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posted by martyb on Saturday March 30 2019, @08:53AM   Printer-friendly
from the you-had-me-at-helio dept.

According to new reasearch from Queen's and Aberystwyth Universities, the Sun's magnetic field is 10 times stronger than previously believed.

Studying a particularly strong solar flare allowed researchers to quantify the sun's magnetic field more precisely than in the past.

Speaking about the accuracy of the results, Dr. Kuridze, a Research Fellow at Aberystwyth, stated:

"This is the first time we have been able to measure accurately the magnetic field of the coronal loops, the building blocks of the sun's magnetic corona, which such a level of accuracy."

The weak signal reaching Earth and limitations of equipment have hindered previous measurements.

There was also serendipity involved:

Over a 10-day period in September 2017, Dr. Kuridze studied an active area on the sun's surface which the team knew to be particularly volatile.

However, the telescope used can only focus on 1% of the sun's surface at any given time. As luck would have it, Dr. Kuridze was focused on exactly the right area and at the right time when the solar flare erupted.

Now I'm not saying what caused this increase in measured magnetism, but some might say there was some field filching going on. It has been reported that the Earth's magnetic field is weakening 10 times faster than previously estimated.


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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 30 2019, @09:20AM (5 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 30 2019, @09:20AM (#822274)

    The Sun is the closest star to Earth and our measurements were off by 1,000%? What happens if some of our other measurements of stars or galaxies or red shift or <insert metric here> is off by even 10%? How does that affect our measurement of distances or age or whatever?

    Best guesses (educated guesses?) are as good as we can get to many of these cosmological entities. Yet our whole understanding of the universe is based on them. And as one or more are redefined by more accurate measurements everything that depends on them changes.

  • (Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday March 30 2019, @11:50AM (4 children)

    by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Saturday March 30 2019, @11:50AM (#822299) Journal

    The Sun is the closest star to Earth and our measurements were off by 1,000%?

    I bet you're closer than that. Measurements depend on the ability to measure what you're trying to measure. Don't have that and you don't have good measurements as a result.

    Best guesses (educated guesses?) are as good as we can get to many of these cosmological entities. Yet our whole understanding of the universe is based on them. And as one or more are redefined by more accurate measurements everything that depends on them changes.

    What theories depended again on the strength of the magnetic fields of solar flares?

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 30 2019, @01:56PM (1 child)

      by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 30 2019, @01:56PM (#822337)

      So there is no theory that makes a quantitative prediction about the strength of stellar magnetic fields? It is just irrelevant to them all?

      • (Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday March 31 2019, @04:02AM

        by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Sunday March 31 2019, @04:02AM (#822624) Journal

        What theories depended again on the strength of the magnetic fields of solar flares?

        So there is no theory

        There were so many fallacies with that single straw man. I wasn't saying anything of the sort. I grant that there are theories of how strong those magnetic fields get and some of those theories apparently were way off. But those theories aren't very material to the theories of stellar evolution and such, important theories that among other things help us figure out how old the universe is and why it looks like it does.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 30 2019, @05:36PM (1 child)

      by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 30 2019, @05:36PM (#822413)

      What theories depended again on the strength of the magnetic fields of solar flares accurate measurements?

      FTFY

      All of them.

      • (Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday March 31 2019, @03:54AM

        by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Sunday March 31 2019, @03:54AM (#822621) Journal
        You're committing the fallacy of composition. Just because one narrow sort of measurement was way off, doesn't mean that all measurements are similarly far off.