Sun's Magnetic Field About to Flip

[kell1990]

http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/sc ... fieldflip/

"August 5, 2013: Something big is about to happen on the sun. According to measurements from NASA-supported observatories, the sun's vast magnetic field is about to flip.

The sun's magnetic field changes polarity approximately every 11 years. It happens at the peak of each solar cycle as the sun's inner magnetic dynamo re-organizes itself. The coming reversal will mark the midpoint of Solar Cycle 24. Half of 'Solar Max' will be behind us, with half yet to come.

Hoeksema is the director of Stanford's Wilcox Solar Observatory, one of the few observatories in the world that monitor the sun's polar magnetic fields. The poles are a herald of change. Just as Earth scientists watch our planet's polar regions for signs of climate change, solar physicists do the same thing for the sun. Magnetograms at Wilcox have been tracking the sun's polar magnetism since 1976, and they have recorded three grand reversals—with a fourth in the offing.

Solar physicist Phil Scherrer, also at Stanford, describes what happens: "The sun's polar magnetic fields weaken, go to zero, and then emerge again with the opposite polarity. This is a regular part of the solar cycle."

A reversal of the sun's magnetic field is, literally, a big event. The domain of the sun's magnetic influence (also known as the "heliosphere") extends billions of kilometers beyond Pluto. Changes to the field's polarity ripple all the way out to the Voyager probes, on the doorstep of interstellar space.

When solar physicists talk about solar field reversals, their conversation often centers on the "current sheet." The current sheet is a sprawling surface jutting outward from the sun's equator where the sun's slowly-rotating magnetic field induces an electrical current. The current itself is small, only one ten-billionth of an amp per square meter (0.0000000001 amps/m2), but there’s a lot of it: the amperage flows through a region 10,000 km thick and billions of kilometers wide. Electrically speaking, the entire heliosphere is organized around this enormous sheet.

During field reversals, the current sheet becomes very wavy. Scherrer likens the undulations to the seams on a baseball. As Earth orbits the sun, we dip in and out of the current sheet. Transitions from one side to another can stir up stormy space weather around our planet.

Cosmic rays are also affected. These are high-energy particles accelerated to nearly light speed by supernova explosions and other violent events in the galaxy. Cosmic rays are a danger to astronauts and space probes, and some researchers say they might affect the cloudiness and climate of Earth. The current sheet acts as a barrier to cosmic rays, deflecting them as they attempt to penetrate the inner solar system. A wavy, crinkly sheet acts as a better shield against these energetic particles from deep space.

As the field reversal approaches, data from Wilcox show that the sun's two hemispheres are out of synch.

"The sun's north pole has already changed sign, while the south pole is racing to catch up," says Scherrer. "Soon, however, both poles will be reversed, and the second half of Solar Max will be underway."

When that happens, Hoeksema and Scherrer will share the news with their colleagues and the public.

Stay tuned to Science@NASA for updates.

Credits:

Author:Dr. Tony Phillips| Production editor: Dr. Tony Phillips | Credit: Science@NASA"
END QUOTE

THis solar cycle has been very weak so far, in terms of sunspots, flares and CME's. If the law of averages comes into play then there should be a greatly increased amount of solar activity for the rest of this cycle.

[Michael Mozina]

The active regions in both hemisphere's have indeed finally come close to the equator, and the field is about to flip. FYI, you can track it's progress over the next few months in the SDO magnetogram movies.

http://jsoc.stanford.edu/data/hmi/movie ... lor_2d.mpg

If you look at the areas around sunspots and active regions at the moment in the northern hemisphere as the sun rotates, the yellow regions are typically located to the right of the dark green areas. It's typically the opposite pattern in the southern hemisphere. Once the field actually flips, that magnetic field pattern in the orientation of coronal loop currents will reverse itself in both hemispheres. When that actually starts to occur, that's when the sun is "most dangerous" since the various active regions are all concentrated near the equator, and all the active regions start to interact with one another. We should also start to see some decent x-ray flare events once that flip starts to occur.

[Mohib]

I'm new here and still learning the various aspects EU & ES concepts, but am wondering if the EU/ES theories have any light to shed (in layman's terms as I'm not an EE) on why the Sun's magnetic field flips (vis a vis the currents that power the Sun according to the ES theory) and also why the solar cycle occurs and is so regular (+/- 10-13 years).

Thanks

[nick c]

am wondering if the EU/ES theories have any light to shed (in layman's terms as I'm not an EE) on why the Sun's magnetic field flips (vis a vis the currents that power the Sun according to the ES theory) and also why the solar cycle occurs and is so regular (+/- 10-13 years).

Yes. Check out section VI. MAGNETIC FIELDS THAT REVERSE THEIR
POLARITY

Regardless of the direction of the main driving current
coming into the Sun, the eleven-year reversal of the magnetic
loops can be explained by transformer action as shown
above. If the main magnetic field that induces the surface
currents is growing in strength, the surface current will point
in one direction. If the main magnetic field starts to weaken
in intensity, the secondary (surface) current will reverse direction.
Consequently the magnetic polarity of the Omega
loops will also reverse. Notice that this mechanism does not
require the main solar driving current itself to reverse direction,
only to vary in amplitude.

[Mohib]

Thx! Very interesting although I don't understand the math, it is very interesting to see well understood phenomena of electricity and magnetism once again being observed in the solar phenomena.

What about the 11 year cycle itself, are there any theories about what is causing that? There has been some interesting work that seems to tie the cycle (and other longer term cycles) with the orbital periods of the planets -- which seems to makes sense but I'm curious what the mechanism might be and if there is an ES answer that could explain a planetary source to the solar cycles. For example, with Jupiter (the most obvious since it has an 11 year orbital period too) see here:

http://www.landscheidt.info/

BTW I trust you all are familiar with Livingston and Penn's work (predicting sunspots to disappear due to a straight linear decline umbral magnetic fields)? If not, here are some links going back a few years. Any comments how this fits in with an ES?

Livingston and Penn paper: “Sunspots may vanish by 2015″.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2008/06/02/l ... h-by-2015/

Sunspots Today: A Cheshire Cat – New Essay from Livingston and Penn
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/06/13/s ... -and-penn/

BREAKING – major AAS solar announcement: Sun’s Fading Spots Signal Big Drop in Solar Activity
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/06/14/t ... -activity/

First Estimate of Solar Cycle 25 Amplitude – may be the smallest in over 300 years
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/01/25/f ... 300-years/

Updated graph of the trends here:
http://www.leif.org/research/Livingston ... 20Penn.png

[CharlesChandler]

Regardless of the direction of the main driving current coming into the Sun, the eleven-year reversal of the magnetic loops can be explained by transformer action as shown above. If the main magnetic field that induces the surface currents is growing in strength, the surface current will point in one direction. If the main magnetic field starts to weaken in intensity, the secondary (surface) current will reverse direction. Consequently the magnetic polarity of the Omega loops will also reverse. Notice that this mechanism does not require the main solar driving current itself to reverse direction, only to vary in amplitude.

This "attempts" to explain magnetic field lines perpendicular to the Sun's axis of rotation, in coronal loops. But the actual question concerned the reversal of the Sun's overall magnetic field, which is in solenoidal form, centered on the Sun's axis of rotation. So if Scott's explanation actually works (?) it has to be wrong, because the actual field is orthogonal to the one he describes.

The overall solenoidal field is clearly evidence of a dynamo, where the rotation of the Sun is like the armature in an electric generator. But working out how the Sun generates this field has a hidden gotcha. The Sun is supposedly quasi-neutral. So despite the matter being hot enough to be ionized, in any given volume of it, there "should be" equal quantities of positive and negative charges. If so, the magnetic fields generated by the positive and negative charges "should" cancel each other out, leaving no dynamo. The only way to get a net magnetic field is to have a net charge that rotates, and the conventional model doesn't have it.

Many lines of evidence point to the existence of charged double-layers in the Sun. Think of an onion, where each successive layer has an opposite charge, and where the force binding each layer together is that electrostatic attraction of opposite charges. But in such a configuration, there is still no net magnetic field, because there is still no net charge, and the fields from the rotation of oppositely charged layers "should" cancel each other out.

But there is one more fact that needs to be taken into account: the layers don't rotate at the same rate. If a positive onion layer is rotating faster than the adjacent negative layer, its magnetic field will dominate. So the Sun as a whole is still net neutral. But the strength of a magnetic field is a function of the amount of charge, and the speed at which it is moving, and it's the speed that varies.

To (finally) answer the original question concerning polarity reversals, we know that the net charge remains zero, and that the only variable is the rotational speed of the layers. So the fast layer has to slow down, and the slow layer has to speed up, so that the other electric polarity generates the dominant magnetic field. This variability is actually well-known, and it's called "torsional oscillation". Here are just a few references.

Zhao, J.; Kosovichev, A. G., 2004: Torsional Oscillation, Meridional Flows, and Vorticity Inferred in the Upper Convection Zone of the Sun by Time-Distance Helioseismology. The Astrophysical Journal, 603: 776

Vorontsov, S. V. et al., 2002: Helioseismic Measurement of Solar Torsional Oscillations. Science, 296 (5565): 101-103

So the layers speed up and slow down with respect to each other, and the oscillation coincides with the polarity reversals. The only reason why mainstream scientists can't put the pieces together is that they don't have a charged double-layer model. So for them, the dynamo is inexplicable, the field reversals are inexplicable, and the torsional oscillation is unrelated. But in an EM context, if you can explain one of these in physical terms, you can explain all of them. The overall magnetic field is generated by a charged double-layer that is rotating faster than the opposite charge, but in the next cycle, the other layer rotates faster, and its magnetic field dominates. The existence of such layers is well-known. So we just have to assign charges to those layers to get a dynamo whose polarity reverses at the same time as the reversal of the differential rotation.

[seasmith]

http://www.nasa.gov/content/goddard/sdo ... h-HueDAZpq


CC,

Should like this image: layers, changing flows, solenoids (windings),
it's all there.


http://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/files ... k=v4Svreca

http://www.nasa.gov/content/goddard/sdo ... h-HueDAZpq

http://www.scienceworldreport.com/artic ... on-sun.htm

[seasmith]

`
re above image:



Similar solenoids ?


http://www.thunderbolts.info/forum/phpB ... 223#p87223


JeffreyW probably already spotted that

[D_Archer]

So much wrong in Charles his post but this is the crux > It is NOT a solenoid, that is a basic misunderstanding.

It is more a quadrupole.

Kind regards,
Daniel

[CharlesChandler]

So much wrong in Charles his post but this is the crux > It is NOT a solenoid, that is a basic misunderstanding.

OK, are you going to tell me what I got wrong, or are you just going to leave that as an unsubstantiated drive-by? And in what sense is the overall magnetic field (i.e., the one that flips) a quadrupole?

[CharlesChandler]

Just to make my question about quadrupoles a little clearer, here's what the Sun's magnetic fields look like, through roughly three 11-year cycles:

Solar Magnetogram

Here's a schematic that summarizes the general form of the fields:

Solar Magnetic Schematic

Nowhere in the cycle do I see a quadrupole. In the quiet phase, it's dipolar. During the active phase, I'm counting 6 poles.

[celeste]

Charles, what I don't understand, is how if the mainstream knows this http://sci.esa.int/soho/37249-variation ... ith-depth/ and this http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2001A%26A...372..913N , then why a problem with a mechanism? If you didn't know anything about plasma physics, or electric sun models, wouldn't you still think that with gravitational charge segregation (that's segregation by depth), and varying rotation by depth, that you would have a mechanism for the magnetic field?

[CharlesChandler]

Excellent question, celeste. I think really that it's just a matter of Einstein and Eddington having obfuscated the whole discipline so thoroughly, that the mainstream still can't see their way clear of it. So they still think that it's cool to say that the space-time continuum is getting warped by strong gravitational fields. Tesla made quick work of that in saying that space cannot get warped, because it's nothingness, and therefore doesn't have any properties. But everybody was fascinated with Einstein, so they all got their minds warped. Now, all of the pieces can be laying right there in front of them, and they still can't put the puzzle together. It really isn't that complicated. Magnetic fields can only be created by moving electric charges. And by the orientation of the field, you can derive the direction of the movement. If the field flips, either the direction reverses, or the sign of the charge flips. Since the Sun always spins in the same direction, it has to be the sign of the charge. So you have to have a charge separation, and torsional oscillation. But no, they can't see it.

[Maol]

Have you ever had the experience of witnessing a beach ball, basket ball, soccer ball or any inflatable ball such as you use to play prison ball or water polo, alight on the surface of water with a high rate of spin and begin to precess like any slowing gyroscope and eventually flip 180°, perhaps more than once, before it stops spinning?

[seasmith]

Maol » Wed Sep 11, 2013 2:27 pm

Have you ever had the experience of witnessing a beach ball, basket ball, soccer ball or any inflatable ball such as you use to play prison ball or water polo, alight on the surface of water with a high rate of spin and begin to precess like any slowing gyroscope and eventually flip 180°, perhaps more than once, before it stops spinning?

Bingo