On 06/08/2010 02:41 PM, Hils wrote:
wrote:
On Mon, 07 Jun 2010 20:17:34 -0700, Bill Baka
wrote:

On 06/07/2010 06:36 AM, dave wrote:
Lukagain Cos ThistleBounce wrote:
http://science.nasa.gov/science-news...10/04jun_swef/

Sunspot increase?
A CME in the right direction will someday reduce our techno-society
to a
large collection of paperweights. Can't happen soon enough for me.
That would be great for me since all my radios have tubes. Built in
night lights. I've been thinking for the last 20 years how that event
would destroy all the newer, smaller chips with millions of
transistors on each one. Poof! No more high tech. Nasa says we are
overdue for an event from the sun.
Bill Baka

Nasa says we are overdue for something because they are trying to
keep their funding for all those helio satellites which is fine by me.
But calling these microdots on the sun sunspots is ridiculous. A
sunspot years ago was just that... a dark spot on the sun that you
could see from the ground.
It looks more like we are going the other way. I would be happy if the
solar flux would just get back to 100.

As the latest "expert" prediction is for a sunspot peak of around 90 in
2013, NASA's spin sounds a bit like "law of averages" stuff. OTOH, a lot
of today's CPU-dependent goods have probably never been properly tested.
It could be fun seeing 1970s cars rescued from museums and old steam
locomotives hauling trains past mechanical points and signals. :-)

The sun usually goes on an 11 year cycle, at least since anyone watched
for it, but something is a bit off this time around. Like everyone else,
I am waiting to see what it is. I do like the idea of old steam trains
being used again. They were still in use in the early 50's when I was a
kid. Seeing one 'peel out' spinning those big steel wheels was quite a
sight.
Bill