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El Sol y Sus Tormentas (Inglés)
El Sol y Sus Tormentas (Inglés)
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or all of February the sun is nearly By Sarah Scoles, lar maximum can damage their technologies.
spotless, a smooth circle filled in in Boulder, Colorado Sunspots can be seen with the naked eye,
with a goldenrod crayon. It has been but it wasn’t until the mid-1800s that astrono-
more than a decade since it was so will reach its peak, and how unruly it will be- mers realized they come and go on a rough
lacking in sunspots—dark magnetic come. As light reflects off snow caught in the schedule. They first appear at midlatitudes
PHOTO: NASA/SDO; AIA, EVE, AND HMI SCIENCE TEAMS
knots as big as Earth that are a baro- trees and streams through the tall windows and then proliferate, migrating toward the
meter of the sun’s temperament. Be- of a conference room, the Solar Cycle 25 Pre- equator over about 11 years. In 1848, Swiss
low the surface, however, a radical diction Panel comes to order. NASA and the astronomer Johann Rudolf Wolf published
transition is afoot. In 5 years or so, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Adminis- an account of the sunspot record, identi-
the sun will be awash in sunspots and more tration (NOAA) have sponsored these panels fying 1755–66 as “Cycle 1,” the first period
prone to violent bursts of magnetic activity. since 1989, aiming to understand what drives when counts were reliable. He then created
Then, about 11 years from now, the solar cycle the sun’s 11-year cycles and assess methods a formula for counting the number of daily
will conclude: Sunspots will fade away and for predicting them. But the exercise is not sunspots—a somewhat subjective technique
the sun will again grow quiet. just academic: The military, satellite opera- that has evolved into a counting method used
In early March, a dozen scientists descend tors, and electric utilities all want to know today to marry data sets across the centuries.
on the National Center for Atmospheric Re- what the sun has in store, because the flares The cycles are capricious, however.
search (NCAR) here to predict when the sun and bursts of charged particles that mark so- Sometimes, the sun goes quiet for decades,
Published by AAAS
Clarification: 20 June 2019. See full text. NEWS
with anemic sunspot counts across several jut out from the surface, forming sunspots. effect of such an event on computers and
cycles—as occurred during the 19th century’s The sun’s ebb and flow affects Earth. Its communications would be dire. Financial
so-called Dalton minimum. Such variations upper atmosphere absorbs the sun’s ultra- transaction systems could collapse. Power
are what the scientists at NCAR have gath- violet rays, which dim slightly at solar mini- and water could easily go out. “It probably
ered to forecast. The problem is that no one— mum. That causes the atmosphere to cool would be The Hunger Games pretty soon,”
in this room or elsewhere—really knows how and shrink, reducing friction for low-flying McIntosh says.
the sun works. satellites. In calm solar cycles, operators as- McIntosh doesn’t question the need to
Most models snatch at reality, but none sume their satellites will remain in orbit for prepare, but he is skeptical of the panel’s ap-
pieces together the whole puzzle. The last longer—and because the same goes for space proach. In fact, he believes its very premise—
time the panel convened, in 2007, its scien- junk, the risk of a collision goes up. The predicting the rise and fall of sunspots—is
tists evaluated dozens of models and came up sun’s magnetic field also weakens at solar off-base. Sunspots, and the cycle itself, are
with a prediction that was far from perfect. minimum, which poses another threat to sat- just symptoms of a still-mysterious story
It missed the timing of the maximum, April ellites. The weakened field rebuffs fewer ga- playing out inside the sun.
2014, by almost a year, and also the over- lactic cosmic rays, high energy particles that Lika Guhathakurta, a panel observer from
all weakness of the past cycle. This panel, can flip bits in satellite electronics. NASA’s Ames Research Center in California,
a who’s who list of solar scientists, doesn’t agrees. “Sunspot is not a physical index of
know whether it will do better. anything,” she says, after the morning’s in-
As the NCAR clock ticks toward the start
time, the panelists sit in awkward silence,
“If you design a satellite for troductory talks. “So the fact that we have
used it as a proxy in itself kind of presents a
clutching their compostable coffee cups.
They know what the next 4 days hold: fights
a 10- or 12-year life, problem.” Using sunspots—a side effect, not
a cause—to predict the sun’s future behav-
over physics and intuition, belief and data, you need to consider the cycle.” ior is like trying to divine the germ theory of
Published by AAAS
Clarification: 20 June 2019. See full text.
Convective
4 At solar Sunspot
zone
maximum,
the sunspots
are more
common
Corona and closer to
the equator.
Looping 5 Turbulent
Telltale spots magnetic motions tear
Sunspots are dark because they Eelds apart sunspots.
are cooler than the surrounding
The meridional
hot gas. These intensely Sunspot flow nudges
magnetic knots burst through
remnants to
the surface, unleashing energy Meridional
Hot rising the poles.
for days or weeks before fading. fow
gas
Dalton
150
minimum 7 The sun returns
100 to solar
minimum, but
50 the polarity of
its poloidal field
0 is reversed.
1750 1800 1850 1900 1950 2000
820
Published by AAAS
Clarification: 20 June 2019. See full text.
NEWS | F E AT U R E S
the sun to predict how it will evolve. The you don’t understand, and only later do In the midst of their research, they dis-
models, which combine theories of electro- you model what it means physically. covered they weren’t alone: In the 1980s,
magnetism and fluid dynamics, start with Biesecker concedes the point. “But we other scientists had published a paper in
the sun’s current conditions and calculate haven’t really found one that seems to work,” Nature describing basically the same idea.
its evolution through the cycle. And they’re he says. “And we’ve been doing it for hun- But that work disappeared into obscurity.
improving, says Maria Weber, a panelist dreds of years.” Now, the idea of an extended, 22-year cycle
and fellow at the University of Chicago in McIntosh is irritated that the panel is is catching on again with some researchers.
Illinois. Increased computing power and weighing models he considers dubious. HAO scientist Mausumi Dikpati recently
better algorithms mean scientists can run “This is how churches spring up,” he says. published a Nature paper that builds on
simulations in a few hours that a decade “You’re a disciple of a disciple of a disciple.” McIntosh’s ideas. The magnetic bands,
ago would have taken weeks. They also have McIntosh, who didn’t study astrophysics in she hypothesizes, also produce “magnetic
more measurements to calibrate the models: school and instead focused on math and dams,” which hold back piled-up plasma.
not just sunspot counts and polar field mea- physics, has his own idea of how the sun When the bands meet and annihilate each
surements, but also helioseismology data— works—and it doesn’t spring from one of the other, the dams break. The plasma rolls up
measurements of vibrations that probe the popular models. from the equator toward the midlatitudes
sun’s interior—that can capture the flow of at 300 meters per second in what Dikpati
plasma beneath the sun’s surface. calls a “solar tsunami.” The waves drive
These “dynamo” models are providing
insights into how the shape of the sun’s
“If the predictions hold, magnetic fields to the surface, creating
the first sunspots of the next cycle a few
magnetic field changes over the course at some point someone has to weeks later.
of a cycle. At first the field is primarily Dikpati, who’s an adviser to the panel,
whatsoever to solar physics,” he says in frus- will finally be able to produce reliable and ac- minimum, is proving as surprising as ever.
tration. McIntosh, who by now has walked curate forecasts. The night before, that active region of sun-
downstairs from his office and appears in the The team is still working out exactly spots erupted for an hour straight. The par-
doorway, is blunter. “You’re trying to get rid why these supposed bands would form. In ticles from the coronal mass ejection will
of numerology?” he says, smirking. a 2014 paper in The Astrophysical Journal, arrive in a matter of days.
“That’s how some science has occurred,” McIntosh and his colleagues set out their As the panel preps its predictions and
protests Lisa Upton, Biesecker’s co-chair best guess: Giant swirling cells near the perfects its messaging, the storm charges
and a physicist at Space Systems Research base of the convective zone form tubes of toward Earth, ready or not. j
Corporation in Alexandria, Virginia: You magnetic flux that appear on the surface as
find an obscure quantitative relationship activity bands. Sarah Scoles is a journalist in Denver.
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