Wednesday, March 23, 2022

HD 166620's little ice age

I've been sick as a dog the last few days so not up to posting, but - this evening being a bit better - I would raise HD 166620 to general attention. Anna C. Baum, Jason T. Wright, Jacob K. Luhn, and Howard (?.) Isaacson pored over 50 years worth of 59 main-seq dwarf stars for sunspots. Here are their results.

Table 2 runs K (goldilocks) and G (i.e. our swiftly-warming Sun), with a few Fs; hence, sun like. Also if we can see them clearly enough to make out sunspots then they're pretty close, given the term is astronomy-relative. If these stars have habitable-zone planets (I assume many do) those planets - where are Earthsize - might be Earthlike.

I should have noted that Baum at least is from Pennsylvania State. This is the employer of Dr Michael Mann and (before being reassigned) of Jerry Sandusky. Mann does climate here on Earth - involving himself in the Hockey Stick Graph, which ignored the Maunder Minimum. Mann does not like when you point out his academic shenanigans and has been known to hire lawyers.

All that runup, to note that, like Penn State's athletic department, Penn State's academic department might be (more slowly) redeeming itself, by noting that the Maunder Minimum is actually worthy of note, if a little further from home.

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