The Sun now has two south poles! No need to worry i'm sure an Executive order is on it's way.

Source.

The Sun now has two south poles! No need to worry i'm sure an Executive order is on it's way.HT: IceAgeNow.

Solar activity is stranger than in a century or more, say solar scientists, with the sun producing barely half the number of sunspots as expected and its magnetic poles oddly out of sync.

Normally, the sun’s magnetic north and south poles change polarity about every 11 years. During the reversal, the sun’s polar magnetic fields weaken, drop to zero, then re-emerge with the opposite polarity.

But in this cycle, the sun’s magnetic poles are out of sync. The sun’s north magnetic pole reversed polarity more than a year ago, giving it the same polarity as the south pole.

“The delay between the two reversals is unusually long,” said solar physicist Karel Schrijver at the Lockheed Martin Advanced Technology Center in Palo Alto, Calif.

The polar reversal takes place as the Sun’s magnetic field moves north or south from the equator, eroding the existing pole as it does, explains Todd Hoeksema, a scientist at Stanford University’s Wilcox Solar Observatory.

Phil Scherrer, who works with Mr Hoeksema, said: “The north pole has already changed sign, while the south pole is racing to catch up.

It looks like a complete field reversal could be “no more than three to four months away,” said Mr Hoeksema in early August.

The flip could send “ripple effects” throughout the solar system, causing geomagnetic storms, which, in turn, can cause radio blackouts and interfere with satellites.
Here’s the scoop

Here’s the scoop, says Dr. E. Kirsten Peters:
The sun has two big cycles of change. First, the number of sunspots – dark regions on the surface of the sun – wax and wane over time. That’s something you may have once learned in science class. But another cycle that’s less well known is that the magnetic poles of the sun swap places, north to south. Both of these changes occur on a cycle of about 11 years.
I recently talked about the sun to Dr. Michael Allen, a colleague of mine in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at Washington State University. Allen explained to me that the sun’s magnetic field is in the process of decaying to zero. In the coming weeks it will reorganize itself with north and south poles fully reversed.
What was the north pole of the sun has actually already become a south pole. That means that at the moment the sun has two south poles.
That configuration “will likely change soon and the poles will be fully reversed,” says Allen.
The changes the sun is going through mean the sun is producing more cosmic rays. That translates into more impressive shows of the Northern Lights (Aurora Borealis) which you may see lighting up portions of the night sky on clear nights.
Dr. E. Kirsten Peters was trained as a geologist at Princeton and Harvard. Her column is a service of the College of Agricultural, Human and Natural Resource Sciences at Washington State University.Hmmm.....Better stock up on those Winter Woolies

http://highlandstoday.com/list/highlands-agri-leader-news/suns-shifting-magnetic-poles-brings-more-cosmic-rays-20130925/

http://news.sky.com/story/1169107/sun-set-to-flip-upside-down-within-weeks


http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702304672404579183940409194498

Video - NASA – The Sun’s Magnetic Field is about to Flip.

NASA – The Sun’s Magnetic Field is about to Flip.

It looks like we’re no more than 3 to 4 months away from a complete field reversal,” says NASA press release. Before the end of this year!

Something big is about to happen on the sun, the press release begins. According to measurements from NASA-supported observatories, the sun’s vast magnetic field is about to flip.

“It looks like we’re no more than 3 to 4 months away from a complete field reversal,” says solar physicist Todd Hoeksema of Stanford University. “This change will have ripple effects throughout the solar system.”

A new ScienceCast video anticipates the reversal of the sun’s global magnetic field.

The sun’s magnetic field changes polarity approximately every 11 years. It happens at the peak of each solar cycle as the sun’s inner magnetic dynamo re-organizes itself. The coming reversal will mark the midpoint of Solar Cycle 24. Half of ‘Solar Max’ will be behind us, with half yet to come.

Hoeksema is the director of Stanford’s Wilcox Solar Observatory, one of the few observatories in the world that monitor the sun’s polar magnetic fields. The poles are a herald of change. Just as Earth scientists watch our planet’s polar regions for signs of climate change, solar physicists do the same thing for the sun. Magnetograms at Wilcox have been tracking the sun’s polar magnetism since 1976, and they have recorded three grand reversals—with a fourth in the offing.

wilcox_med Astronomers at the Wilcox Solar Observatory (WSO) monitor the sun’s global magnetic field on a daily basis. Solar physicist Phil Scherrer, also at Stanford, describes what happens: “The sun’s polar magnetic fields weaken, go to zero, and then emerge again with the opposite polarity. This is a regular part of the solar cycle.”

A reversal of the sun’s magnetic field is, literally, a big event. 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.

When solar physicists talk about solar field reversals, their conversation often centers on the “current sheet.” The current sheet is a sprawling surface jutting outward from the sun’s equator where the sun’s slowly-rotating magnetic field induces an electrical current. The current itself is small, only one ten-billionth of an amp per square meter (0.0000000001 amps/m2), but there’s a lot of it: the amperage flows through a region 10,000 km thick and billions of kilometers wide. Electrically speaking, the entire heliosphere is organized around this enormous sheet.

During field reversals, the current sheet becomes very wavy. Scherrer likens the undulations to the seams on a baseball. As Earth orbits the sun, we dip in and out of the current sheet. Transitions from one side to another can stir up stormy space weather around our planet.

helio
An artist’s concept of the heliospheric current sheet, which becomes more wavy when the sun’s magnetic field flips. Cosmic rays are also affected. These are high-energy particles accelerated to nearly light speed by supernova explosions and other violent events in the galaxy. Cosmic rays are a danger to astronauts and space probes, and some researchers say they might affect the cloudiness and climate of Earth. The current sheet acts as a barrier to cosmic rays, deflecting them as they attempt to penetrate the inner solar system. A wavy, crinkly sheet acts as a better shield against these energetic particles from deep space.

As the field reversal approaches, data from Wilcox show that the sun’s two hemispheres are out of synch.

“The sun’s north pole has already changed sign, while the south pole is racing to catch up,” says Scherrer. “Soon, however, both poles will be reversed, and the second half of Solar Max will be underway.”

When that happens, Hoeksema and Scherrer will share the news with their colleagues and the public.

Stay tuned to Science@NASA for updates. Credits:

Author:Dr. Tony Phillips| Production editor: Dr. Tony Phillips | Credit: Science@NASA

http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2013/05aug_fieldflip/

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/08/05/the-sun-is-about-to-have-a-flipping-magnetic-field-reversal/#more-91034

http://www.spaceweather.com/