Global warming to decline by ’20?
There could be sharp decline in global warming by 2022, as scientists claim to have unearthed evidence that the sun is poised to enter its first period of “hibernation” since the Little Ice Age of the early 1700s
The sun goes through a regular cycle of activity that peaks every 11 years. During its most frenzied periods, huge magnetic storms erupt from the sun while vast sunspots appear on its surface, but during the quiet part of the cycle — called the solar minimum — eruptions and sunspots are rarer.
If they the new claims are right, global warming caused by greenhouse gases could be less severe over the next few decades than predicted, the Daily Mail reported.
Astronomers believe the sun should now be building up to its next maximum and that sunspots should be appearing on its surface.
But, three separate studies, presented at an astronomy conference in America this week, have found clues that the sun is not waking up on schedule.
Dr Frank Hill of America’s National Solar Observatory showed that a regular jet-stream current within the sun, which was due in 2008 and 2009, has failed to start up again.
Meanwhile, Dr Richard Altrock, of Sacramento Peak Observatory, who has been studying the sun’s “atmosphere” (the corona) for 40 years, found that a tell-tale march of magnetic activity towards the poles that heralds the start of the solar maximum has failed to materialise.
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Buzz Aldrin files for divorce from third wife
London: Edwin “Buzz” Aldrin, the second man to step on the moon after Neil Armstrong, has filed for divorce from his third wife. The 81-year-old Aldrin was married for 23 years to Lois Driggs Cannon. He filed a divorce petition at a Los Angeles court.
In the petition he cited “irreconcilable differences” as the reason, the Daily Mail reported.
The couple married in 1988 but have no children together. Aldrin’s first marriage was to Joan Archer, with whom he had three children.
His second marriage was to Beverly Zile. Aldrin was the second man to set foot on the moon after he and Neil Armstrong landed there July 20, 1969 in Apollo 11. He has denied any jealousy about being the second man on the moon. “I’m not jealous of anybody else, why should I be?”
Aldrin retired from the space programme in 1973 and rejoined the air force in a managerial role. He also wrote an autobiography Magnificent Desolation and Return To Earth where he spoke about suffering from clinical depression and battling alcoholism after leaving Nasa.
—IANS
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