Thanks Linda...very strange that they missed that date out!!!
Also found this...The cosmic rays that are reaching us now are the highest for 50 years....I thought they woulod maximise by 2011?!!
Cosmic Rays
In addition to solar particles, another highly energetic particle from the Milky Way galaxy reaches Earth's atmosphere all the time. Cosmic rays can damage electronic systems and even DNA in living creatures.
When a high-energy cosmic ray enters the atmosphere,
it can cause an “air shower.” The cosmic ray hits a molecule
in the atmosphere and “breaks up,” producing lots more sub-atomic
particles. The cosmic ray (red center top) breaks up into sub-atomic particles
that can include protons (green), neutrons (orange), pions (yellow),
muons (purple), photons (blue), and electrons & positrons (pink).
Illustration by Randy Russell, NASA and NCAR.
The number of cosmic rays reaching Earth are lower when the sun is active and has a strong, turbulent magnetic field that interferes with cosmic ray travel. But when the sun is not active, more cosmic rays reach Earth. The sun is supposed to be in an increasingly active period of Solar Cycle 24 with a solar maximum originally expected in 2011 to 2012. But the sun has been abnormally quiet. Scientists have not seen such a low sunspot number since around 1913, the beginning of the 20th Century. Further, the magnetic field of the sun is at the lowest magnetic field strength measured in at least fifty years from the beginning of the Space Age.
A collision between a high-energy cosmic ray particle and an atom
in a photographic emulsion, as viewed through a microscope.
Image credit: NASA, Dr. David P. Stern.
At the August 3 to 7, 2009, at the Solar Heliospheric and Interplanetary Environment (SHINE) meeting in Wolfville, Nova Scotia, Richard Mewaldt, Ph.D., Senior Research Associate in Physics at the California Institute of Technology Kahill Astrophysics Laboratory in Pasadena, presented his latest ACE data on cosmic ray intensity change since April 2009, the last six months.
http://www.earthfiles.com/news.php?I...tegory=Science
viking