On August 1st, the entire Earth-facing side of the sun erupted in a tumult of activity. There was a C3-class solar flare, a solar tsunami, multiple filaments of magnetism lifting off the stellar surface, large-scale shaking of the solar corona, radio bursts, a coronal mass ejection and more.

The movie recorded by extreme UV cameras onboard the Solar Dynamics Observatory shows an enormous magnetic filament breaking away from the sun. Some of the breakaway material is now en route to Earth in the form of a coronal mass ejection (CME, movie).

Seeing the sun erupt on such a global scale has galvanized the international community of solar physicists. Researchers are still sorting out the complex sequence of events and trying to understand why they all happened at once. Stay tuned for more movies and analyses in the days ahead.
Via Spaceweather…

The earth could be hit by a wave of violent space weather as early as Tuesday after a massive explosion on the sun, scientists have warned.

The explosion, called a coronal mass ejection, was aimed directly towards Earth, which then sent a “solar tsunami” racing 93 million miles across space. It is likely to spark spectacular displays of the aurora or northern and southern lights.

Scientists have warned that a really big solar eruption could destroy satellites and wreck power and communications grids around the globe if it happened today. Nasa recently warned that Britain could face widespread power blackouts and be left without critical communication signals for long periods of time, after the earth is hit by a once-in-a-generation “space storm”.

The Daily Telegraph disclosed in June that senior space agency scientists believed the Earth will be hit with unprecedented levels of magnetic energy from solar flares after the Sun wakes “from a deep slumber” sometime around 2013.

Via the telegraph…

Via spaceweather..

THERE are sometimes in common expressions an image of what passes in the depths of all men’s hearts. Among the Romans sensus communis signified not only common sense, but humanity, sensibility. As we are not as good as the Romans, this word signifies among us only half of what it signified among them. It means only good sense, plain reason, reason set in operation, a first notion of ordinary things, a state midway between stupidity and intelligence. “This man has no common sense” is a great insult. “A common-sense man” is an insult likewise; it means that he is not entirely stupid, and that he lacks what is called wit and understanding. But whence comes this expression common sense, unless it be from the senses? Men, when they invented this word, avowed that nothing entered the soul save through the senses; otherwise, would they have used the word sense to signify common reasoning?

People say sometimes-”Common sense is very rare.” What does this phrase signify? that in many men reason set in operation is stopped in its progress by prejudices, that such and such man who judges very sanely in one matter, will always be vastly deceived in another. This Arab, who will be a good calculator, a learned chemist, an exact astronomer, will believe nevertheless that Mohammed put half the moon in his sleeve.

Why will he go beyond common sense in the three sciences of which I speak, and why will he be beneath common sense when there is question of this half moon? Because in the first cases he has seen with his eyes, he has perfected his intelligence; and in the second, he has seen with other people’s eyes, he has closed his own, he has perverted the common sense which is in him.

The bright display of Southern Lights was sparked by a solar coronal mass ejection (CME), which hit Earth’s magnetic field and sparked a G1-class geomagnetic storm. On the other end of the planet, the same storm produced bright Northern Lights over Wisconsin, Minnesota and parts of Canada. Both poles were ringed in light at the same time.

This isn’t the first time astronauts have seen auroras underfoot. The shuttle has flown right through auroral curtains with no ill effects–other than time lost while the crew crowds around the window to stare.The ISS also turns out to be a wonderful platform for aurora watching.

Next up: A solar wind stream is due to hit Earth’s magnetic field on June 26th, possibly sparking a new round of geomagnetic activity.

Via Spaceweather…

They are basically talking about another Carrington event, which we have talked about here before, although for some reason they don’t mention it specifically in the article below.

Senior space agency scientists believe the Earth will be hit with unprecedented levels of magnetic energy from solar flares after the Sun wakes “from a deep slumber” sometime around 2013, The Daily Telegraph can disclose.

In a new warning, Nasa said the super storm would hit like “a bolt of lightning” and could cause catastrophic consequences for the world’s health, emergency services and national security unless precautions are taken.

Scientists believe it could damage everything from emergency services’ systems, hospital equipment, banking systems and air traffic control devices, through to “everyday” items such as home computers, iPods and Sat Navs.

Due to humans’ heavy reliance on electronic devices, which are sensitive to magnetic energy, the storm could leave a multi-billion pound damage bill and “potentially devastating” problems for governments.

“We know it is coming but we don’t know how bad it is going to be,” Dr Richard Fisher, the director of Nasa’s Heliophysics division, said in an interview with The Daily Telegraph.

“It will disrupt communication devices such as satellites and car navigations, air travel, the banking system, our computers, everything that is electronic. It will cause major problems for the world.

“Large areas will be without electricity power and to repair that damage will be hard as that takes time.”

Dr Fisher added: “Systems will just not work. The flares change the magnetic field on the earth that is rapid and like a lightning bolt. That is the solar affect.”

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/space/7819201/Nasa-warns-solar-flares-from-huge-space-storm-will-cause-devastation.html

On Saturday, April 11th, a coronal mass ejection (CME) hit Earth’s magnetic field. The impact caused a G2-class geomagnetic storm and, for the first time this year, ignited auroras over the continental United States.

“Lower 48″ sightings of auroras are a sign: The deep solar minimum of 2008-2009 has come to an end and a new solar cycle is gaining strength. If forecasters are correct, Solar Max is just two to three years away. From spaceweather…

Ten thousand years ago, before the dawn of recorded human history, a new light must suddenly have appeared in the night sky and faded after a few weeks. Today we know this light was an exploding star and record the colorful expanding cloud as the Veil Nebula. Pictured above is the west end of the Veil Nebula known technically as NGC 6960 but less formally as the Witch’s Broom Nebula. The expanding debris cloud gains its colors by sweeping up and exciting existing nearby gas. The supernova remnant lies about 1400 light-years away towards the constellation of Cygnus.

The Orion Nebula is a vast stellar nursery lying about 1350 light-years from Earth.

In March 1993, a tiny remote-controlled robot created by Rudolf Gantenbrink, a German robotics engineer, traveled up airshafts within the Great Pyramid of Giza and relayed to scientists video pictures of a hitherto unknown sealed door within the pyramid. Bauval, a British engineer and writer who has been investigating the pyramids for more than ten years, and Gilbert, a British publishing consultant, use Gantenbrink’s tantalizing discovery as a launching pad for an extended analysis of the purpose of the mysterious airshafts, which lead from the Great Pyramid’s chambers to its exterior, and of the placement of other Fourth Dynasty pyramids. They were sited, the authors argue, to coincide with the key stars of Orion, a constellation that had religious significance for the Egyptians. Bauval and Gilbert claim that the shafts were pointed directly at important stars in Orion–that is, at those stars as they were placed in ancient times. Using astronomical data about stellar movement, they argue that the Orion stars coincide exactly with the pyramids’ positions in approximately 10,400 b.c.–a period the Egyptians called the First Time, when they believed the god Osiris ruled the Earth.

There are three very conspicuous stars in the “belt” of the constellation of Orion that are also called the “Three Kings.”
Like so many other religious and mythological correspondences, the “bright star” and the “three kings” represent motifs that long predate Christianity and are found within Egyptian religion, symbolizing the star Sirius as well as those of the constellation called Orion, along with their relationship to the Egyptian deities Osiris, Isis and Horus.

All week long, the Arctic Circle has been aglow with auroras. “The lights have been incredibly bright and active,” says Øystein Lunde Ingvaldsen of Bø i Vesterålen, Norway. He took this picture on Feb. 17th:

“This has been a very nice month for auroras,” agrees Wioleta Zarzycka of Iceland, where coastal waters have been turning green in reflection of the sky above. The lights have even descended as far south as Scotland. “On Monday night, we had the first auroras I have seen here in years,” reports Gordon Mackay of Campsie Fells.

All this activity is a sign that the sun is coming back to life after a long, deep solar minimum. Sunspots have returned crackling with solar flares, and coronal mass ejections (CMEs) are once again buffeting Earth’s magnetic field.

Via Spaceweather…

Ibn Khaldūn (1332-1406 C.E.) –  was a North African polymath — an astronomer, economist, historian, Islamic scholar, Islamic theologian, hafiz, jurist, lawyer, mathematician, military strategist, nutritionist, philosopher, social scientist and statesman (!!!!!!!) —born in North Africa in present-day Tunisia. He retreated into the desert in 1375 and emerged four years later having written one of the most important ever studies of the workings of history.

This volume, commonly known as Muqaddimah or ‘Prolegomena’, became a masterpiece in literature on philosophy of history and sociology. The chief concern of this monumental work was to identify psychological, economic, environmental and social facts that contribute to the advancement of human civilization and the currents of history. In this context, he analysed the dynamics of group relationships and showed how group-feelings, al-’Asabiyya, give rise to the ascent of a new civilisation and political power and how, later on, its diffusion into a more general civilization invites the advent of a still new ‘Asabiyya in its pristine form. He identified an almost rhythmic repetition of rise and fall in human civilization, and analysed factors contributing to it.

Ibn Khaldun’s writings seem particularly relevant today after reading this:
Endgame

I’ve mentioned more than once in these essays the foreshortening effect that textbook history can have on our understanding of the historical events going on around us. The stark chronologies most of us get fed in school can make it hard to remember that even the most drastic social changes happen over time, amid the fabric of everyday life and a flurry of events that can seem more important at the time.

The twilight years of Rome offer a good object lesson; so many people were convinced that the Second Coming might occur at any moment that the collapse of classical civilization went almost unnoticed; only a tiny handful of writers from those years show any recognition that something out of the ordinary was happening at all.

Reflections of this sort have been much on my mind lately, and there’s a reason for that. Scattered among the statistical noise that makes up most of today’s news are data points that suggest to me that business as usual is quietly coming to an end around us, launching us into a new world for which very few of us have made any preparations at all.

On Jan. 15th, a burst of Northern Lights startled observers around the Arctic Circle. “The sky exploded over my head!” reports Øystein Lunde Ingvaldsen, who sends this picture from Bø in Vesterålen, Norway:

A solar wind stream is heading toward Earth and it could spark polar geomagnetic storms when it arrives on Jan. 18th or 19th.
Via Spaceweather..

On Dec. 13th, Earth passed through a stream of debris from extinct comet 3200 Phaethon. The encounter produced a surge of more than 160 Geminid meteors per hour.

815 new snowfall records, 304 low temperature, and 403 lowest max temperature records were set this week in the USA.

And they want us to pay how many billions (trillions?) to stop warming? What warming are they talking about exactly? How was that money going to be able to control the climate again? Personally, I like the cold (for half the year) because it makes the snow better, but overall, I imagine most people would be happier to have a little warming rather than extensive cooling (not that we control the climate either way, anyway).

Including those freezing their asses off in copenhagen. brrrrr.

The cold winner however is in Edmonton Canada, where they beat their old record by 10 degrees and recorded a frigid -46.1 C, or -58.4 C with wind chill. The old record of -36.1 C was set last year.

Maybe we should start a -273 Award for all the places which beat their previous cold records (modern times only).

One last point, If any of these record cold temps are at urban sites, then the natural variability has been enough to overcome forty years of Urban Heat Island effect (which a 6th grader here demonstrates has lead to temperature rises in the cities, whilst the rural areas nearby had no temperature rise).

When i first saw this, I thought it was fake, but a spiral with a greenish blue light was witnessed and recorded this morning by thousands of people throughout northern Norway and the Trondelag.

Video and more photos here: http://www.nrk.no/nyheter/distrikt/nordland/1.6902336

Info via spaceweather.com.

Knut Jorgen Roed Odegaard, Norway’s most celebrated astronomer, said:
“This was seen over an exceptionally large area of the country – in all of north Norway and the Trondelag. My first thought was that it was a fireball meteor – but it lasted far too long. It may have been a missile from Russia – but I can’t guarantee that is the answer. I rang the Air Traffic Control tower in Tromse. They said it was over in two minutes. To me, that is far too long for this to be an astronomical phenomenon. This spiral shape is unique. It is definitely not a variation of the aurora borealis – northern lights.”

Another video of it here. And more info here. The most likely explanation so far seems to be that it was an out of control Russian rocket, but that expanding black disk is still a bit puzzling.

The calm before the storm?

The sun is in the pits of a very deep solar minimum. Many researchers thought the sunspot cycle had hit bottom in 2008 when the sun was blank 73% of the time. Not so. 2009 is on the verge of going even lower. So far this year, the sun has been blank 75% of the time, and only a serious outbreak of sunspots over the next few weeks will prevent 2009 from becoming the quietest year in a century. Solar minimum continues.

spaceweather.com

Milankovitch Theory describes the collective effects of changes in the Earth’s movements upon its climate, named after Serbian civil engineer and mathematician Milutin Milanković. Milanković mathematically theorised that variations in eccentricity, axial tilt, and precession of the Earth’s orbit determined climatic patterns on Earth, resulting in 100,000-year ice age cycles of the Quaternary glaciation over the last few million years. The Earth’s axis completes one full cycle of precession approximately every 26,000 years. At the same time, the elliptical orbit rotates, more slowly, leading to a 23,000-year cycle between the seasons and the orbit. In addition, the angle between Earth’s rotational axis and the normal to the plane of its orbit moves from 22.1 degrees to 24.5 degrees and back again on a 41,000-year cycle. Currently, this angle is 23.44 degrees and is decreasing.

As the Earth spins around its axis and orbits around the Sun, several quasi-periodic variations occur. Milankovitch studied changes in the orbital eccentricity, obliquity, and precession of Earth’s movements. Such changes in movement and orientation change the amount and location of solar radiation reaching the Earth. This is known as solar forcing. Changes near the north polar area are considered important due to the large amount of land, which reacts to such changes more quickly than the oceans do.

Orbital forcing is the effect on climate of slow changes in the tilt of the Earth’s axis and shape of the orbit. These orbital changes change the total amount of sunlight reaching the Earth by up to 25% at mid-latitudes. In this context, the term “forcing” signifies a physical process that affects the Earth’s climate.

This mechanism is believed to be responsible for the timing of the ice age cycles.

Today, northern hemisphere summer is 4.66 days longer than winter and spring is 2.9 days longer than autumn. As axial precession changes the place in the Earth’s orbit where the solstices and equinoxes occur, Northern hemisphere winters will get longer and summers will get shorter, eventually creating conditions believed to be favorable for triggering the next glacial period.

Precession is the change in the direction of the Earth’s axis of rotation relative to the fixed stars, with a period of roughly 26,000 years. This gyroscopic motion is due to the tidal forces exerted by the sun and the moon on the solid Earth, associated with the fact that the Earth is an oblate spheroid shape and not a perfect sphere.

The arrangements of land masses on the Earth’s surface are believed to reinforce the orbital forcing effects. Comparisons of plate tectonic continent reconstructions and paleoclimatic studies show that the Milankovitch cycles have the greatest effect during geologic eras when landmasses have been concentrated in polar regions, as is the case today. Greenland, Antarctica, and the northern portions of Europe, Asia, and North America are situated such that a minor change in solar energy will tip the balance between year-round snow/ice preservation and complete summer melting.