Petition To Name The Next Significant Solar Minimum
There was an online petition underway, organized by Anthony Watts, to be submitted to the Solar Physics Division of the American Astronomical Society in June 2009, in Boulder, Colorado by solar astronomer Leif Svalgaard, to name the next significant solar minimum the "Eddy Minimum" to honor Eddy's contributions to this line of research.
During an interview, in a statement which may yet prove prophetic, Eddy first used the term "Eddy Minimum" while explaining why he rejected it in favor of naming the event the "Maunder Minimum":
EDDY: And, you know, the temptation was to think that it might someday be called the "Eddy Minimum": that is, to call it nothing in the hope that someone else would do that. But being from Nebraska, I could never do anything like that. I also knew I wasn't the first to find it, and it wasn't really mine. I think I did quite a bit for Maunder with that name. Particularly because he also got the idea from somebody else. He got it from Sporer who was a German astronomer. So, among the shots I took after publishing the paper were some from Germany that said, "You know, you really named it after the wrong person." Which I knew very well.
While Eddy did not predict the next significant solar minimum he did identify that we are living by the light of a variable star and it is for this reason it is said that the next significant solar minimum should be named in his honor. He cautioned:
It was one more defeat in our long and losing battle to keep the Sun perfect, or, if not perfect, constant, and if inconstant, regular. Why we think the Sun should be any of these when other stars are not is more a question for social than for physical science.
Read more about this topic: John A. Eddy
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