What I notice, with some professional training in paleo-climate, is the total absence of sunspots. We are but 3 years away from a cyclical maximum in solar activity, and it is dead quiet.
We are due for a return to the conditions of the Maunder Minimum, the mini-ice-age of the 17th century, during which the sun was quiet for several generations. The Baltic froze over and the Swedish empire was demolished. These harsh cooling spells return every 350 years or so, the previous one coming in the 14th century, during which time food shortages were so great and life so nasty that all of south and central Asia — previously majority [i]Christian[/i] areas — saw Christians slaughtered in the struggle for resources. Two cycles previously … Rome collapsed. Serious stuff.
We’ll know for sure in no more than two or three years. You might wish to contemplate preparations for having our local climates come to resemble those 500 to 1000 miles farther north.
A curious trigonometry problem, for those inclined, is to figure out how high the shuttle is in the picture. Take the picture where the shuttle is clearest, figure out what angle the orbiter subtends against the sky (given that the sun is half a degree), and then using the fact that it is 184 feet long, figure out the distance to it.
I got 145 miles; probably have some measurement error.
Wow, that’s like something off Star Trek. That’s pretty cool.
What I notice, with some professional training in paleo-climate, is the total absence of sunspots. We are but 3 years away from a cyclical maximum in solar activity, and it is dead quiet.
We are due for a return to the conditions of the Maunder Minimum, the mini-ice-age of the 17th century, during which the sun was quiet for several generations. The Baltic froze over and the Swedish empire was demolished. These harsh cooling spells return every 350 years or so, the previous one coming in the 14th century, during which time food shortages were so great and life so nasty that all of south and central Asia — previously majority [i]Christian[/i] areas — saw Christians slaughtered in the struggle for resources. Two cycles previously … Rome collapsed. Serious stuff.
We’ll know for sure in no more than two or three years. You might wish to contemplate preparations for having our local climates come to resemble those 500 to 1000 miles farther north.
Here’s one of both the shuttle and the telescope against the sun:
http://www.wltx.com/news/story.aspx?storyid=73842
A curious trigonometry problem, for those inclined, is to figure out how high the shuttle is in the picture. Take the picture where the shuttle is clearest, figure out what angle the orbiter subtends against the sky (given that the sun is half a degree), and then using the fact that it is 184 feet long, figure out the distance to it.
I got 145 miles; probably have some measurement error.
Can anyone even imagine the amount of solar radiation hitting the shuttle? WOW!