...
- el_zorro 13y agoCorrect. I'll do some digging around to find the polarity maps we have around the lab here and post them if I find them. At times, there really isn't a clear 'pole' of the sun, and octopoles can sometimes be found. E: Here's a link to one of those maps. I'll see if I can find any better. http://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/imagenes_ciencia/ciencia_sol08_03.gif http://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/imagenes_ciencia/ciencia_s...
- muloka 13y agoI know I'm stating the obvious though these comments are hilarious. Keep'em coming.
- arc_of_descent 13y agoIs this due to our Sun's rotation or because it revolves around the center of the Galaxy?
- el_zorro 13y agoIt's caused by the sun's rotation, mostly. There are some complex magnetics that go on inside the sun, but the gist of it is that there is a differential in rotation rates between the poles and the equator of the sun. This causes field lines to be dragged along the equator, which then get knotted up and form coronal holes and other phenomena. Eventually, along an 11-year cycle, the field flips orientation. Source: I work in a solar research lab at the University of New Hampshire
- coldarchon 13y agoor you could have scrolled down where I wrote an answer hours ago ..
- Groxx 13y agoThere's evidence it happens to the Earth too: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geomagnetic_reversal http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geomagnetic_reversal seems like it's probably a fairly common thing with any spinning core.
- easytiger 13y agoHow do they measure it? There was nothing in the article about how this is observed?
- fsckin 13y agoIt's an inset picture and link[0]. They collect quite a bit of data[1] (that you can ask for[2]). "Astronomers at the Wilcox Solar Observatory (WSO) monitor the sun's global magnetic field on a daily basis." [0] http://wso.stanford.edu/ http://wso.stanford.edu/ [1] http://wso.stanford.edu/words/plots.info http://wso.stanford.edu/words/plots.info [2] http://wso.stanford.edu/forms/prsyn.html http://wso.stanford.edu/forms/prsyn.html
- laumars 13y agoThey fired a load of iron filings at the sun.
- gngeal 13y agoObserving the behavior of plasma around the Sun is probably one of the indicators. Also, the Zeeman effect in the Sun's spectrum measures the absolute intensity quite directly; I'd assume that the zero transition could be observable this way.
- mturmon 13y agoOnce they observe the photospheric magnetic field, they use it as a boundary condition for models that project upward into the corona. They can't observe the field directly in the corona (this might be an experimental capability somewhere, but it is not done observationally anywhere). They do observe the movement of plasma in the corona, to check the field lines predicted by the models.
- mturmon 13y agoGood question. The light spectrum emitted by the Sun has "spectral lines", or emission features (deep dips or strong peaks) that are determined by light-absorption or light-emission from specific elements (e.g., Nickel, Iron, and of course Hydrogen) in the Sun's atmosphere. If the little packet of stuff that was absorbing light is moving toward or away from you, the characteristic frequencies of all its spectral lines will be Doppler shifted. So, you can measure the velocity of that packet of stuff by seeing how much the line is shifted. Since you have a lot of photons, you can do this independently across the Sun's surface and get a spatially-resolved map of velocity ("Dopplergram", http://solar-center.stanford.edu/dopplergram.html http://solar-center.stanford.edu/dopplergram.html). If the little packet of stuff was in a magnetic field, its spectral lines will be split into sub-lines due to the Zeeman effect. So, you can also measure the spatially-resolved magnetic field of the Sun, and this is called a "magnetogram". It is kind of surprising that this measurement can be made at all.
- codereflection 13y ago(╯°□°)╯︵ pʃǝıɟ ɔıʇǝuƃɐɯ
- biot 13y agoThis entire thread has turned into 2005 Slashdot.
- SmokyBorbon 13y agoNothing to do with global warming people. That's still cow farts. Move along. Nothing to see here.