Science & Technology
"Right now, there's an imbalance between the north and the south poles," Jonathan Cirtain, NASA's project scientist for a Japanese solar mission called Hinode, in a recent article on NASA's website. "The north is already in transition, well ahead of the south pole, and we don't understand why."
Further, the asymmetrically reversing solar magnetic field could have an effect on Earth, resulting in increased solar flares and the accompanying bursts of radioactive particles called "coronal mass ejections," or CMEs, that can hit Earth and cause brilliant Northern Lights displays and problematic geomagnetic solar storms, according to NASA scientists.
"This usually leads to a double peak in the sunspot number and CME rate as a function of time," Nat Gopalswamy, a solar scientist NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., in an email to TPM.
Gopalswamy and his team studied the Sun's shifting magnetic field from microwave signatures obtained by Japanese radio telescopes and reported their findings in a paper in the Astrophysical Journal on April 9.
Gopalswamy explained that while the Sun's shifting magnetic poles were first discovered in 1955, the rate at which the North and South wasn't found to be mismatched until the last few solar cycles.
To be clear, the magnetic field doesn't just flip, but rather, the Sun essentially sheds its current magnetic field and regrows a new one every 11 years. Currently, the Northern portion of the Sun is further along on this process than its Southern counterpart.
Further, the Sun's oddly shifting magnetic field affects the Solar System, though it isn't yet known just how.
"Whether the north pole of the Sun has north or south polarity decides the entry point of galactic cosmic rays into the heliosphere," Gopalswamy told TPM.
The heliosphere is an enormous magnetic bubble made up of the continual regular ejection of charged particles from the Sun. It stretches beyond Pluto.
Reader Comments
Earth norhpole moves also faster then the southpole.
Could it be, that we are now close to the disc from center of the galaxy, what the maya's did predict every 25600 years? so when we passes the other side ( plane ), that then the northpole is the southpole and the earth turns around the opposite way?
Oh i forgot something.
I think our milkey way, that spiral were we moves up and down every 25600 years, has also a north and southpole. because there is a great gravity force there because of the great mass in the middle, and mass has a north pole and south pole like planets.
the sun is only going to complete a 90 degree reversal. The N & S geographic solar poles will both be positive. That is seen by the migration of the N pole eastward and its destination is the equator. That is why the Southern positive pole has not moved. Only the N pole which is negative is moving. The equator will be the home of both negative poles and the N & S geographic poles will both be positive. This information is currently on the net, see Hinode telescope of Japan.
Compared to the previous Solar Max, this one is but a shadow of the last one, and the last one wasn't exactly a blockbuster.
The Sun is very unhappy about the rotten state of affairs on Earth.
If you were a star, would you be enthusiastic about shining forth on a decrepid civilization?