Mystery of missing sunspots solved
19 June 2009
by Tony Phillips
The Sun is in the pits of a century-class solar minimum, and sunspots have been puzzlingly scarce for several years. Now, solar physicists think they understand why.
A JET STREAM DEEP inside the Sun may be migrating slower than usual through the star's interior, giving rise to the current lack of sunspots.
A team at the U.S. National Solar Observatory in Tucson, Arizona, used a technique called helioseismology to detect and track the jet stream down to depths of 7,000 km below the surface of the star.
The physicists, Rachel Howe and Frank Hill, announced the results this week at an American Astronomical Society press conference in Boulder, Colorado.
The Sun generates new jet streams near its poles every 11 years. The streams migrate slowly from the poles to the equator and when a jet stream reaches the critical latitude of 22º, new-cycle sunspots begin to appear.
Howe and Hill found that the stream associated with the next solar cycle has moved sluggishly, taking three years to cover a 10º range in latitude compared to only two years for the previous solar cycle.
The jet stream is now, finally, reaching the critical latitude, heralding a return of solar activity in the months and years ahead.
"It is exciting to see", says Hill, "that just as this sluggish stream reaches the usual active latitude of 22º, a year late, we finally begin to see new groups of sunspots emerging."
THE CURRENT SOLAR MINIMUM has been so long and deep, it prompted some scientists to speculate that the Sun might enter a long period with no sunspot activity at all, akin to the Maunder Minimum of the 17th century.
This new result dispels those concerns. The sun's internal magnetic dynamo is still operating, and the sunspot cycle is not broken.
Because it flows beneath the surface of the Sun, the jet stream is not directly visible. Hill and Howe tracked its hidden motions via helioseismology - the study of pressure waves within the Sun. Shifting masses inside the sun send these waves rippling through the stellar interior.
So-called 'p modes' (p for pressure) bounce around the interior and cause the Sun to ring like an enormous bell. By studying the vibrations of the Sun's surface, it is possible to figure out what is happening inside. Similar techniques are used by geologists to map the interior of our planet.
Excerpt from www.cosmosmagazine.com.
I find this so fascinating! I had no idea that sunspots were caused by huge currents of sun material, travelling in a "jet stream" beneath the surface of the sun. Also note the intruiging number symbolism ~ the Sun produces new jet streams every 11 years, and to create sunspots, the jet stream must reach the critical latitude of 22 degrees. The numbers 11 and 22 are very important in numerology ~ they are non-reducible and represent constants: they are numbers of great tests and mastery (for example there are 22 cards in the Major Arcana of the tarot.)
But it's the notion of the Sun's echoing vibrations causing it to "ring like a giant bell" that I found the most fascinating. In esoteric philosophy, the Sun God was said to have "sung creation into being" with his glorious and triumphant song. Perhaps the Sun is still keeping this process going today ~ every so often it makes "music" that causes sunspots, which affect our Earth and the entire solar system.
