Kanook – Tlingit Nation

February – 2010

We’re 2.85 years from that advertised date of the end of our known world, December 21st, 2012, much
ado has been made of the end of the Mayan calendar, as Hollywood has produced a not-so-well made
production chucker-block full of generated graphics. Might be that the graphics are stupendous but as
always their research is lacking, well what the heck they made this to bring in copious amounts of green-
stuff, the truth be damned.
Some predict that our primary heat source in our solar system will generate a massive “solar flare”,
which is defined in the text books as a “sudden, rapid, and intense variation in brightness”, occurring
when magnetic energy that has built up in the sun’s atmosphere is suddenly released. Through our
technology we know that across the entire electromagnetic spectrum massive amounts of radiation will be
emitted, radiation that includes long wavelength radio waves, optical waves, x-rays and gamma rays. On
the average a solar flare releases energy equal to millions of 100-megaton hydrogen bomb exploding
simultaneously.
The first “solar flare” recorded in our astronomical history was on Sept 1st, 1858, whereas two scientists
Richard C Carrington and Richard Hodgen were independently observing sunspots and viewed a large
flare of light. It is named in history as the “Carrington Event”, eventually somewhere along the line
Hodgen did not have a good PR guy or it would have been called the “Carrington/Hodgen Event”, but
what the heck – like today Madison Avenue played a large role in Science.
As the magnetic energy is being released, particles, that include
electrons, protons and heavy nuclei are heated and accelerated in
the solar atmosphere – the typical energy released during a flare is
in the order of 1027 ergs1 per second, large flares can
produce 1032 ergs per second – this is ten million
times greater than the energy released from a good
sized volcanic explosion – but it is still less than one-
tenth of the total energy emitted by the Sun every
second.
There are “typically” three stages to a solar flare, 1)
The precursor, where the release of magnetic energy
is ‘triggered’. Soft x-ray emissions are detected in
this stage, 2) the impulsive, where protons and electrons are accelerated to
energies exceeding 1 Million electron Volts (“MeV”), during the impulsive, radio
waves, hard x-rays and gamma rays are emitted, 3) the gradual build up and decay
of soft x-rays can be detected in the decay stage. The duration of these stages can
be as short as a few seconds or as long as an hour.

1
107 (ten million) erg s-1 (ergs per second) = 1 watt
 Solar flares push out to the layer of the Sun called the corona, the outermost
atmosphere of the Sun, made up of highly rarefied gas (kind of like Congress), a gas
that has a normal temperature of a few million degrees Kelvin2, inside the flare the
typical temperature is around 20,000,000 Kelvin or approximately 36,000,000 °F,
and in rare instances can be 100 million degrees Kelvin or 180 million °F – in other
words pretty hot! The corona is visible in soft x-rays, as seen in the image on the
preceding page and notice that it is not uniformly bright, but is concentrated around
the solar equator in loop-shaped features – these bright loops are located within and
connect areas of strong magnetic fields called active regions – sunspots are located
within theses active regions.
The frequency of flares work within the Sun’s eleven year sunspot cycle – when
the sunspot cycle is at a minimum, active regions are small and rare whereas a
“few” flares are detected. They increase in number as the Sun approaches the
maximum part of its cycle – the Sun will reach its next Maximum in the year 2011,
give or take one year.

The, “give or take” is an accurate statement as you can see from the above graph,
whereas the maximum’s were reached in less than ten-years between 1980 and
1990, and in more than ten-years between 1990 and 2000, in fact in this time
period more than the expected 11 years. Average length over a period of 309 years
of a cycle has been calculated at 10.66 years, where there have been found some
as short as 9-years and as long as 14-years and include some significant variations

2
1,000,000 degrees Kelvin equals 1,799,540.6 ºF
in amplitude, all measurements supporting the theory that our Sun is anything but
constant in its duty heating our solar system. The 11 year sunspot cycle is related
to a 22 year cycle for the reversal of the Sun's magnetic field.
A complex study of the Sun would be a little long-winded for this short-piece, but a
simple overview will give some (like myself) a lay-readers idea on its makeup.
The four regions on the interior of the Sun are regions only in a sense that they
contain four difference types of processes, the inner most region is the core which
occupies about 25%, this central region is where nuclear reactions consume
hydrogen to form helium. Consider that Hydrogen is are number one atomic
number (“1”) and is the most abundant chemical element in the Universe, where it
makes up 75% of our Universes mass, but remember hydrogen occurring naturally
on earth is relatively rare – go figure. The nuclear process within the 25% releases
energy that in the end leaves the surface as visible light, these reactions are highly
sensitive to temperature and density – it is said that the temperature at the Sun’s
center runs around 27,000,000°F (15,000,000°C) and the density is about 150
g/cm³ (about 10-times the density of gold or lead). The temperature and the
density decreases as you move outward from the center, whereas the nuclear
process is “almost” shut off beyond the outer edge of the core (about 25% of the
distance to the surface or 175,000 km (108,740 miles) from the center) at this point
the temperature is only 50% of its central value and the density drops to about
20g/cm³. There is a 3-step process involved in the nuclear reaction, where the 1st
step is where two protons collide to produce “deuterium” a positron and a neutrino.
The 2nd step a proton collides with the deuterium to produce a helium-3 nucleus
and a gamma-ray; in the 3rd step two helium-3s collide to produce a normal helium-
4 nucleus with the release of two protons. During this entire process are produced
elementary particles called neutrinos, and elusive particle that passes through the
overlaying layers of the Sun and with a supreme effort at a tremendous cost we
have tried to measure or find here on Earth – and the fraction of neutrinos we
detect is but a fraction of the number we expect – eventually a serious problem until
lately when we discovered neutrino masses.
The 2nd region, the radiative zone extends outward from the outer edge of the
core to the interface layer or tachocline at the base of the convection zone, (from
25% of the distance to the surface to 70% of that distance, in other words it varies).
The radiative zone is called such because of the method it uses for energy
transport, radiation. The energy generated in the core is carried by photons that
bounces from particle to particle through the radiative zone, they bounce so many
times through this “dense” material that an individual proton takes about a “million
years” to finally reach the interface layer. The density drops from 20 g/cm³ (about
the density of Gold) down to only 0.2 g/cm³ (less than the density of water) this
happening from the bottom to the top of the radiative zone. In addition the
temperature drops from 7,000,000°C [12.6 million °F] to 2,000,000°C [3.6 million
°F] over the route.
The interface layer is between the radiative zone and the convective zone. The
interface zone is a zone that we knew very little about, whereas this thin layer is
now believed where the Sun’s magnetic field is generated by a magnetic dynamo
within the zone. Whereas the fluid flow velocities across the layer (or shear flows)
albeit they slowly disappear as they move from the “top” to the “bottom” of the
zone as they stretch magnetic lines of force and make them stronger – this change
in flow velocity gives this layer an alternative name, “tachocline”, in addition there
appears to be sudden changes in chemical composition within the layer.
The convection zone is the outer-most layer of the Solar Interior, extending from a
depth of about 200.000 km [124,274 miles] right up to the visible surface, its base
temperature is about 2,000,000°C [3.6 million °F], considered “cool” enough for the
heavier ions (carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, calcium and iron) to keep hold of their
electrons – in this making the material more opaque so that it is “harder’ for
radiation to get through to the surface. This process in turn “traps” the heat
making the fluid unstable and it begins to “boil” or “convect”. The “convection”
occurs when the rate at which temperature fall with height or radius gets larger
than the rate at which the temperature would fall “if” a volume of material were
moved higher “without” adding heat. Where this occurs a volume of material
moved upward will be warmer than its surroundings and will continue to rise further.
These convective motions carry heat quite “rapidly” to the surface. Whereas the
fluid expands and cools as it rises, at the visible surface the temperature has
dropped to 5,700°K [9,800.6°F] and the density is only 0.0000002 gm/cm³ (about
1/10,000th the density of air at sea level.
The visible surface of the Sun we have labeled the “photosphere”, obviously the
Sun as a ball of gas (unlike most governmental bodies around this globe, being
mostly made of hot gas), it has a purpose, this layer of gas is about 100 km [62.14
miles] thick, which is very, very thin when compared to the radius of the Sun,
695,500 kms [432,163 miles]. When mankind and his instruments look at the
center of the disk the view shows us a the somewhat hotter and brighter regions,
when we look at the edge (or limb) of the disk we see light that has taken a
“slanting” path through this layer and we only see through the upper, cooler and
dimmer regions – this explains the phrase “limb darkening”, that appears as a
darkening of the solar disk near the edge. The temperature at the photosphere is
around 5,778 °K [9,941°F], albeit a little cooler then the core still mighty damn hot!
Like most other objects in our Universe the Sun rotates on its axis, but unlike Earth
and other solid objects, the entire Sun does NOT rotate at the same rate – simply
because the Sun is not a solid, instead being a giant ball of gas and plasma (like
Congress) and different part of the Sun spin at different rates.
The equatorial regions rotate once every 25-days, and at its poles the rotation is
once every 36-days, in addition the interior does NOT spin the same way as it does
on its surface. Whereas it is believed that the core and radiative zone rotate more
like a solid, where from the convective zone outward the rotation changes with the
latitude – the change occurs in the tacholine region. The Suns’ rotation axis is tilted
by about 7.25° from the axis of the Earth’s orbit, therefore we see more of the Sun’s
north pole in September and more of its south pole in March.
 The surface of the Sun is in constant motion, with different components driving
the motion such as rotation, cellular convection, oscillations, and meridoional flow.
The equatorial velocity is 74.56 miles per minute, or 4,473 mph while the
meridional flow is at 44.73 mph, two differences that play an important role in
understanding the Sun and how it produces its 11-year sunspot activity. The Sun’s
magnetic field is influenced by the combination of convective currents, whereas the
convective currents drag the charged plasma from deep within the Sun to the
surface, and then the “differential rotation” creates the complex, swirling motions
that create a “tangled mess of magnetic field lines” on the surface.
During the last decade an additional element was discovered on the Sun, an
electrically-conducting gas acting as a conveyor belt moving a current. This
“conveyor” belt flows in a loop from the Sun’s equator to the poles and back again.
David Hathaway of the National Space Science & Technology Center tells us that
Sun’s inner dynamo creates the sunspots, whereas a typical sunspot exists for just a
few weeks, eventually decaying leaving behind a ‘corpse’ of weak magnetic fields.
These fields are swept up as the conveyor skims the surface of the sun, the
‘corpses’ are dragged to the poles to a depth of
200,000 km [124,274 miles] where the Sun’s
magnetic dynamo recharges them and amplifies their
intensity, once recharged they float back to the
surface – and Bingo, new sunspots. This does not
happen overnight, where the conveyor belt moves at
a varying speed sometimes taking as long as 50-
years and as short as 30-years, to complete one
cycle.
As a matter of record, in 2006, Mausumi Dikpati of
the National Center for Atmospheric Research
(NCAR), along with Hathaway says that during 1986-
1996 the belt was turning fast where old magnetic fields were swept up and will re-
appear as big sunspots in 2010-2011 timeframe. Hathaway agrees with Ms Dikpati
in her prediction that the next solar maximum will be a doozy – she tells us it should
happen during the solar max in 2012 – he believes it will arrive sooner in 2010 or
2011.
Above the photosphere is the chromosphere an
irregular layer where the temperature rises from
6000°C to about 20,000°C [36,000°F], at these
temperatures hydrogen emits light that is a reddish
color and is labeled as the H-alpha emission. This
colorful emission can be seen when there is a total
eclipse above the limb (edge), giving the
chromospheres its name as the color-sphere.
When the Sun is viewed through a spectrograph or
a filter that isolates the H-alpha emission, a lot of
new features can be observed – including the
chromospheric network of the magnetic field elements, the bright plage around
sunspots, the dark filaments across the entire disk and prominences above the limb.
The chromosphere is also a hotbed of activity where changes in solar flares,
prominence and filament eruptions, and the flow of material in post-flare-loops can
all be observed over the timeframe of a few minutes.
Riding above the chromosphere is the transition region a thin and very irregular
layer of the Sun’s atmosphere that separates the very hot corona from the much
cooler chromosphere. Heat flows down from the corona into the chromosphere and
in this process produces this thin region where the temperature changes “rapidly”
from 1,000,000°C [1.8million °F] down to about 20,000°C [36,000°F]. Hydrogen is
ionized (stripped of its electron) at these temperatures and is therefore difficult to
see—instead of hydrogen the light emitted by the transition region is dominated by
such ions carbon, oxygen, and silicon each with three electrons stripped off. These
ions emit light in the ultraviolet region of the solar spectrum that is only seen from
space.
The outer atmosphere is called the Corona, which is visible during a total eclipse
of the Sun as a pearly white crown around the Sun – it displays a variety of features
that include streamers, plumes, and loops which change from eclipse to eclipse
whereas the overall shape of the corona changes with the sunspot cycle. The true
nature of the corona remained a mystery until it was determined that the coronal
gases are super-heated to temperatures greater than 1,000,000°C [1.8 million °F],
whereas at these high temperatures both hydrogen and helium, the two dominant
elements, are stripped of their electrons. Only the heavier “trace” elements such as
iron and calcium retain a few of their electrons in the intense heat…it is these
emissions from these highly ionized (stripping them) that produces the spectral
emission lines that were a big mystery to early astronomers. We now produce
artificial eclipses in coronagraphs that cover the disk and filter out everything
except the emissions due to these coronal ions.
 .
The high-temperatures in the corona produces bright x-rays, on the other hand
the “cool photosphere emits very few x-rays, in-turn allowing us to view the corona
across the disk of the Sun when we observe the Sun in x-rays. In the early 1970s
Skylab had an x-ray telescope that revealed coronal holes and coronal bright spots
for the first time, and today we have the SOHO and TRACE along with Yohkoh giving
us a bundle of information and images of our dear friend and life giver.
The solar wind streams off of the Sun in all directions at speeds of about 248.5
miles/second or 894,775 mph – its source being the hot corona. Whereas the
temperature is so high that the Sun’s gravity cannot contain it, albeit we
understand why this happens we do not understand the details about how and
where the coronal gases are accelerated to these high speeds. The answer lies
somewhere buried in the process of coronal heating.
We do know that it is NOT uniform and it is always directed away from the Sun,
and that it changes speed and carries with it magnetic clouds, and interacting
regions where high-speed wind catches up with slow-speed wind. There are some
parts that carry very-high-speed winds at 1,789,549 mph over coronal holes and
other low-speed winds 671,081 mph over streamers. These two winds streams
interact with each other and alternately pass by the Earth as the Sun rotates, where
their presence disturbs the Earth’s magnetic field and can produce storms in the
Earth’s magnetosphere.
On Oct 6th, 1990 the Ulysses spacecraft was launched from the Space Shuttle
Discovery and between then and June 30th, 2009 after completing passes over the
southern and northern poles of the Sun and one complete orbit through the solar
system gave its earthbound scientists unseen view of the solar wind.
 Solar Wind
The Advanced Composition Explorer (“ACE”) satellite that was launched in August
of 1997 and placed into an orbit about the L1 (L1 point is one of several points in
space where the gravitational attraction of the Sun and Earth are equal and
opposite) between the Earth and the Sun, this L1 point if 1.5 million km [932,056.8
miles] from Earth or about 1% of an AU. ACE has the task of monitoring the solar
wind, providing real-time information. Today, (2-14-2010/1915-UT) its speed is
721,636 mph.
The heliosphere is a “bubble” in space created by the solar wind, albeit electrically
neutral atoms from interstellar space can penetrate the bubble, virtually “all” of the
material in the heliosphere is from the Sun itself.
 The solar wind streams off of the Sun in “all” directions at speeds that vary, but on
average about 1 million mph in the Earth’s vicinity…at some distance from the Sun,
well “beyond” the orbit of Pluto, this supersonic wind must slow down to “meet” the
gases in the interstellar medium, whereas it must first pass through the termination
shock, to become sub-sonic. It gets turned around, after slowing down, flowing in
the direction of the ambient flow of the interstellar medium to form a comet-like tail
behind the Sun. The sub-sonic flow region is called the helio-sheath, and the outer
surface of the helio-sheath where the heliosphere meets the interstellar medium is
called the heliopause.
The “precise” distance and the shape of the heliopause is unknown, whereas
interplanetary spacecraft such as Pioneer 10 (launched July 15th, 1972), Pioneer 11
(launched April 6th, 1973) and Voyager 1 (launched Sept 5th, 1977) and Voyager 2
(launched Aug 20th, 1977) along with New Horizons (launched Jan 19th, 2006) are
traveling outward through the solar system and will eventually pass through the
heliopause.
 The solar wind consists of particles, ionized atoms from the solar corona, and
other fields, such as magnetic fields…as the Sun rotates whereas the magnetic field
transported by the solar wind is wrapped into a spiral – and these spirals are pushed
outward in the solar wind eventually producing magnetic storms in the Earth’s
magnetosphere.
Studies Associated the Sun
 The Maya/Aztec calendar, which is extremely accurate, has a its inception date on
August 13, 3114 BCE (or) 4 Ahaw 8 Kumk’u in the Mayan language…the Mayan
concept of time was of “circles” within “circles” which only appeared to be linear.
The above shows us we are in the 5th Creation, whereas four before this one were
destroyed the ones surrounding the central figure. The “end” of the 5 th Creation
according to the Mayan calendar is on December 23 rd, 2012 – some 5,125.602 years
since August 13th, 3114.
500 years ago, high in the Andes of Peru, Inca priests understood how important
the Sun was in their lives. Whereas they may not have known to the exact second
when the Sun rose, but they knew the stars the foretold the Sun’s rising…and they
may not have used the name winter solstice (they called it inti Raymi), but by
tracking the Sun’s motion they knew when the dry season was upon them, this is
other than there was ready little water or snow falling from the heavens.
The Maya calendar is NOT the oldest known calendar, but it is the most accurate
one. They were consummated astronomers and had at least 20-calendars, based
on several astrological movements in practice they used two “main” calendars, a
sacred year of 260-days and a “vague” year of 365-days, today we calculate the
number of days in our year 365.242199 (or) each year at 365 days, 5 hours, 48
minutes and 46 seconds. Their “vague” 365 days was far more exact than any
other older or contemporary cultures. It is believed that the central principles that
governed the most common features of both forms of the Mesoamerican calendar
“may” well have been developed in sites of the Pacific coastal plain of Guatemala3,
along with neighboring Chiapas.
Stelae’s4 have been found with the “earliest” known Long Count dates that come
from the general region, around Tak’alik Abaj5, and El Baul6, recent findings in the
Peten Lowlands7 that include an Altar in Polol8, Stelaes in El Mirado9 and Uaxactun10,
the San Diego Cliff Carvings11 and the San Bartolo Murals12 all confirm that the
calendar was well in use in the Late Preclassic period.

3
http://www.authenticmaya.com/pacific_lowlands.htm
4
A freestanding inscribed, carved, or decorated stone slab set upright in the ground,
usually commemorating a person or event. Often connected with ceremonial sites or burial
places; a stone slab set up in a public place, with an inscription recording a victory, treaty,
or a decree; also a grave-stone
5
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Takalik_Abaj
6
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/El_Ba%C3%BAl
7
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pet%C3%A9n_Basin
8
http://www.authenticmaya.com/Polol.htm
9
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/El_Mirador
10
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uaxactun
11
http://www.wayeb.org/notes/wayeb_notes0011.pdf
12
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Bartolo_%28Maya_site%29
 To attest to the Mayan’s and their accurate mathematical records, the
measurement over countless years of the lunar cycle gave them results that are
extremely well within today’s value 29.53059 days, while the observations made in
Copan spanned 149 lunation or 4400 days and returned their lunar month at
29.5302 days, while the observations at Tikal spanned 81 lunation or 2392 days and
gave them a lunar day at 29.53086 days
The Maya is noted for the only known “fully” developed written language of the
pre-Columbian America’s, their culture included developed art, architecture, and a
well established culture in mathematics and astronomy. Maya civilization peaked
from 250 AD to 900 AD.
Another region, about 80-miles west of London on the plains of Salisbury there
stands a circle of monolithic stones, apparently built to mark or track the positions
of the Sun. Stonehenge’s construction is estimated to have begin around 2800 BCE
(+/-), and was completed about 1800 BCE (+/-), obviously a British public works
project…in that it took a over 1000 years to complete and its only a circle of stones.

Some believe that because of its position and size and layout it was a observatory
made to determine the important days in the summer, such as the summer solstice,
whereas important members of the local region would gather up the locals and
make offerings to gods so that the rising Sun would return each year to his/her
place in the north.
Stonehenge, like other prehistoric sites around the world is shrouded in mystery
as to their function and like Stonehenge their construction data is just as elusive.
What we do know is that it is at the center of the very dense complex of Neolithic
and Bronze Age monuments in England, including several hundred burial mounds.
Now who its builders were or when they constructed this site is far from being
solved, if it ever will. There are too many to count theories bouncing around
attempting to put a face of the builders and a construction date.
To the point, since the beginning of our present civilization the inhabitants of this
planet have put a lot of stock in the power of that object in our solar system that
contains over 99.86% of our solar system mass. In numerous studies we have
looked at the bright ball in our daytime sky and wondered how it affects our planet,
from its weather to disrupting our magnetic shield. Now today, the friends of Al
Gore are telling us to ignore its effects on our planet and to stop driving our SUVs
and shut-down our coal fired power plants, (or) buy into their Green Stamp
program.