>>CERN's 8,000 scientists may not be able to find the hypothetical Higgs boson, but they have made an important contribution to climate physics, prompting climate models to be revised.
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>>The first results from the lab's CLOUD ("Cosmics Leaving OUtdoor Droplets") experiment published in Nature today confirm that cosmic rays spur the formation of clouds through ion-induced nucleation. Current thinking posits that half of the Earth's clouds are formed through nucleation. The paper is entitled Role of sulphuric acid, ammonia and galactic cosmic rays in atmospheric aerosol nucleation.
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>>This has significant implications for climate science because water vapour and clouds play a large role in determining global temperatures. Tiny changes in overall cloud cover can result in relatively large temperature changes.
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>>Unsurprisingly, it's a politically sensitive topic, as it provides support for a "heliocentric" rather than "anthropogenic" approach to climate change: the sun plays a large role in modulating the quantity of cosmic rays reaching the upper atmosphere of the Earth.
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>>http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/08/25/cern_cloud_cosmic_ray_first_results/
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>>CERN Press Release : http://press.web.cern.ch/press/PressReleases/Releases2011/downloads/CLOUD_SI_press-briefing_29JUL11.pdf
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>>Paper: http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v476/n7361/full/nature10343.html
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>Hey Jake, one of my favorite conservatives,
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>Will you please try this again in English? Not asking you to dumb it down. Just offer a synopsis that makes it accessible to reasonably educated readers. As is this is all jargon, which as we know is the enemy of clear communication.
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>Best,
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>Mike

Lawrence Soloman sums it up nicely:
63 CERN scientists from 17 European and American institutes...demonstrate that cosmic rays promote the formation of molecules that in Earth’s atmosphere can grow and seed clouds, the cloudier and thus cooler it will be. Because the sun’s magnetic field controls how many cosmic rays reach Earth’s atmosphere (the stronger the sun’s magnetic field, the more it shields Earth from incoming cosmic rays from space), the sun determines the temperature on Earth.