Finally!

[ellarien]

Active region 11024, currently visible on the Sun, may be the closest thing to a real active region we've seen yet in the new solar cycle; the leading spot has a penumbra and everything! It's even managed a couple of C-class (aka, feeble but noticeable) flares in the last couple of days, the first we've seen in months.

This claim that an upcoming surge in solar activity has been predicted by crop circle, however, had my colleagues and me boggling and rolling our eyes. It's a very nice crop circle, but who comes up with these things?

Comments

[green-knight.livejournal.com]

This throws up some interesting questions. Why would extraterrestrials warn us of something that lies a mere week in the future, so that a) it will become self-evident before the news of the warning has spread around the world, and that b) is something we can't do anything about and can't really shield against so knowing about it in advance doesn't really change anything.
This might have been fascinating information if it had been given, say, five years ago, when our understanding of the solar cycle was a different one.

And the other question is what shall our reply be? So someone with superior knowledge tells us about pretty uninteresting astronomical facts a week in advance. What say the etiquette books should one answer back? Since we don't know their home planet, do we just answer with more facts about this solar system? Do we illustrate, say, mathematical principles? Base ten, pi, that sort of thing? And are there any cosmic resonances that make certain crops more suited to this than others? Will the meaning change if we plant something rather than flattening cereals?

And could it be that in gardens all over the planet, gardeners planting ornamental flower beds have been saying Very Rude Things to the universe?

[ellarien]

With my solar-physicist hat on, I feel obliged to point out that seeing solar storms coming isn't entirely useless; for example, airlines can avoid routing planes over the north pole at high-risk times, and there are a few safing actions that can be taken for satellites and power grids. There's a fair amount of interest in staring at active regions and trying to forecast what they will do in the way of "geoeffective activity", and not all of it is simply from scientists who like puzzles.

As an SF fan and sometime writer, I like the idea of a dialog in installation art. (In fact, a miniature version, done in found objects and lumps of crystal, features in my W(N)IP.)

[lil-shepherd.livejournal.com]

I wanna know who these crop circle "researchers" are - and what their qualifications are. Are they like a certain person of my acquaintance, but is on the fund raising committee for a particular piece of research, and who tells people (on the Internets as well as RL) that he is "researching" this.

[ellarien]

There seems to be a whole shadowy community out there, of unofficial and unorthodox "researchers" into all sorts of things. Some of them are perfectly respectable, retired academics dabbling in things a bit outside their professional field; some of them are ... rather more eccentric than that. We get a steady trickle of letters and emails from propounders of way-out theories, like the one who wrote to my old boss to suggest that the missing solar neutrinos were being captured in the Arecibo dish.

There are reasons for the peer-review system. In some ways it may be unfortunate that the system is so heavily stacked against those without some kind of institutional affiliation, and the lines between good, innovative science, bad science, and pure crankery aren't always as clear as we'd like. I'm pretty sure I know where I'd put crop circles on that continuum, though.