Video - Sun has ‘flipped upside down’ as new magnetic cycle begins.

The sun has “flipped upside down,” with its north and south poles reversed to reach the midpoint of Solar Cycle 24, NASA has said. 

Now, the magnetic fields will once again started moving in opposite directions to begin the completion of the 22 year long process which will culminate in the poles switching once again. “A reversal of the sun’s magnetic field is, literally, a big event,” said NASA’s Dr. Tony Phillips.

“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.” 

To mark the event, NASA has released a visualization of the entire process. At the beginning, in 1997 the video shows the sun in Solar Cycle 23 with its positive polarity on the top (the green lines), and the negative polarity on the bottom (the purple lines). Each set of lines gradually move toward the opposite pole, showing a complete flip around 2002, completing the sun’s previous cycle. Both set of lines representing the opposing magnetic fields then begin to work their way back, to culminate in the latest flip. 

“At the height of each magnetic flip, the sun goes through periods of more solar activity, during which there are more sunspots, and more eruptive events such as solar flares and coronal mass ejections,” said NASA’s Karen C. Fox. “Cosmic rays are also affected,” added Dr. Phillips. “These are high-energy particles accelerated to nearly light speed by supernova explosions and other violent events in the galaxy.” –Independent UK

Video - NASA Hangout - Comet ISON LIVE. - Latest Messages on Twitter suggest the Comet didn't survive it's close meeting with the Sun

Latest Messages on Twitter suggest the Comet didn't survive it's close meeting with the Sun.

Watch live updates on comet ISON - There are only 4 hours, 30 minutes left until perihelion of Comet ISON.

Watch live updates on comet ISON - There are only 4 hours, 30 minutes left until perihelion of Comet ISON.HT: WattsUpWiththat.

Accurate Data: As today is the day of ISON's perihelion, we've updated and narrowed the data resolution down to just 10-minute intervals! This means that all throughout today, you can be assured to see the most accurate speed and distance data of Comet ISON (both before and after perihelion at 18:37 UTC).

Live updates HERE.

Global Cooling: be afraid........be very afraid.

Global Cooling: be afraid........be very afraid.(Telegraph).In Perth, Australia I'm staying with one of the country's most brilliant polymaths David Archibald. This morning, he treated to me to a scary presentation he recently delivered to the Institute of World Policy in Washington DC, where he is a visiting fellow. The title is Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, representing the four threats which Archibald believes are the ones we should most fear. The four horsemen, i.e. great challenges the world will soon have to face, are: a decreasing extraction of oil, causing growing prices of energy and, by extension, food; Pakistan's nuclear weapons program, which threatens proliferation and, perhaps, even a nuclear war in the region; rapid population growth in the Middle East and North Africa coupled with higher food imports in those regions, which spells mass starvation; and a 210-year climate cooling cycle. I'm not sure I'm quite as pessimistic as Archibald is on peak oil and shale gas – the latter, he estimates, is only good for another twenty years (the real energy solution, he reckons, is thorium reactors). But the area where I really hope he is wrong is on global cooling. If his analysis of declining sunspot activity is correct, then global mean temperatures are going to decline by about 2 degrees C by 2040 – completely undoing all that lovely beneficial (but rather meagre 0.8 degrees C) global warming we have experienced in the last 150 years. It will mean longer, colder winters and cooler summers. But far worse than the discomfort will be the effect it has on grain production. The shift in latitudes at which corn and wheat can be grown will be the equivalent of losing a belt 300 kilometres wide all around the world, leading to the loss perhaps 400 million tonnes per annum of grain. The result will be rising food prices, grain shortages – and a 50 per cent likelihood of the kind of volcanic-influenced disaster that led to the horrors of the 1816 Year Without A Summer, precipitating crop failures, weird Turner sunsets, and 200,000 deaths in Europe alone. Still there will be at least one consolation. Phil Jones, Michael Mann, James Hansen and Al Gore will all, most likely, still be around to see their entire religious belief system collapsing around their ears.Read and see the full story here.