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Sunspots Essay

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Sunspots Our Sun continuously converts hydrogen into helium and with this process it provides the essentials for life processes. In doing this it controls “our climate, provides light, raises tides, and drives the food chain” (Schaefer 34). Our Sun also has influenced many beliefs now and in the past. History has documented Sun worshipping religions while many current societies use solar calendars (Schaefer 34).

Because the Sun is so influential, imperfections of the Sun, such as sunspots will continue to impact life on Earth. The discovery of sunspots is correlated with the invention of the telescope in 1608, although there are earlier recordings of sunspot like activity from China (Schaefer 35). Galileo was one of the …show more content…

In each sunspot pair in the northern hemisphere the first spot has a north magnetic polarity and the second has a south magnetic polarity while in the southern hemisphere it is the opposite pattern. In sunspot groups the polarity of the sunspots gets increasingly complex (Nicolson 124). The sunspots follow a cycle of eleven years. The number of sunspots varies monthly from zero to the hundreds. During the eleven year cycle there are periods called solar maximum and solar minimum where the number of sunspots reaches its peak or low. At the time of solar max the Sun’s magnetic poles reverse. The north magnetic pole switches to extend through the southern hemisphere and the south magnetic pole extends through the northern hemisphere. In fact the Sun reached its solar max in February of this year
(Philips 1).

According to astrophysicist, K. V. K. Nehru the magnetic poles reverse because of a theory of high range temperature matter. His theory states that one way high temperature matter acts in is thredules, which is “[m]atter in the ultra high temperature range manifests as slender, unidirectional, expanding threads that keep forming and dissolving” (1Nehru 8). Nehru states that co-magnetic lines follow the thredules as they expand. North and south thredules form two “sheaves” one north polarized and one south polarized, but where the sheaves interact opposite polarities are adjacent to each other. The thredules cannot

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