The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) held a live media teleconference today on the state of our sun, and announced that the solar system’s only star will burn out in the year 2012.
Data from the joint NASA and European Space Agency Ulysses mission has indicated that the sun’s solar wind is at a 50-year low, said NASA spokesman Dan Groverfield.
“A sun that is less windy is, of course, less gassy,” Groverfield explained. “And gas is what powers stars. So basically, our sun is running out of gas and it will burn out on December 21, 2012. So we’re all screwed. We’ll go over all the boring details during the rest of the teleconference, but it looks like the Mayan calendar is correct.”
Scientists had previously calculated that the sun would last another five billion years. But data obtained from the Ulysses mission indicates that the sun has lost much of its magnetic field strength, allowing most of its fuel source — hydrogen gas — to escape into space. As a result, the sun no longer generates enough energy to maintain strong solar winds, or to continue burning for more than a few years.
“Because of the loss of mass, the sun won’t expand into a red giant,” Groverfield said. “It’ll pretty much just peter out.”
But even though the new findings are grim, Groverfield insisted the news wasn’t all bad.
“The upside to losing the sun is that we no longer need to worry about global warming,” he pointed out. “In fact, it might be prudent now to start increasing greenhouse gas emissions.”
Former vice president and climate change kingpin Al Gore denounced NASA’s findings, and said that a solution for the global warming problem that doesn’t involve a carbon tax is irresponsible.
“Taking away the sun without cutting back on greenhouse gas emissions is not a panacea for global warming,” he said to reporters outside his Tennessee mansion. “We must be realistic; we need to reduce our dependence on fossil fuels and invest more in the production of renewable resources such as solar energy.”
Source: LiveIndia
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