Hacker News Reader

The article includes the following quotation:

"The sun's north pole has already changed sign, while the south pole is racing to catch up," says Scherrer.

Does that not suggest that the sun is currently a magnetic monopole? Or is that too simplistic?

Of course it's not a monopole, but the dipole idea is also too simplistic, as is the idea of "poles". Presumably, the dipole moment of the Sun has become very small but there are still higher orders at work. Thus, the field of the Sun will look very much more complex than the simple dipole field [0].

A possible configuration would be that both geographicals poles of the same sign, but the field around the equator is of a different sign, like a quadrupole perhaps.

Disclaimer: I'm a physicist but not an astrophysicist.

0: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/17/Earths_Ma...

Correct. I'll do some digging around to find the polarity maps we have around the lab here and post them if I find them. At times, there really isn't a clear 'pole' of the sun, and octopoles can sometimes be found.

E: Here's a link to one of those maps. I'll see if I can find any better.

http://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/imagenes_ciencia/ciencia_s...

Reply on news.ycombinator.com