Something strange is happening on the Sun: spots have completely disappeared from it

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

The luminary disk remains absolutely clean. What is the threat? Pictures taken by NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory (NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory) show that all spots have disappeared from our star again. The only one that was on May 9, 2017 is gone. There were no spots on May 10, nor on May 11.

In the picture taken on May 12, there were no spots again. The third day in a row went without them.

According to experts, in 2017 it has already accumulated 32 days when the solar disk remained absolutely clean. Exactly the same number of "clean" days were in the past year. But this is for the whole year. And now - in just 5 months. It may be that there is a noticeable decrease in solar activity. What threatens global cooling. And who knows, suddenly the observed oddities of the weather - snow after the spring heat - are the harbingers of an impending cataclysm.

Together with solar activity, the intensity of ultraviolet radiation will decrease. As a result, the upper layers of the Earth's atmosphere will become more discharged. And this will lead to the fact that space debris will accumulate and not burn up.

The sun in the image taken by the SOHO observatory on May 12, 2017. There are still no spots.

The sun in the image taken by the SOHO observatory on May 12, 2017. There are still no spots.

And in 2014, spots disappeared from the Sun. Even then, it looked suspicious, because the luminary was in the middle of an 11-year cycle of its activity - that is, at its maximum. It should have been strewn with spots, which just indicate activity. After all, it is with them that solar flares and coronal ejections are associated.

And here again something is wrong. Scientists are concerned. It is possible, they believe, that the spots may disappear for a long time - for decades.

Matthew Penn and William Livingston of the American National Solar Observatory (NSO) warned about this back in 2010 - almost at the beginning of the current 24th solar activity cycle.

They were echoed by researchers led by Dr Richard Altrock, an astrophysicist at the Air Force Research Laboratory. They discovered oddities in the movement of plasma streams inside the Sun. And, as a consequence, abnormal changes in magnetic fields. Namely from them - from these fields - the formation of spots mainly depends. As a result, Altrok and his colleagues also predicted that solar activity will be reduced in the coming cycle.

This is how a “normal” Sun should look like - with spots. Images of Earth and Jupiter have been added to the Sun's disk for comparison.

This is how a “normal” Sun should look like - with spots. Images of Earth and Jupiter have been added to the Sun's disk for comparison.

If the spots stop appearing, then the Sun will most likely plunge into an over-prolonged minimum of activity. In the history of mankind, something similar has already happened. For example, from 1310 to 1370, from 1645 to 1715. In those days, the number of sunspots decreased by a thousand times compared to "normal" years. And the Earth was covered by the so-called small ice ages. According to the chroniclers, the Thames and the Seine were frozen, snow fell even in the south of Italy.

As for when to expect a new Little Ice Age, the opinions of researchers differ. Some threaten that the Earth will begin to freeze in 2020, others - that earlier. Like, it has already begun.

Yes, you may have to freeze. But on the other hand, there will be fewer magnetic storms, from which many suffer. After all, storms are from solar flares generated by spots.

BY THE WAY

It has been worse, it has been really bad

According to official science, our planet, at least once - in the Neoproterozoic era, about 700-800 million years ago - froze so that it turned into an ice ball. This is evidenced by sedimentary glacial rocks found almost at the equator. It turned out that ice covered the current tropical regions at that time.

“Earth-snowball” - this was our planet when the Sun warmed it very badly.