Café & Kosmos — Is the Sun responsible for climate change?

Global warming, the increase of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, these are things that worry us. The brightness of the Sun is what keeps us warm. Could it be that global warming is actually due to changes in the Sun and not our greenhouse gases? In other words that it is not our fault after all?

Fig.: Magnetic fields on the surface of the Sun
Credit: G. Scharmer, Institute for Solar Physics, Stockholm

We regularly hear in the news about devastating tropical storms, severe winters or unusually warm ones. Are they are on the increase because of global warming? It turns out that insurance companies have interesting things to say about this.

Henk Spruit of the Max-Planck-Institute for Astrophysics will discuss these thorny questions, illustrating them with recent images of things happening on the Sun. He will present the current knowledge about our central star and how much we understand the processes going on inside it.

What: Café & Kosmos
When: 14 March 2012, 19:00
Where: Vereinsheim, Occamstr. 8, 80802 München (U3/U6 Münchner Freiheit)
Entrance free.
Please note that the event will be conducted in German.