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Wednesday, April 22, 2009

End of the world ?

Tessa don't want to die so early ):



Sighs, Weida showed me an article on the papers last night and it says that, there'll be a solar storm hitting the earth on year 2012 ): Ohbtw, hi world!

NASA Confirms Solar Storm Near 2012

March 10, 2006: It's official: Solar
minimum has arrived. Sunspots have all but vanished. Solar flares are
nonexistent. The sun is utterly quiet.

Like the quiet before a
storm.

This week researchers announced that a storm is coming--the most
intense solar maximum in fifty years. The prediction comes from a team led by
Mausumi Dikpati of the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR). "The
next sunspot cycle will be 30% to 50% stronger than the previous one," she says.
If correct, the years ahead could produce a burst of solar activity second only
to the historic Solar Max of 1958.


That was a solar maximum. The Space Age was just beginning: Sputnik was
launched in Oct. 1957 and Explorer 1 (the first US satellite) in Jan. 1958. In
1958 you couldn't tell that a solar storm was underway by looking at the bars on
your cell phone; cell phones didn't exist. Even so, people knew something big
was happening when Northern Lights were sighted three times in Mexico. A similar
maximum now would be noticed by its effect on cell phones, GPS, weather
satellites and many other modern technologies.

Right: Intense auroras
over Fairbanks, Alaska, in 1958.

Dikpati's prediction is unprecedented.
In nearly-two centuries since the 11-year sunspot cycle was discovered,
scientists have struggled to predict the size of future maxima—and failed. Solar
maxima can be intense, as in 1958, or barely detectable, as in 1805, obeying no
obvious pattern.
The key to the mystery, Dikpati realized years ago, is a
conveyor belt on the sun.

We have something similar here on Earth—the
Great Ocean Conveyor Belt, popularized in the sci-fi movie The Day After
Tomorrow. It is a network of currents that carry water and heat from ocean to
ocean--see the diagram below. In the movie, the Conveyor Belt stopped and threw
the world's weather into chaos.


Above:
Earth's "Great Ocean Conveyor Belt."

The sun's conveyor belt is a
current, not of water, but of electrically-conducting gas. It flows in a loop
from the sun's equator to the poles and back again. Just as the Great Ocean
Conveyor Belt controls weather on Earth, this solar conveyor belt controls
weather on the sun. Specifically, it controls the sunspot cycle.

Solar
physicist David Hathaway of the National Space Science & Technology Center
(NSSTC) explains: "First, remember what sunspots are--tangled knots of magnetism
generated by the sun's inner dynamo. A typical sunspot exists for just a few
weeks. Then it decays, leaving behind a 'corpse' of weak magnetic fields."

Enter the conveyor belt.


"The top of the conveyor belt skims the surface of the sun, sweeping up the
magnetic fields of old, dead sunspots. The 'corpses' are dragged down at the
poles to a depth of 200,000 km where the sun's magnetic dynamo can amplify them.
Once the corpses (magnetic knots) are reincarnated (amplified), they become
buoyant and float back to the surface." Presto—new sunspots!

Right: The
sun's "great conveyor belt."

All this happens with massive slowness. "It
takes about 40 years for the belt to complete one loop," says Hathaway. The
speed varies "anywhere from a 50-year pace (slow) to a 30-year pace (fast)."

When the belt is turning "fast," it means that lots of magnetic fields
are being swept up, and that a future sunspot cycle is going to be intense. This
is a basis for forecasting: "The belt was turning fast in 1986-1996," says
Hathaway. "Old magnetic fields swept up then should re-appear as big sunspots in
2010-2011."

Like most experts in the field, Hathaway has confidence in
the conveyor belt model and agrees with Dikpati that the next solar maximum
should be a doozy. But he disagrees with one point. Dikpati's forecast puts
Solar Max at 2012. Hathaway believes it will arrive sooner, in 2010 or 2011.

"History shows that big sunspot cycles 'ramp up' faster than small
ones," he says. "I expect to see the first sunspots of the next cycle appear in
late 2006 or 2007—and Solar Max to be underway by 2010 or 2011."

Who's
right? Time will tell. Either way, a storm is coming.
Source: http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2006/10mar_stormwarning.htm



Hopefully it won't affect us! ): End of the world ? I really don't want to die so early yet, another 3 more years lehhhhh, what the hell! Damnit.

Okkkk whatever it is, fuck it _l_

Alright I've just got home not long ago. Actually supposed to go to Weida's school with him today, but ended up didn't. So yeappppppp, I'm home! :)

Okkkkk I think I'm gonna watch some movies online now!
Done with - Legally Blondes, 13 going on 30, Twilight, Another Cinderella Story :)
Bye earthies, xoxo.

Please fucking be original for fuck's sake, so copycat !

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