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Climate change is causing changes in our weather, but that’s nothing compared to what’s happening on the sun. Solar scientists say that the sun’s magnetic field is weakening, and we are going to go into a long period of solar inactivity, but NASA remains worried enough about massive solar flares to begin working on a solar shield that will protect the power grid from dangerous solar explosions. A new NASA project called "Solar Shield" could help keep the lights on. On the NASA website, Tony Phillips quotes NASA researcher Antti Pulkkinen as saying, "Solar Shield is a new and experimental forecasting system for the North American power grid.read more

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We need to go see – A researcher is helping to design instruments for a robotic space probe that will go where no other has gone before: The sun (NOTE: Subscribers can still listen to this show) because we need to figure out what’s going on up there.

Astrophysicist William Matthaeus is involved in NASA’s Solar Probe Plus project, which is slated to launch by 2018. The unmanned spacecraft, the size of a small car, will plunge directly into the sun’s atmosphere to help uncover answers to perplexing mysteries about the fiery ball of plasma at the center of our solar system.
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We may actually be warmed by TWO suns (NOTE: Subscribers can still listen to this show).

The second one could be hidden beyond the edge of our solar system. The astronomers who are studying it called it “Nemesis.”

Binary star systems are common in the Milky Way, and astronomers say that one-third of the stars out there in the galaxy are either binary or part of a multiple-star system. This undetected object could be a red or brown dwarf star. Red and brown dwarfs are smaller and cooler than our Sun, and do not shine brightly.
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Not only are sunspots at a record low, so is the solar wind. The stream of charged particles blowing out of the sun is at its lowest point for 50 years.

In BBC News, Jonathan Amos quotes researcher Dave McComas as saying, “This is a whole sun phenomenon. The entire Sun is blowing significantly less hard?about 20-25% less hard?than it was during the last solar minimum 10-15 years ago.

“That’s a very significant change. In fact, the solar wind we’re seeing now is blowing the least hard we’ve see it for a prolonged time, since the start of those observations in the 1960s at the start of the space age.”
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