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from the tek-tek-tek-tek-tek-tek-tek-tek dept.
Unlike electromagnetic radiation, which consists of massless and accelerated charged particles, galactic cosmic rays (CR) are composed mostly of atomic nuclei and solitary electrons, objects that have mass. Cosmic rays originate via a wide range of processes and sources including supernovae, galactic nuclei, and gamma ray bursts. Researchers have speculated for decades on the possible effects of galactic cosmic rays on the immediate environs of Earth's atmosphere, but until recently, a causal relationship between climate and cosmic rays has been difficult to establish.
A research collaborative has published a paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences that mathematically establishes such a causal link between CR and year-to-year changes in global temperature, but has found no causal relationship between the CR and the warming trend of the 20th century.
http://phys.org/news/2015-03-cosmic-fluctuations-global-temperatures-doesnt.html
[Abstract]: http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2015/02/23/1420291112
(Score: 2) by wantkitteh on Thursday March 12 2015, @12:21AM
Me striking a match in my kitchen causes a localised fluctuation in temperature. It's too small and brief to affect either the weather or the global climate in any measurable way what-so-ever. However, if I had the population of China strike a match every 10 seconds for a few decades, then you're possibly talking climate change.
The research show that the cosmic radiation is more towards the single-match-in-a-kitchen scale rather than the Chinese-Match-Shortage-of-2015 scale. Just because it's called "Cosmic" radiation doesn't mean the scale of it's effect is going to amount to much down here.