More than a month ago, we covered a story about bees disappearing for a yet unknown reason. The hypotheses presented on this mysterious disappearance of bees called Colony Collapse Disorder, were the following: pesticides, mites, and/or poor management of the bee farmers.

But in a study made by Barbara Shipman, mathematician and daughter of a bee researcher, a different reason for the disappearance of bees was given: sunspots. A sunspot is a region on the Sun's surface that is marked by a lower temperature than its surroundings and intense magnetic activity. Sunspots follow an estimated 11-year cycle, corresponding to increases in solar activity.

Whatever have sunspots to do with honeybees? Shipman studied the complex dance that honeybees do when signaling pollen sources to their colony. As a mathematician, Shipman analyzed that this complex bee-dance is influenced by things such as polarization of the light of the sun and local variations of the earth's magnetic field.

Shipman's studies suggest that bees are sensitive to quantum-mechanical effects such as magnetic fields and electromagnetic waves. In the bee disappearance case, it may be no coincidence that the predicted next solar maximum in 2010 could be the most intense ever. This view suggests that because of the coming sunspot peak, the quantum field to which bees may be sensitive could have been disturbed.

Let's put it this way: because of Shipman's views, scientists are suggesting that the Colony Collapse Disorder may have been caused by bees losing their navigation skills because of the disturbed magnetic activity. They may have flown skyward, attempting to keep up with the rapidly moving target of home in six dimensions. Or, hyperdimentsional bee-eaters could have emerged from the sunspot, phasing the bees out of existence on contact.

Sounds weird now, but someday maybe we'll understand it better. As physicist David Hathaway puts it, "We don't know why this works. The underlying physics is a mystery. But it does work."

Don't stock up on food and batteries just yet. This storm is unlike any other most in our age groups have ever seen. The storm isn't even on the Earth, it's on the sun.

Astronomer Mausumi Dikpati of the National Center for Atmospheric research has predicted that come 2012, the Earth will experience a solar maximum, a phenomenon that last happened in 1958. This happens as a sunspot, a huge mass of violent magnetism, intensifies an area of the sun as it causes weird things to happen.

More than a heat storm, the solar max unleashes a barrage of magnetism that can be felt even in the Earth. Dikpati says he won't be surprised if modern electronics such as GPS and mobile phones will be affected.

That's not the only strange thing that can happen. As the sun spot drags on for years and prompts the solar max to rage on, atmospheric and astronomic frills can be seen on Earth. During the last solar max, Aurora Borealis was seen in Mexico.

Dikpati's prediction is bold in the sense that no scientists before him have come close to being able to accurately predict the cycle of sunspots. Once thought of as a semi=random occurrence, Dikpati asserts that there exists such a thing as a "solar conveyor belt" made of magnetism which drags sun spots along a path.

The National Space Science & Technology Center agreed with Dikpati. Solar Physicist David Hathaway said that Dikpati made all the points clear and true. However, he says that the solar max should come in 2011, not 2012. "History shows that big sunspot cycles 'ramp up' faster than small ones," he says.

The solar telescope-toting spacecraft Hironde of Japan has made a significant discovery in how the sun's chronosphere actually works. The red layer was once thought of as a relatively peaceful part of the sun, but that belief has been debunked.

  

The chronosphere actually hosts a multitude of violent solar flares every day. What starts as a huge magnetic vortex floats around, twisting, and suddenly explodes to shoot a high-intensity solar flare. NASA's solar physicist says that when they first saw the spectacle staff members almost fell out of their seats. "I managed to stay in my seat, but just barely" he recalls.

Solar flares are huge jets of hot gas that shoot up from the sun's photosphere and fall back again. Scientists believe that they must be triggered by magnetic instabilities in the star, but even after years of observation, experts found no explanation as to how exactly they are formed.

Hironde, astronomers hope, could be the catalyst for a huge discovery. The Solar Optical telescope it carries is the cutting edge of space observation technology, prompting many to call the spacecraft "the Hubble of the Sun." The spacecraft was launched in September of 2006 on a mission to gain more understanding on sunspots and solar flares. The name Hironde means "sunrise" in Japanese.

Religion and science are often depicted as mortal enemies. But Stephen Barra, a theoretical particle physicist at the Bartol Research Institute of the University of Delaware, begs to disagree and wants to set the record straight. True, science has Galileo as its poster boy for those who think religion would rather have a world cloaked in ignorance rather than have  its dogma challenged.

But Barr reminds us that some of the greatest scientific minds happen to be people of religion:

• Gregor Mendel, the father of modern genetics was an Austrian monk
• Georges Lema?e, one of the founders of the Big Bang Theory was a Belgian priest/physicist
• Fr. Christoph Scheiner was one of the discoverers of sunspots and discovered the rotation of the sun on its axis
• Fr. Francesco Grimaldi discovered an extremely important effect in physics called the "diffraction" of light
  
• Fr. Lazzaro Spallanzani was considered as one of the top biologists in the world in the 18th century
• Fr. Marin Mersenne, the father of acoustic, discovered basic facts about wave motion and sound
• Fr. Giovanni Riccioli discovered the first "binary star"
• Fr. Angelo Secchi was one of the the founders of modern astrophysics
• Bisghop  Nicholas Oresme was the first to graph mathematical functions and discovered how to combine exponents
• Fr. Niels Stensen is considered as one of the founders of geology

Apparently abstinence is good for the brain as well as the soul.

Read the rest of the article after the jump.

If recent observations of the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) spacecraft are any indication, the next sunspot cycle will be exceptionally active. 

SOHO recently observed the first sunspot of the next cycle, which has shown up slightly ahead of schedule. Sunspots occur in an 11-year cycle when magnetic fields bubble up from the Sun's interior, causing a dark, cooler spot on the surface. The beginning of the next cycle was not expected until March of 2007. The odd sunspot observed three weeks ago indicates an early start.

Also unusual was this spot's orientation. While sunspots in Sun's southern hemisphere are typically oriented north-south, this one was magnetically backwards, having a south-north orientation. It also showed up closer to the Sun's equator that is usual.  According to NASA's David Hathaway, these are indications that the next sunspot cycle is likely to be an active one. It is also evidence that the Sun magnetic polarity may be reversing.

Two other signs that we may see the largest number of sunspots in nearly fifty years are the flow of sunspots and small variations in the Earth's magnetic field. What causes these vibrations is not completely understood, but it has been reliable in predicting the level of sunspot activity. The flow of sunspots is another indicator; these travel from low to high latitudes, where they sink back beneath the sun's surface, then travel back toward the solar equator, re-emerging twenty years later. Back in the 1980's, these sunspots were moving rather quickly, which could mean their magnetic fields will be even stronger when they resurface.

Not everyone believes this sunspot cycle will be stronger than usual. A group at Houston consulting firm believe that this may be the weakest solar cycle in a century because magnetic fields toward the sun's polar regions are currently weak.