sunscare: scientists worry more than solar minimum at hand

Is it only fear-mongering over new observations in article at Before It's News, "Shocked Scientists Ask: Is the Sun Dying?" The solar system is, after all, coursing through relatively unknown region of the galactic ecliptic and sun may be affected in unpredictable ways? The article is, still, of great interest as a regional space weather report, offering a sort of local forecast!  Scientists concerns are threefold: 1) sun's core of hydrogen gases is shrinking, and presents concern, helium gases will be used instead as fuel. Helium would transform Sun into a Red giant. Scientists believed, previously, this phase of Sun's lifespan still billions of years in future.

2) The Sun has been cooling since 1979. Scientists were shaken when a predicted warming trend did not materialize in 2007. The cooling trend is drawing comparisons to the Maunder Minimum, a mini-ice age of the late 1700s. David Hathaway of the Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, AL sums up agreement among scientists in Scientific American article, "I think we're almost in violent agreement that this is an interesting minimum". The Sun's so-called "Great Conveyor Belt" has slowed to a crawl, which affects future solar activity. The solar wind, is also, 13 percent cooler and 20 percent less dense. The Sun's heliosphere is shrinking, offering less protection from Cosmic rays.

Perhaps, most alarmist of all, 3) Scientists are concerned about radioactive decay rates speeding up and possibility matter itself is being mutated? Wow! The article concludes with a fitting description and picture of a solar system without its first four planets, vaporized by our Red giant Sun! The present writer believes most readers suffer a degree of fear-fatigue and take a flamethrower in their face to get their attention! It's still a very interesting read!

sun's great conveyor belt

Does the Sun's Great Conveyor Belt of circulating hot plasma control 11 year solar cycle of maximums and minimums? "The Great Conveyor Belt is a massive circulating current of fire (hot plasma) within the sun. It has two branches, north and south, each taking about 40 years to complete one circuit. Researchers believe the turning of the belt controls the sunspot cycle." A Daily Galaxy article asks very question, "Sun's "Great Conveyor Belt" --Does this 40-Year Cycle Control Sunspots?". Physicist David Hathaway and Lisa Rightmire measured speed of flow with SOHO data and found a relationship,"...as the number of sunspots increases on the Sun, the speed of the Great Conveyor Belt decreases, and vice versa: fewer sunspots and the faster the speed of the Belt... It's the 40-year circuit that scientists think is the controlling mechanism for the approximate 11-year solar cycle—when a lot of sunspots occur (solar maximums) for about half the cycle and when only a few (or no) sunspots occur (solar minimums) for the other half of the cycle." Reader is left to assume a straightforward four solar cycles per completion of circuit made by the Great Conveyor Belt? It's more input for your mind!