June 1, 2019 | Page 4 of 5 | Science Of Cycles News and Research

Rain And Wind Warnings As Storm Miguel Lashes Finland

Warnings have been issued in Central Finland throughout the weekend for heavy rain and strong winds from severe thunderstorms, the remains of Storm Miguel, an unusual out-of-season depression that already brought gales and torrential rain to northwest France and the British Isles.

High temperatures were measured in Finland this week, with a record seasonal high of 32.2 degrees Celsius measured in the northwest coastal city of Oulu on Friday. That beat the June record by 0.5C and was more than 14 degrees above average.

Lightning bolts struck Finland about 16,000 times on Saturday. Matti Huutonen, a meteorologist at Finland’s public broadcaster Yle, said that is a large number for this time of year, equivalent to nearly half of the monthly average for June.

Crews were working on Sunday to repair power outages following bands of thunderstorms late on Saturday that left some 20,000 customers without electricity.

Early next week, colder conditions bring a chance of snow into northernmost Finland. Temperatures in southern and central Finland should be near 20C on Monday, a 10-degree drop. Wednesday night may even bring severe frosts to central and northern parts of the country.

‘2018 hottest year’
The Finnish Meteorological Institute has confirmed that 2018 was the hottest year in Finland since records began over 150 years ago, fuelling further concerns over the pace of climate change.

The institute has also confirmed that “about half” of the warmest years on record were all in the previous decade, with 2011, 2013, 2014, and 2015 all shattering heat records.

The summer of 2018 in Finland was unique in that not only did the heatwave last for an extended unbroken period, but there was also exceptionally little rain.

The institute says the trend is further supported by the report’s evidence that winter days with abnormally low temperatures are becoming a thing of the past.

Finland’s top meteorologists even say that daily cold records will soon become “etched in stone”, in that there is little chance that they will ever be surpassed.

Ways on How Particles Travel Nearly the Speed of Light

In the field of science, it is a common knowledge that nothing can ever surpass the speed of light, as what Albert Einstein theory of special relativity suggests. However, only small particles can get near the speed of light.

On May 29, 1919, after confirming Einstein’s work, NASA offered ways in accelerating particles in an amazing speed including electromagnetic field, magnetic explosion, and wave-particle interactions. These fundamental ways can be observed in the Sun. It’s a kind of real laboratory that allows scientists to even watch how nuclear reactions occur. Electromagnetic and magnetic fields have the ability to accelerate particles near the speed of light by electric charges. Examples, where this process can be done, are the particle accelerator at the Department of Energy Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory and Large Hadun Collides at the European Organization for Nuclear Research. The accelerators are able to pulse electromagnetic fields. Also, the particles are often crashed to find out what kind of energy they release.

Above the Sun interface is a tangle of magnetic fields. The magnetic field can send plums of solar material off the surface when it intersects and snaps. This kind of interaction also gives the particles its charge, according to Space.

“When tension between the crossed line becomes too great, the lines explosively snap and realign in a process known as “magnetic reconnection”,” explained NASA officials.

“The rapid change in a region’s magnetic field creates electric fields, which causes all the attendant charged particles to be flung away at high speeds,” they explained. The magnetic reconnection also happens to planets such as Jupiter and Saturn. The earth’s magnetic field can be measured using NASA’s Magnetospheric Multiscale Mission with the aid of four spacecrafts. Their results indicate that the magnetic field will help in understanding how particles in the universe accelerate. For instance, a magnetic connection can be observed with the solar wind specifically the constant stream of charged particles emitted by the Sun into the solar system.

Aside from the magnetic reconnection, other factors which are also capable of accelerating particles near the speed of light is the wave-particle interactions. The wave-particle interaction phenomena are driven when electromagnetic waves collide. “When electromagnetic waves collide, their fields can become compressed. Charged particles bouncing back and forth between the waves can gain energy similar to a ball bouncing between two merging walls,” stated NASA’s officials.

Another factor which can create an environment for a wave-particle interaction is the explosion of stars like supernovas. According to scientists, when a star explodes, it creates a blast wave shell of hot, dense compressed gas that can zoom away at a great speed from the stellar core. The process ejects high energy cosmic rays which are composed of particles at velocities close to the speed of light.

New Findings On Earth’s Magnetic Field

The huge magnetic field which surrounds the Earth, protecting it from radiation and charged particles from space — and which many animals even use for orientation purposes — is changing constantly, which is why geoscientists keep it constantly under surveillance. The old well-known sources of the Earth’s magnetic field are the Earth’s core — down to 6,000 kilometres deep down inside the Earth — and the Earth’s crust: in other words, the ground we stand on. The Earth’s mantle, on the other hand, stretching from 35 to 2,900 kilometres below the Earth’s surface, has so far largely been regarded as “magnetically dead.” An international team of researchers from Germany, France, Denmark and the USA has now demonstrated that a form of iron oxide, hematite, can retain its magnetic properties even deep down in the Earth’s mantle. This occurs in relatively cold tectonic plates, called slabs, which are found especially beneath the western Pacific Ocean.

“This new knowledge about the Earth’s mantle and the strongly magnetic region in the western Pacific could throw new light on any observations of the Earth’s magnetic field,” says mineral physicist and first author Dr. Ilya Kupenko from the University of Münster (Germany). The new findings could, for example, be relevant for any future observations of the magnetic anomalies on the Earth and on other planets such as Mars. This is because Mars has no longer a dynamo and thus no source enabling a strong magnetic field originating from the core to be built up such as that on Earth. It might, therefore, now be worth taking a more detailed look on its mantle. The study has been published in the “Nature” journal.

Background and methods used:

Deep in the metallic core of the Earth, it is liquid iron alloy that triggers electrical flows. In the outermost crust of the Earth, rocks cause magnetic signal. In the deeper regions of the Earth’s interior, however, it was believed that the rocks lose their magnetic properties due to the very high temperatures and pressures.

The researchers now took a closer look at the main potential sources for magnetism in the Earth’s mantle: iron oxides, which have a high critical temperature — i.e. the temperature above which material is no longer magnetic. In the Earth’s mantle, iron oxides occur in slabs that are buried from the Earth’s crust further into the mantle, as a result of tectonic shifts, a process called subduction. They can reach a depth within the Earth’s interior of between 410 and 660 kilometres — the so-called transition zone between the upper and the lower mantle of the Earth. Previously, however, no one had succeeded in measuring the magnetic properties of the iron oxides at the extreme conditions of pressure and temperature found in this region.

Now the scientists combined two methods. Using a so-called diamond anvil cell, they squeezed micrometric-sized samples of iron oxide hematite between two diamonds, and heated them with lasers to reach pressures of up to 90 gigapascal and temperatures of over 1,000 °C (1,300 K). The researchers combined this method with so-called Mössbauer spectroscopy to probe the magnetic state of the samples by means of synchrotron radiation. This part of the study was carried out at the ESRF synchrotron facility in Grenoble, France, and this made it possible to observe the changes of the magnetic order in iron oxide.

The surprising result was that the hematite remained magnetic up to a temperature of around 925 °C (1,200 K) — the temperature prevailing in the subducted slabs beneath the western part of Pacific Ocean at the Earth’s transition zone depth. “As a result, we are able to demonstrate that the Earth’s mantle is not nearly as magnetically ‘dead’ as has so far been assumed,” says Prof. Carmen Sanchez-Valle from the Institute of Mineralogy at Münster University. “These findings might justify other conclusions relating to the Earth’s entire magnetic field,” she adds.

Relevance for investigations of the Earth’s magnetic field and the movement of the poles

By using satellites and studying rocks, researchers observe the Earth’s magnetic field, as well as the local and regional changes in magnetic strength. Background: The geomagnetic poles of the Earth — not to be confused with the geographic poles — are constantly moving. As a result of this movement they have actually changed positions with each other every 200,000 to 300,000 years in the recent history of the Earth. The last poles flip happened 780,000 years ago, and last decades scientists report acceleration in the movement of the Earth magnetic poles. Flip of magnetic poles would have profound effect on modern human civilisation. Factors which control movements and flip of the magnetic poles, as well as directions they follow during overturn are not understood yet.

One of the poles’ routes observed during the flips runs over the western Pacific, corresponding very noticeably to the proposed electromagnetic sources in the Earth’s mantle. The researchers are therefore considering the possibility that the magnetic fields observed in the Pacific with the aid of rock records do not represent the migration route of the poles measured on the Earth’s surface, but originate from the hitherto unknown electromagnetic source of hematite-containing rocks in the Earth’s mantle beneath the West Pacific.

“What we now know — that there are magnetically ordered materials down there in the Earth’s mantle — should be taken into account in any future analysis of the Earth’s magnetic field and of the movement of the poles,” says co-author Prof. Leonid Dubrovinsky at the Bavarian Research Institute of Experimental Geochemistry and Geophysics at Bayreuth University.

Part VII – Coming Back Around to Earth’s Magnetic Reversal

New findings suggest a series of current events are weakening the Earth’s magnetic field. Above the liquid outer core is the mantle – made up of viscous rock composition which can be molded or shaped due to intense heat and high pressure, this is called convection. At the boundary between Earth’s core and mantle there is an intense heat exchange – this is called convection.

What creates Earth’s magnetic field is the process through which a rotating, convecting, and electrically conducting fluid which makes up the geodynamo mechanism. Recent studies indicate a slow flowing solid mantle and its reciprocal connection with a hot fast flowing outer core – is the central focus of Earth’s magnetic field weakening. The outcome of this convection between Earth’s outer core and mantle is the production of mantle plumes and the formation of fluid ‘crystallization’. Mantle plumes are a reaction to the Earth’s dipole magnetic core acting as a thermostat.

As a result of a weakened magnetic field coupled with a deep solar minimum, is allowing an alarming amount of galactic cosmic rays to enter our planets environment. In a paper published in the journal American Geophysical Union (AGU) Space Weather, associate professor Nathan Schwadron of the UNH Institute for the Study of Earth, Oceans, and Space (EOS) and the department of physics; says that due to this solar cycles vast drop in solar activity, a stream of cosmic ray particles are flooding Earth’s atmosphere – and further driving in and through Earth’s core.

Additionally, a major consequence of a weakened magnetic field, in conjunction with an inundation of space radiation, allows for the redistribution of gas and fluids which could contribute to Earth’s tilt and wobble. It is this action/reaction which could affect the convection process allowing for the north/south magnetic field lines to bounce around northern latitudes. This is known as geomagnetic excursion.

My research suggests radiation produced by GCRs has a significant influence on Earth’s core by increasing temperatures. In viewing Earth as a living entity, a natural reaction to overheating would be to find a way to cool down. And that’s exactly what Earth does. When our planet becomes overheated…it sweats. Yes, just like us humans when we get overheated, we sweat through our pores. When Earth becomes overheated it sweats through its pores called ‘mantle plumes’. Earth, just like humans is always seeking to maintain its ambient temperature.

In relation to this current moderate-term cycle i.e. 20,000-40,000 years – in conjunction with this long-term cycle i.e. 22myr -60myr (million years) my study’s identify a pattern of a weakening magnetic field, and influx of highly charged particles sets up the perfect conditions to produce a magnetic excursion followed by a magnetic reversal.

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Part – VIII How Far Along Are We In This Cycle?

Solving The Sun’s Super-Heating Mystery With Parker Solar Probe

It’s one of the greatest and longest-running mysteries surrounding, quite literally, our sun — why is its outer atmosphere hotter than its fiery surface?

University of Michigan researchers believe they have the answer, and hope to prove it with help from NASA’s Parker Solar Probe.

In roughly two years, the probe will be the first human-made craft to enter the zone surrounding the sun where heating looks fundamentally different that what has previously been seen in space. This will allow them to test their theory that the heating is due to small magnetic waves traveling back and forth within the zone.

Solving the riddle would allow scientists to better understand and predict solar weather, which can pose serious threats to Earth’s power grid. And step one is determining where the heating of the sun’s outer atmosphere begins and ends — a puzzle with no shortage of theories.

“Whatever the physics is behind this superheating, it’s a puzzle that has been staring us in the eye for 500 years,” said Justin Kasper, a U-M professor of climate and space sciences and a principal investigator for the Parker mission. “In just two more years, Parker Solar Probe will finally reveal the answer.”

The U-M theory, and how the team will use Parker to test it, is laid out in a paper published June 4 in The Astrophysical Journal Letters.

In this “zone of preferential heating” above the sun’s surface, temperatures rise overall. More bizarre still, individual elements are heated to different temperatures, or preferentially. Some heavier ions are superheated until they’re 10 times hotter than the hydrogen that is everywhere in this area — hotter than the core of the sun.

Such high temperatures cause the solar atmosphere to swell to many times the diameter of the sun and they’re the reason we see the extended corona during solar eclipses. In that sense, Kasper says, the coronal heating mystery has been visible to astronomers for more than a half millenium, even if the high temperatures were only appreciated within the last century.

This same zone features hydromagnetic “Alfvén waves” moving back and forth between its outermost edge and the sun’s surface. At the outermost edge, called the Alfvén point, the solar wind moves faster than the Alfvén speed, and the waves can no longer travel back to the sun.

“When you’re below the Alfvén point, you’re in this soup of waves,” Kasper said. “Charged particles are deflected and accelerated by waves coming from all directions.”

In trying to estimate how far from the sun’s surface this preferential heating stops, U-M’s team examined decades of observations of the solar wind by NASA’s Wind spacecraft.

They looked at how much of helium’s increased temperature close to the sun was washed out by collisions between ions in the solar wind as they traveled out to Earth. Watching the helium temperature decay allowed them to measure the distance to the outer edge of the zone.

“We take all of the data and treat it as a stopwatch to figure out how much time had elapsed since the wind was superheated,” Kasper said. “Since I know how fast that wind is moving, I can convert the information to a distance.”

Those calculations put the outer edge of the superheating zone roughly 10 to 50 solar radii from the surface. It was impossible to be more definitive since some values could only be guessed at.

Initially, Kasper didn’t think to compare his estimate of the zone’s location with the Alfvén point, but he wanted to know if there was a physically meaningful location in space that produced the outer boundary.

After reading that the Alfvén point and other surfaces have been observed to expand and contract with solar activity, Kasper and co-author Kristopher Klein, a former U-M postdoc and new faculty at University of Arizona, reworked their analysis looking at year-to-year changes rather than considering the entire Wind Mission.

“To my shock, the outer boundary of the zone of preferential heating and the Alfvén point moved in lockstep in a totally predictable fashion despite being completely independent calculations,” Kasper said. “You overplot them, and they’re doing the exact same thing over time.”

So does the Alfvén point mark the outer edge of the heating zone? And what exactly is changing under the Alfvén point that superheats heavy ions? We should know in the next couple of years. The Parker Solar Probe lifted off in August 2018 and had its first rendezvous with the sun in November 2018 — already getting closer to the sun than any other human-made object.

In the coming years, Parker will get even closer with each pass until the probe falls below the Alfvén point. In their paper, Kasper and Klein predict it should enter the zone of preferential heating in 2021 as the boundary expands with increasing solar activity. Then NASA will have information direct from the source to answer all manner of long-standing questions.

“With Parker Solar Probe we will be able to definitively determine through local measurements what processes lead to the acceleration of the solar wind and the preferential heating of certain elements,” Klein said. “The predictions in this paper suggest that these processes are operating below the Alfvén surface, a region close to the sun that no spacecraft has visited, meaning that these preferential heating processes have never before been directly measured.”

Kasper is the principal investigator of the Solar Wind Electrons Alphas and Protons Investigation on the Parker Solar Probe. SWEAP’s sensors scoop up the solar wind and coronal particles during each encounter to measure velocity, temperature and density, and shed light on the heating mystery.

The research is funded by NASA’s Wind Mission.

VLT Observes A Passing Double Asteroid Hurtling By Earth At 70 000 Km/h

The unique capabilities of the SPHERE instrument on ESO’s Very Large Telescope have enabled it to obtain the sharpest images of a double asteroid as it flew by Earth on 25 May. While this double asteroid was not itself a threatening object, scientists used the opportunity to rehearse the response to a hazardous Near-Earth Object (NEO), proving that ESO’s front-line technology could be critical in planetary defence.

The International Asteroid Warning Network (IAWN) coordinated a cross-organisational observing campaign of the asteroid 1999 KW4 as it flew by Earth, reaching a minimum distance of 5.2 million km on 25 May 2019. 1999 KW4 is about 1.3 km wide, and does not pose any risk to Earth. Since its orbit is well known, scientists were able to predict this fly-by and prepare the observing campaign.

ESO joined the campaign with its flagship facility, the Very Large Telescope (VLT). The VLT is equipped with SPHERE—one of the very few instruments in the world capable of obtaining images sharp enough to distinguish the two components of the asteroid, which are separated by around 2.6 km.

SPHERE was designed to observe exoplanets; its state-of-the-art adaptive optics (AO) system corrects for the turbulence of the atmosphere, delivering images as sharp as if the telescope were in space. It is also equipped with coronagraphs to dim the glare of bright stars, exposing faint orbiting exoplanets.

Taking a break from its usual night job hunting exoplanets, SPHERE data helped astronomers characterise the double asteroid. In particular, it is now possible to measure whether the smaller satellite has the same composition as the larger object.

“These data, combined with all those that are obtained on other telescopes through the IAWN campaign, will be essential for evaluating effective deflection strategies in the event that an asteroid was found to be on a collision course with Earth,” explained ESO astronomer Olivier Hainaut. “In the worst possible case, this knowledge is also essential to predict how an asteroid could interact with the atmosphere and Earth’s surface, allowing us to mitigate damage in the event of a collision.”

“The double asteroid was hurtling by the Earth at more than 70 000 km/h, making observing it with the VLT challenging,” said Diego Parraguez, who was piloting the telescope. He had to use all his expertise to lock on to the fast asteroid and capture it with SPHERE.

Bin Yang, VLT astronomer, declared “When we saw the satellite in the AO-corrected images, we were extremely thrilled. At that moment, we felt that all the pain, all the efforts were worth it.” Mathias Jones, another VLT astronomer involved in these observations, elaborated on the difficulties. “During the observations the atmospheric conditions were a bit unstable. In addition, the asteroid was relatively faint and moving very fast in the sky, making these observations particularly challenging, and causing the AO system to crash several times. It was great to see our hard work pay off despite the difficulties!”

While 1999 KW4 is not an impact threat, it bears a striking resemblance to another binary asteroid system called Didymos which could pose a threat to Earth sometime in the distant future.

Didymos and its companion called “Didymoon” are the target of a future pioneering planetary defence experiment. NASA’s DART spacecraft will impact Didymoon in an attempt to change its orbit around its larger twin, in a test of the feasibility of deflecting asteroids. After the impact, ESA’s Hera mission will survey the Didymos asteroids in 2026 to gather key information, including Didymoon’s mass, its surface properties and the shape of the DART crater.

The success of such missions depends on collaborations between organisations, and tracking Near-Earth Objects is a major focus for the collaboration between ESO and ESA. This cooperative effort has been ongoing since their first successful tracking of a potentially hazardous NEO in early 2014.

“We are delighted to be playing a role in keeping Earth safe from asteroids,” said Xavier Barcons, ESO’s Director General. “As well as employing the sophisticated capabilities of the VLT, we are working with ESA to create prototypes for a large network to take asteroid detection, tracking and characterization to the next level.”

This recent close encounter with 1999 KW4 comes just a month before Asteroid Day, an official United Nations day of education and awareness about asteroids, to be celebrated on 30 June.

Part VI – Galactic Cosmic Rays Effect on Animal and Human Behavior

So what happens when Earth’s magnetic field weakens, an extended solar minimum occurs, and a profusion of cosmic rays rain down on our planet?

Several study’s have come out in the last few years providing new insights into what ensues to animals and humans by way of varying forms of magnetism and radiation. During times of a highly active solar maximum, an acceleration in certain forms of charged particles – such as solar flares, CMEs (coronal mass ejections), coronal holes, and filament can have a direct causal effect to Earth in many forms of extreme weather. This same scenario with these very same particles can have an effect on animals and humans. I will give specific examples of how in just a minute.

During times of low solar activity, and especially in the time of an extended solar minimum cycle of which we are currently experiencing, it is the far more hazardous form of charged particle known as galactic cosmic rays GCRs, which can cause the most damage to animals and humans. Large amounts of radiation from cosmic rays race near the speed of light hitting Earth’s magnetic field. Usually, the magnetic field deflects the vast majority of particles keeping the Earth and its inhabitants safe. But what happens when the magnetic field weakens?

Recent studies have confirmed the adverse effects of cosmic radiation exposure on humans central nervous system have been identified. Cognitive tasks used in the study corroborate past findings and identify significant longer-term deficits in episodic, spatial, recognition memory. Areas of the brain affected are the frontal and temporal lobes containing the hippocampus, medial prefrontal cortex, and perirhinal cortex.

The hippocampus is a small organ located within the brain’s medial temporal lobe forming an important part of the limbic system – the region that regulates emotions. It also enables our ability to maintain long and short-term memory, most significantly with long-term memory. This organ plays an important role in a person’s physical coordination, also elicits the feeling of being engaged, connected, or part-of. The medial prefrontal cortex region has been implicated in planning complex cognitive behavior, personality expression, decision making, and moderating social behavior. Perirhinal cortex is importantly involved in a number of different memory functions.

Now, going back to solar charged particles and geomagnetism; I found it quite interesting that both forms of charged particles…i.e. cosmic rays and solar rays have different but similar effects on humans. Dr. Kelly Posner, a psychiatrist at Columbia University says; “The most plausible explanation for the association between geomagnetic activity and depression and other mood disorders is that geomagnetic storms can desynchronize melatonin production and circadian rhythms.

In a related study from the Department of Neurobiology, University of Massachusetts Medical School suggests humans may be genetically pre-disposed to the influence of geomagnetic flux as it relates to the Earth’s magnetic field and charged particles. The study published in the scientific journal ‘Geophysical Research’, indicates a dormant gene is residing within all of us just ready to be tapped. It is known as ‘Cryptochromes’ (CRY). They are involved in the ‘circadian’ (24-hour cyclical rhythms) of daily life. Strong scientific evidence indicates geomagnetic fields have an influence on the light sensitivity of the human visual system.

Oleg Shumilov, of the Institute of North Industrial Ecology in Russia said: “Many animals can sense the Earth’s magnetic field, so why not people”. Shumilov looked at activity in the Earth’s geomagnetic field noting during periods of high solar storm activity, the geomagnetism peaks matched up with peaks in the number of mood disorders i.e. depression, anxiety, bi-polar and even suicides over the same period.

Coming Next: Part VII – Coming Back Around to Earth’s Magnetic Reversal