SOLAR WIND WEAKEST SINCE BEGINNING OF SPACE AGE
Joanie September 25th, 2008
SOLAR WIND WEAKEST SINCE BEGINNING OF SPACE AGE
AFP
September 24, 2008
http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=080924193222.3r9aw25a&show_article=1
The intensity of the sun’s million-mile-per-hour solar wind has dropped to
its lowest levels since accurate records began half a century ago,
scientists say.
Measurements of the cosmic blasts of radiation, ejected from the sun’s upper
atmosphere, were made with the Ulysses spacecraft, a joint mission between
NASA <http://ulysses.jpl.nasa.gov/> and the European Space Agency (ESA)
<http://ulysses-ops.jpl.esa.int/>.
The solar wind “inflates a protective bubble, or heliosphere, around the
solar system,” which protects the inner planets against the radiation from
other stars, said Dave McComas, Ulysses’ solar wind principal investigator
and senior executive director at the Southwest Research Institute in San
Antonio, Texas.
“With the solar wind at an all-time low, there is an excellent chance the
heliosphere will diminish in size and strength,” said Ed Smith, NASA’s
Ulysses project scientist at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena,
California.
“If that occurs, more galactic cosmic rays will make it into the inner part
of our solar system,” added Smith.
Scientists say the weakening of solar wind appears to be due to changes in
the sun’s magnetic field, but the causes of these changes are unknown.
The weakened solar activity can be beneficial because it slows satellites
around the Earth, allowing them to remain in orbit longer.
The sun normally experiences 11-year-cycles between periods of great
activity and lesser activity.
But, Smith said, the Ulysses mission’s recent results, published in
Geophysical Research Letters, show that “we are in a period of minimal
activity that has stretched on longer than anyone anticipated.”
The Ulysses mission was the first project to survey the space environment
over the sun’s poles. The data the spacecraft has collected has profoundly
changed the way scientists view our nearest star and its effects on the
Earth.
The spacecraft has traveled more than 539 million kilometers in more than 18
years, almost four times its expected lifetime.
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