Magnetic pole reversal of the Sun 3 – 4 months away [video included]

The Watchers
August 6, 2013

solar_magnetic_field_flip
As it does approximately every 11 years on a solar cycle, the Sun’s magnetic field is now reversing. Measurements have confirmed that we are about 3 – 4 months away from complete magnetic field reversal when Sun’s inner magnetic dynamo will re-organize itself. When that happens Sun’s magnetic north pole, which is in the northern hemisphere now, will point south and south will point north. Though this reversal process of north and south magnetic pole is yet again proven to be asymmetrical, when they both flip we will officially be in Solar Maximum. How strong or weak it will be is another story.

Solar physicist Phil Scherrer, describes what happens: “The sun’s polar magnetic fields weaken, go to zero, and then emerge again with the opposite polarity. This is a regular part of the solar cycle.”

A reversal of the Sun’s magnetic field is, literally, a big event. The domain of the sun’s magnetic influence (also known as the “heliosphere”) extends billions of kilometers beyond Pluto. Changes to the field’s polarity ripple all the way out to the Voyager probes, on the doorstep of interstellar space.

When solar physicists talk about solar field reversals, their conversation often centers on the “current sheet.” The current sheet is a sprawling surface jutting outward from the sun’s equator where the sun’s slowly-rotating magnetic field induces an electrical current. The current itself is small, only one ten-billionth of an amp per square meter (0.0000000001 amps/m2), but there’s a lot of it: the amperage flows through a region 10,000 km thick and billions of kilometers wide. Electrically speaking, the entire heliosphere is organized around this enormous sheet.

During field reversals, the current sheet becomes very wavy. Scherrer likens the undulations to the seams on a baseball. As Earth orbits the sun, we dip in and out of the current sheet. Transitions from one side to another can stir up stormy space weather around our planet.

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