Latest news with #sunspots
Yahoo
5 hours ago
- Health
- Yahoo
I'm in my 50s and have recently developed brown spots. Can anything be done about hyperpigmentation?
Dermatologist Marisa Garshick explains how UV exposure, hormones and inflammation cause dark spots — and what can reverse them. I'm in my early 50s and have recently developed some serious brown sun spots on my cheeks, forehead and chest. At first, I thought they were freckles, but then I realized they looked a lot smudgier and more blob-like than the freckles I had when I was younger. What can I do to get rid of them? Thanks! Dear Aging Into Age Spots, It's true that at one time you may have sprouted a sprinkling of cute, Punky Brewster-esque freckles, but into middle age you get less-cute sun damage, also known as the definitely unadorable-sounding hyperpigmentation. "Hyperpigmentation is the result of an increase in melanin and can result from UV exposure or environmental stressors that lead to free radical damage and manifest as brown spots," board-certified dermatologist Dr. Marisa Garshick told me last month. "It can arise in the setting of what is known as post-inflammatory hyperpigmentation, which refers to discoloration that occurs as a result of skin injury or skin inflammation, such as after an acne breakout or a bug bite. Another type of hyperpigmentation is melasma, which typically occurs on sun-exposed areas of the face and can be triggered by hormonal changes." While hyperpigmentation is super common, the bad news is it won't go away on its own. But the good news? Garshick says there are loads of treatments for it, some of which you can try at home. The first thing to do if you notice new spots on your face (or body) is head to a dermatologist's office. After the doctor has determined that the skin discoloration is benign, you can decide on the best course of treatment together. In-office treatments for hyperpigmentation include lower-cost chemical peels or pricier services like lasers and light-based devices. Different forms of hyperpigmentation will respond better to different treatments, so a consultation with an expert is essential to find the right fit for your skin. And while I was initially skeptical, Garshick assures me that at-home remedies can also be effective to brighten dark spots, though the effect will be more subtle and happen over time. Of the best over-the-counter products, she's seen a good result with both inexpensive drugstore creams like Eucerin's thiamiadol dark spot corrector and pricier serums like Mother Science's award-winning Molecular Hero, which contains a patented form of malassezin and which was used — in addition to sunscreen — on the set of the most recent season of The White Lotus to keep the actors' skin from developing further damage in the hot Thailand sun. Other ingredients that have been proved to promote clarity in your complexion are vitamin C and retinol. Most important of all, to avoid further brown spots, Garschick says it's crucial to apply sunscreen whenever you're planning on being outside in the sun and to reapply it every two hours for optimal protection. "I'd also say to avoid peak hours in the sun and seek shade whenever possible," she the daily Crossword
Yahoo
18-07-2025
- Science
- Yahoo
Scientists Just Solved a Solar Mystery That Baffled Humanity For Centuries
Here's what you'll learn when you read this story: Why sunspots are able to last so long has been a mystery for millenia, but a new observation technique revealed their secret. The equilibrium between magnetic fields and pressure allows the solar blotches to remain stable anywhere from days to months. Despite being darker, cooler regions of the sun, sunspots are related to its hot temper, and can help predict solar outbursts like flares and coronal mass ejections. Sunspots were observed on the surface of our star centuries before Galileo suffered eye damage peering at them through his telescope. The first known records were written down by Chinese astronomers in 27 B.C., but observation may go even further back if Greek philosopher Anaxagoras really, ahem, spotted one in 467 B.C. While some of the ancients thought that these shadows on our star meant changes in the cosmos, sunspots are surprisingly stable—and now we know why. Sunspots are actually byproducts of magnetic field chaos. Inside the sun's convective zone, scorching plasma cools as it moves towards the solar surface, taking energy with it. This plasma becomes denser as it loses heat and sinks, forming cooler dark spots until heat from further inside the sun causes it to rise again. And all the while, magnetic fields keep twisting and breaking and rearranging themselves. This explains the association of sunspots with the outbursts we know as solar flares and coronal mass ejections, which can release enough electromagnetic radiation to threaten satellites and electrical infrastructure on Earth. More stable sunspots can possibly give more insight to the solar activity cycle, which is about 11 years long and peaks during a solar maximum. Previous explanations for their stability suggested an equilibrium between magnetic fields and gas pressure, but magnetic turmoil has long made this difficult to observe. Now, an international research team using Germany's GREGOR solar telescope has finally cleared up the hazy observations of sunspots with a new method that removes interference from Earth's atmosphere and reveals strikingly clear images. Led by researchers from the Institute of Solar Physics in Freiburg, Germany, the technique—originally developed at the Göttingen Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research—has achieved what only (much more expensive) satellites were able to do before: it made the analysis of polarized light from the Sun possible. Polarization is the phenomenon of light's electric field moving back and forth, perpendicular to the direction in which the light wave itself is headed, and light is said to be polarized when it continues to propagate one way (as opposed to scattering). By taking a closer look at polarized light, the team was able to tell exactly where it was coming from within sunspots, and what was going on inside. It turned out that the equilibrium in sunspots is a balance of pressure and magnetism. Magnetic fields are strongest when electrons remain unattached, but as more pressure is exerted, it forces them into pairs and weakens the magnetic field. Just enough pressure balances out the strength of magnetic fields and keeps the sunspots intact for extended periods. This is known as magnetohydrostatic equilibrium, which describes the properties of a gas or fluid (such as solar plasma) in a magnetic field. Because solar plasma can conduct electricity, it supports the magnetic field it interacts with. '[Our] results provide decisive observational and theoretical support for the idea that sunspots slowly evolve around an equilibrium state and are [in] magnetohydrostatic equilibrium, thereby helping to explain their long lifespans,' the researchers said in a study recently published in Astronomy & Astrophysics. Understanding why sunspots—and the solar turbulence that comes with them—can hang around for so long will help us better forecast space weather and possibly prevent blackouts, damage to satellites, and threats to astronauts' health. You Might Also Like The Do's and Don'ts of Using Painter's Tape The Best Portable BBQ Grills for Cooking Anywhere Can a Smart Watch Prolong Your Life? Solve the daily Crossword
Times
16-05-2025
- Health
- Times
10 best beauty buys for your hands
When was the last time you used anything more than a reluctant, pragmatic quick dab of cream to look after your hands? And then expect it to work on nails, cuticles, sun spots, cracked skin, crepey and wrinkled knuckles… I used to do the same thing, but there are products that are just as effective for your hands as there are for your face — and they are just as affordable. Eucerin Anti-Pigment Skin Tone Perfecting Body CreamBeiersdorf, the company that owns Eucerin and Nivea, has a patented ingredient proven to tackle sun spots, so if your hands are starting to show the signs of a misspent sunny youth, join the queue behind me and put this on your shopping list. Lightweight and easily
Yahoo
10-05-2025
- Science
- Yahoo
Stronger Solar Activity Cycles May Be in the Sun's Forecast
A year ago this weekend, the sun's activity created some of the most spectacular auroras on record, with displays visible as far south as Florida. The incredible spectacles last May (and another auroral outburst last October) were partly a matter of luck because several factors, some of them serendipitous, affect the appearance of aurora. But the sun had been primed to put on a show as it approached the maximum phase of its 11-year activity cycle—and that high activity continues today. This solar cycle still has the potential to cause more celestial spectacles before activity calms down. And scientists say that the coming solar cycles may be even more eventful. But it remains quite difficult to predict the sun's behavior. 'Solar storms—it's a probabilistic thing, so sometimes they don't always do what you would expect,' says Lisa Upton, a heliophysicist at the Southwest Research Institute. [Sign up for Today in Science, a free daily newsletter] The sun is essentially a massive liquid magnet. Heliophysicists gauge our star's activity by tallying the number of sunspots—relatively 'cold' knots of its magnetic field that are often the source of radiation and plasma outbursts—on its surface. (Scientists monitor this tally in real time, but they evaluate the solar cycle's stages based on smoothed averages over many months. So the formal declaration of a cycle's solar maximum and minimum always happens after the fact.) The number of sunspots naturally rises and falls over about 11 years, during which the sun's magnetic poles first strengthen, then weaken and finally flip. When the sun's magnetic field is calmest—with one pole that is firmly positive and one that is firmly negative—activity is at its minimum, as it was most recently around December 2019, and the star is sometimes entirely free of blemishes. For more than a year now, the sun has been in the opposite phase—the solar maximum—with a messy magnetic field, plenty of sunspots and regular outbursts. August 2024 produced the most sunspots of any recent month, with more than 200 such storms. Sunspots have since become less numerous, but it's still unclear whether the solar maximum is truly on its way out. 'We've had a little bit of a slowdown in activity [during] the last couple months. That's not too surprising,' Upton says. 'A question at this point, which will be interesting, is whether or not we're going to have another little spike in activity.' She says that if such a spike were to happen, it would likely come within about three months, mirroring a small spike that occurred in June and July 2023. 'But the sun likes to surprise us,' Upton adds, 'so we'll see if that happens.' Even as scientists watch the current solar cycle unfold, they're also working to understand what future cycles might bring. That's a difficult task, given that modern science is only in the 25th activity cycle in which researchers have made plentiful sunspot observations. More sophisticated observations that help scientists understand the sun in detail, such as space-based observations and magnetic data, are even newer, with some offering insight into only a couple of solar cycles thus far. Scientists can study tree rings and ice cores to get a basic sense of solar activity before observations began, but these data are less detailed and don't provide precise sunspot counts. One hypothesis suggests that the sun displays a longer-term variability called the Gleissberg cycle, named for astronomer Wolfgang Gleissberg, who posited such 80-year cycles in the 1960s. (Other proposed longer-duration cycles in solar behavior include the Suess–de Vries cycle, lasting 195 to 235 years, and the Hallstatt cycle, stretching over some 2,400 years.) And a new analysis of protons trapped in the inner radiation belt that surrounds Earth suggests a new Gleissberg cycle may be beginning. Not all heliophysicists are sold on the Gleissberg cycle, however, given the scant data scientists have to work with. 'It's kind of debatable whether or not this is a physical phenomenon versus a statistical phenomenon,' Upton says. Regardless, chances are good that during the coming solar cycles, the sun will be more active than it has been over the past two decades. That's because Solar Cycle 24, which dominated the 2010s, was one of the weakest on record—and the current cycle has remained below average in activity. 'We, as humans, have a short memory, and a lot of people have been wowed and amazed by what's been going on in the last year or two on the sun,' Upton says. 'There's this tendency for us to forget this longer-term variability in what the sun is doing.' The sun's activity doesn't just paint our skies with spectacular auroras. The radiation and plasma outbursts the sun emits can have real consequences for terrestrial life: solar storms can interfere with satellites in orbit, including communication and navigation infrastructure, and serious incidents can even affect the power grid on Earth. And if our technology is vulnerable to the set of phenomena collectively called space weather, human bodies are even more so. Fortunately, people on Earth's surface are well shielded from the sun's activity by a magnetic bubble that surrounds our planet and deflects much of the most dangerous emissions. The risks of solar activity stretch throughout the solar system, however. As NASA and other space agencies look to send humans beyond orbit, to the moon and to Mars, these organizations will need to protect astronauts from the dangers of space weather—work that will include better predictions of what conditions these outer regions are likely to experience. 'As solar cycle activity ramps up—and it is very likely to do so because we are in weaker-than-average cycles—it's going to become more and more important to be able to understand space weather not just in the direction of Earth,' Upton says.
