ramonmercado
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Is it safe to come out of the bunker? Vid & images at link.
Solar Cycles / Solar Flares / Coronal Mass Ejections / Solar Storms
- Thread starter KeyserXSoze
- Start date
BREAKING: Coronal Cavity Sphere Deflects Solar Eruption! May 25, 2012 - SunsFlare.
Not sure if anyone has looked at this video interesting it is.
BREAKING: Coronal Cavity Sphere Deflects Solar Eruption! May 25, 2012 - SunsFlare
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xgs4QUNzZfI
Not sure if anyone has looked at this video interesting it is.
BREAKING: Coronal Cavity Sphere Deflects Solar Eruption! May 25, 2012 - SunsFlare
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xgs4QUNzZfI
ramonmercado
CyberPunk
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Head for the bunkers again.
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Monster radiation burst from Sun
The Sun has unleashed its most powerful eruption of 2013 so far.
The solar flare - a sudden release of radiation - peaked at 1705 BST on Monday, and was associated with a huge eruption of matter.
When these eruptions reach Earth, they can interfere with electronic systems in satellites and those on the ground.
Nasa said this solar explosion - known as a coronal mass ejection (CME) - was not directed at Earth, but it could pass several US spacecraft.
The event on Monday was classified as an "X-class" flare - the most intense type - with a designation of X2.8 (higher numbers denote a stronger flare). It surpassed an X1.7-class flare that occurred 14 hours earlier.
They are the first X-class events to occur this year.
When intense enough, a flare can disturb the Earth's atmosphere in the layer where GPS and communications signals travel.
This disrupts the radio signals for as long as the flare is ongoing - the radio blackout associated with this flare has since subsided.
CMEs can be even more disruptive because they can send billions of tonnes of solar particles into space. In those cases when very strong eruptions do reach Earth, the charged matter can blow out transformers in power grids.
The so-called Carrington Event of 1-2 September 1859 shorted telegraph wires, starting fires in North America and Europe, and caused bright aurorae (northern and southern lights) to be seen in Cuba and Hawaii.
The CME associated with this flare may pass the Stereo-B and Spitzer spacecraft. The operators of those science missions can choose to put their spacecraft into a "safe mode" to protect the electronics in onboard instruments from being tripped.
Increased numbers of flares are expected at the moment because the Sun's normal 11-year activity cycle is approaching a "high" of activity - known as a solar maximum.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-22525233
The Sun has unleashed its most powerful eruption of 2013 so far.
The solar flare - a sudden release of radiation - peaked at 1705 BST on Monday, and was associated with a huge eruption of matter.
When these eruptions reach Earth, they can interfere with electronic systems in satellites and those on the ground.
Nasa said this solar explosion - known as a coronal mass ejection (CME) - was not directed at Earth, but it could pass several US spacecraft.
The event on Monday was classified as an "X-class" flare - the most intense type - with a designation of X2.8 (higher numbers denote a stronger flare). It surpassed an X1.7-class flare that occurred 14 hours earlier.
They are the first X-class events to occur this year.
When intense enough, a flare can disturb the Earth's atmosphere in the layer where GPS and communications signals travel.
This disrupts the radio signals for as long as the flare is ongoing - the radio blackout associated with this flare has since subsided.
CMEs can be even more disruptive because they can send billions of tonnes of solar particles into space. In those cases when very strong eruptions do reach Earth, the charged matter can blow out transformers in power grids.
The so-called Carrington Event of 1-2 September 1859 shorted telegraph wires, starting fires in North America and Europe, and caused bright aurorae (northern and southern lights) to be seen in Cuba and Hawaii.
The CME associated with this flare may pass the Stereo-B and Spitzer spacecraft. The operators of those science missions can choose to put their spacecraft into a "safe mode" to protect the electronics in onboard instruments from being tripped.
Increased numbers of flares are expected at the moment because the Sun's normal 11-year activity cycle is approaching a "high" of activity - known as a solar maximum.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-22525233
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Documentary about solar activity:
The Secret Life of the Sun
90 million miles away from us is the power that shapes our world - the Sun. We see it shine in the sky above us, but beyond our sight something dramatic is happening - the Sun is going into overdrive.
It's more active now that it's been for a decade, sending eruptions of super-heated plasma and vast waves of radiation towards our planet. With the potential to disrupt our lives in dramatic ways.
Using the latest satellite images, and the expertise of Britain's leading solar scientists, Kate Humble and Helen Czerski reveal the inner workings of our very own star, and the influence its mysterious cycles of activity have on our planet.
They discover why the light reaching us from the Sun can be up to a million years old: they meet the teams who protect us by keeping a round-the-clock vigil on the Sun; and investigate why some scientists think longer term changes in the Sun's behaviour may have powerful effects on our climate.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b0 ... f_the_Sun/
Available until
12:19AM Wed, 3 Jul 2013
The Secret Life of the Sun
90 million miles away from us is the power that shapes our world - the Sun. We see it shine in the sky above us, but beyond our sight something dramatic is happening - the Sun is going into overdrive.
It's more active now that it's been for a decade, sending eruptions of super-heated plasma and vast waves of radiation towards our planet. With the potential to disrupt our lives in dramatic ways.
Using the latest satellite images, and the expertise of Britain's leading solar scientists, Kate Humble and Helen Czerski reveal the inner workings of our very own star, and the influence its mysterious cycles of activity have on our planet.
They discover why the light reaching us from the Sun can be up to a million years old: they meet the teams who protect us by keeping a round-the-clock vigil on the Sun; and investigate why some scientists think longer term changes in the Sun's behaviour may have powerful effects on our climate.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b0 ... f_the_Sun/
Available until
12:19AM Wed, 3 Jul 2013
- Joined
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Is our Sun falling silent?
By Rebecca Morelle, Science reporter, BBC World Service
"I've been a solar physicist for 30 years, and I've never seen anything quite like this," says Richard Harrison, head of space physics at the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory in Oxfordshire.
He shows me recent footage captured by spacecraft that have their sights trained on our star. The Sun is revealed in exquisite detail, but its face is strangely featureless.
"If you want to go back to see when the Sun was this inactive... you've got to go back about 100 years," he says.
This solar lull is baffling scientists, because right now the Sun should be awash with activity.
It has reached its solar maximum, the point in its 11-year cycle where activity is at a peak.
This giant ball of plasma should be peppered with sunspots, exploding with flares and spewing out huge clouds of charged particles into space in the form of coronal mass ejections.
But apart from the odd event, like some recent solar flares, it has been very quiet. And this damp squib of a maximum follows a solar minimum - the period when the Sun's activity troughs - that was longer and lower than scientists expected.
"It's completely taken me and many other solar scientists by surprise," says Dr Lucie Green, from University College London's Mullard Space Science Laboratory.
The drop off in activity is happening surprisingly quickly, and scientists are now watching closely to see if it will continue to plummet.
"It could mean a very, very inactive star, it would feel like the Sun is asleep... a very dormant ball of gas at the centre of our Solar System," explains Dr Green.
This, though, would certainly not be the first time this has happened.
During the latter half of the 17th Century, the Sun went through an extremely quiet phase - a period called the Maunder Minimum.
Historical records reveal that sunspots virtually disappeared during this time.
Dr Green says: "There is a very strong hint that the Sun is acting in the same way now as it did in the run-up to the Maunder Minimum."
Mike Lockwood, professor of space environment physics, from the University of Reading, thinks there is a significant chance that the Sun could become increasingly quiet.
An analysis of ice-cores, which hold a long-term record of solar activity, suggests the decline in activity is the fastest that has been seen in 10,000 years.
"It's an unusually rapid decline," explains Prof Lockwood.
"We estimate that within about 40 years or so there is a 10% to 20% - nearer 20% - probability that we'll be back in Maunder Minimum conditions."
The era of solar inactivity in the 17th Century coincided with a period of bitterly cold winters in Europe.
Londoners enjoyed frost fairs on the Thames after it froze over, snow cover across the continent increased, the Baltic Sea iced over - the conditions were so harsh, some describe it as a mini-Ice Age.
And Prof Lockwood believes that this regional effect could have been in part driven by the dearth of activity on the Sun, and may happen again if our star continues to wane.
"It's a very active research topic at the present time, but we do think there is a mechanism in Europe where we should expect more cold winters when solar activity is low," he says.
He believes this local effect happens because the amount of ultraviolet light radiating from the Sun dips when solar activity is low.
This means that less UV radiation hits the stratosphere - the layer of air that sits high above the Earth. And this in turn feeds into the jet stream - the fast-flowing air current in the upper atmosphere that can drive the weather.
The results of this are dominantly felt above Europe, says Prof Lockwood.
"These are large meanders in the jet stream, and they're called blocking events because they block off the normal moist, mild winds we get from the Atlantic, and instead we get cold air being dragged down from the Arctic and from Russia," he says.
"These are what we call a cold snap... a series of three or four cold snaps in a row adds up to a cold winter. And that's quite likely what we'll see as solar activity declines."
So could this regional change in Europe have a knock-on effect on for the rest of the world's climate? And what are the implications for global warming?
In a recent report by the UN's climate panel, scientists concluded that they were 95% certain that humans were the "dominant cause" of global warming since the 1950s, and if greenhouse gases continue to rise at their current rate, then the global mean temperature could rise by as much as 4.8C.
And while some have argued that ebbs and flows in the Sun's activity are driving the climate - overriding the effect of greenhouse gas emissions, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change concludes that solar variation only makes a small contribution to the Earth's climate.
Prof Lockwood says that while UV light varies with solar activity, other forms of radiation from the Sun that penetrate the troposphere (the lower layer of air that sits above the Earth) do not change that much.
He explains: "If we take all the science that we know relating to how the Sun emits heat and light and how that heat and light powers our climate system, and we look at the climate system globally, the difference that it makes even going back into Maunder Minimum conditions is very small.
"I've done a number of studies that show at the very most it might buy you about five years before you reach a certain global average temperature level. But that's not to say, on a more regional basis there aren't changes to the patterns of our weather that we'll have to get used to."
But this weather would not be the only consequence of a drawn out period of inactivity, says Dr Green.
"If the Sun were to get very quiet, one of the few things that would happen is that we'd have very few displays of the northern lights. They are driven by solar activity, and we'd miss out on this beautiful natural phenomenon," she explains.
However, there could be positive effects too.
"Solar activity drives a whole range of space weather, and these are ultimately effects on the electricity networks, on satellites, on radio communications and GPS on your sat-nav," she explains.
And while scientists cannot discount that the random bursts of activity may still occur, calmer periods of space weather would help to maintain the technological infrastructure that we rely so heavily on.
While the full consequences of a quietening Sun are not fully understood, one thing scientists are certain about is that our star is unpredictable, and anything could happen next.
"This feels like a period where it's very strange... but also it stresses that we don't really understand the star that we live with." says Prof Harrison.
"Because it's complicated - it's a complex beast."
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-25743806
By Rebecca Morelle, Science reporter, BBC World Service
"I've been a solar physicist for 30 years, and I've never seen anything quite like this," says Richard Harrison, head of space physics at the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory in Oxfordshire.
He shows me recent footage captured by spacecraft that have their sights trained on our star. The Sun is revealed in exquisite detail, but its face is strangely featureless.
"If you want to go back to see when the Sun was this inactive... you've got to go back about 100 years," he says.
This solar lull is baffling scientists, because right now the Sun should be awash with activity.
It has reached its solar maximum, the point in its 11-year cycle where activity is at a peak.
This giant ball of plasma should be peppered with sunspots, exploding with flares and spewing out huge clouds of charged particles into space in the form of coronal mass ejections.
But apart from the odd event, like some recent solar flares, it has been very quiet. And this damp squib of a maximum follows a solar minimum - the period when the Sun's activity troughs - that was longer and lower than scientists expected.
"It's completely taken me and many other solar scientists by surprise," says Dr Lucie Green, from University College London's Mullard Space Science Laboratory.
The drop off in activity is happening surprisingly quickly, and scientists are now watching closely to see if it will continue to plummet.
"It could mean a very, very inactive star, it would feel like the Sun is asleep... a very dormant ball of gas at the centre of our Solar System," explains Dr Green.
This, though, would certainly not be the first time this has happened.
During the latter half of the 17th Century, the Sun went through an extremely quiet phase - a period called the Maunder Minimum.
Historical records reveal that sunspots virtually disappeared during this time.
Dr Green says: "There is a very strong hint that the Sun is acting in the same way now as it did in the run-up to the Maunder Minimum."
Mike Lockwood, professor of space environment physics, from the University of Reading, thinks there is a significant chance that the Sun could become increasingly quiet.
An analysis of ice-cores, which hold a long-term record of solar activity, suggests the decline in activity is the fastest that has been seen in 10,000 years.
"It's an unusually rapid decline," explains Prof Lockwood.
"We estimate that within about 40 years or so there is a 10% to 20% - nearer 20% - probability that we'll be back in Maunder Minimum conditions."
The era of solar inactivity in the 17th Century coincided with a period of bitterly cold winters in Europe.
Londoners enjoyed frost fairs on the Thames after it froze over, snow cover across the continent increased, the Baltic Sea iced over - the conditions were so harsh, some describe it as a mini-Ice Age.
And Prof Lockwood believes that this regional effect could have been in part driven by the dearth of activity on the Sun, and may happen again if our star continues to wane.
"It's a very active research topic at the present time, but we do think there is a mechanism in Europe where we should expect more cold winters when solar activity is low," he says.
He believes this local effect happens because the amount of ultraviolet light radiating from the Sun dips when solar activity is low.
This means that less UV radiation hits the stratosphere - the layer of air that sits high above the Earth. And this in turn feeds into the jet stream - the fast-flowing air current in the upper atmosphere that can drive the weather.
The results of this are dominantly felt above Europe, says Prof Lockwood.
"These are large meanders in the jet stream, and they're called blocking events because they block off the normal moist, mild winds we get from the Atlantic, and instead we get cold air being dragged down from the Arctic and from Russia," he says.
"These are what we call a cold snap... a series of three or four cold snaps in a row adds up to a cold winter. And that's quite likely what we'll see as solar activity declines."
So could this regional change in Europe have a knock-on effect on for the rest of the world's climate? And what are the implications for global warming?
In a recent report by the UN's climate panel, scientists concluded that they were 95% certain that humans were the "dominant cause" of global warming since the 1950s, and if greenhouse gases continue to rise at their current rate, then the global mean temperature could rise by as much as 4.8C.
And while some have argued that ebbs and flows in the Sun's activity are driving the climate - overriding the effect of greenhouse gas emissions, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change concludes that solar variation only makes a small contribution to the Earth's climate.
Prof Lockwood says that while UV light varies with solar activity, other forms of radiation from the Sun that penetrate the troposphere (the lower layer of air that sits above the Earth) do not change that much.
He explains: "If we take all the science that we know relating to how the Sun emits heat and light and how that heat and light powers our climate system, and we look at the climate system globally, the difference that it makes even going back into Maunder Minimum conditions is very small.
"I've done a number of studies that show at the very most it might buy you about five years before you reach a certain global average temperature level. But that's not to say, on a more regional basis there aren't changes to the patterns of our weather that we'll have to get used to."
But this weather would not be the only consequence of a drawn out period of inactivity, says Dr Green.
"If the Sun were to get very quiet, one of the few things that would happen is that we'd have very few displays of the northern lights. They are driven by solar activity, and we'd miss out on this beautiful natural phenomenon," she explains.
However, there could be positive effects too.
"Solar activity drives a whole range of space weather, and these are ultimately effects on the electricity networks, on satellites, on radio communications and GPS on your sat-nav," she explains.
And while scientists cannot discount that the random bursts of activity may still occur, calmer periods of space weather would help to maintain the technological infrastructure that we rely so heavily on.
While the full consequences of a quietening Sun are not fully understood, one thing scientists are certain about is that our star is unpredictable, and anything could happen next.
"This feels like a period where it's very strange... but also it stresses that we don't really understand the star that we live with." says Prof Harrison.
"Because it's complicated - it's a complex beast."
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-25743806
ramonmercado
CyberPunk
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- Eblana
Space weather aided the Taliban. Sunni spots.
ramonmercado
CyberPunk
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- Eblana
Ancient Solar Storms.
What happened to the sun over 7,000 years ago?
Analysis of tree rings reveals highly abnormal solar activity in the mid-Holocene
Date:
February 7, 2017
Source:
Nagoya University
Summary:
By analyzing the level of a carbon isotope in tree rings from a specimen of an ancient bristlecone pine, researchers have revealed that the sun exhibited a unique pattern of activity in 5480 BC. By comparing this event with other similar but more recent phenomena, they reported that this event may have involved a change in the sun's magnetic activity, or a number of successive solar burst emissions. ...
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/02/170207092720.htm
What happened to the sun over 7,000 years ago?
Analysis of tree rings reveals highly abnormal solar activity in the mid-Holocene
Date:
February 7, 2017
Source:
Nagoya University
Summary:
By analyzing the level of a carbon isotope in tree rings from a specimen of an ancient bristlecone pine, researchers have revealed that the sun exhibited a unique pattern of activity in 5480 BC. By comparing this event with other similar but more recent phenomena, they reported that this event may have involved a change in the sun's magnetic activity, or a number of successive solar burst emissions. ...
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/02/170207092720.htm
maximus otter
Recovering policeman
- Joined
- Aug 9, 2001
- Messages
- 14,013
NASA has shared a spectacular picture of the Northern Lights adorning the sky in Iceland - but warned that the "beauty and the beast" aurora could wreak havoc here on Earth.
The image was captured by astronomer Juan Carlos Casado in 2016, and selected as NASA's Astronomy Picture of the Day on Sunday.
It shows the aurora borealis over Thingvallavatn Lake in Iceland - a lake that partly fills a fault that divides Earth's large Eurasian and North American tectonic plates.
"Admire the beauty but fear the beast," wrote Casado, in his picture caption.
"The beauty is the aurora overhead, here taking the form of great green spiral, seen between picturesque clouds with the bright Moon to the side and stars in the background. The beast is the wave of charged particles that creates the aurora but might, one day, impair civilization."
Aurora are the result of collisions between electrically charged particles from the sun and particles in the Earth's atmosphere.
While they are usually harmless, scientists warn that a particularly strong solar flare could one day release a pulse of charged particles capable of bringing down Earth's communication networks.
This happened once before in 1859, when a pulse of charged particles associated with a solar flare bombarded Earth's magnetosphere, creating a so-called "Carrington Event".
https://www.mirror.co.uk/science/nasa-warns-spectacular-beauty-beast-14446044
maximus otter
The image was captured by astronomer Juan Carlos Casado in 2016, and selected as NASA's Astronomy Picture of the Day on Sunday.
It shows the aurora borealis over Thingvallavatn Lake in Iceland - a lake that partly fills a fault that divides Earth's large Eurasian and North American tectonic plates.
"Admire the beauty but fear the beast," wrote Casado, in his picture caption.
"The beauty is the aurora overhead, here taking the form of great green spiral, seen between picturesque clouds with the bright Moon to the side and stars in the background. The beast is the wave of charged particles that creates the aurora but might, one day, impair civilization."
Aurora are the result of collisions between electrically charged particles from the sun and particles in the Earth's atmosphere.
While they are usually harmless, scientists warn that a particularly strong solar flare could one day release a pulse of charged particles capable of bringing down Earth's communication networks.
This happened once before in 1859, when a pulse of charged particles associated with a solar flare bombarded Earth's magnetosphere, creating a so-called "Carrington Event".
https://www.mirror.co.uk/science/nasa-warns-spectacular-beauty-beast-14446044
maximus otter
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- Out of Bounds
Did anyone else wonder whether the fault beneath the lake may be the more terrifying 'beast'?
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- 29,622
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- Out of Bounds
Ruh-roh ... Newly published research findings indicate the Carrington Event wasn't all that atypical, and other events of its relative magnitude probably occur more frequently than previously suspected ...
https://www.sciencealert.com/powerful-solar-storms-may-be-much-more-common-than-we-thought
ABSTRACT FROM THE PUBLISHED PAPER:
https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1029/2019SW002269
FULL STORY:
https://www.sciencealert.com/powerful-solar-storms-may-be-much-more-common-than-we-thought
ABSTRACT FROM THE PUBLISHED PAPER:
https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1029/2019SW002269
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Our ability to piece together the historical incidence and frequency of solar storms has now been enhanced by researching known ancient astronomical records from the Mesopotamian region.
SOURCE: https://www.sciencealert.com/an-anc...used-to-verify-the-date-of-a-huge-solar-storm
SOURCE: https://www.sciencealert.com/an-anc...used-to-verify-the-date-of-a-huge-solar-storm
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- Out of Bounds
Here are the bibliographic particulars and the abstract for the published report ...
SOURCE: https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3847/2041-8213/ab42e4
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It's possible that a recent flare signals the end of a solar cycle and progressively increasing solar flare activity.
FULL STORY: https://www.livescience.com/sun-unleashes-biggest-solar-flare-since-2017.html
FULL STORY: https://www.livescience.com/sun-unleashes-biggest-solar-flare-since-2017.html
ramonmercado
CyberPunk
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- Eblana
Solar storms: News from SIGCOMM 2021
SCIENTISTS HAVE KNOWN for decades that an extreme solar storm, or coronal mass ejection, could damage electrical grids and potentially cause prolonged blackouts.
The repercussions would be felt everywhere from global supply chains and transportation to internet and GPS access. Less examined until now, though, is the impact such a solar emission could have on internet infrastructure specifically. New research shows that the failures could be catastrophic, particularly for the undersea cables that underpin the global internet.
At the SIGCOMM 2021 data communication conference on Thursday, Sangeetha Abdu Jyothi of the University of California, Irvine presented “Solar Superstorms: Planning for an Internet Apocalypse,” an examination of the damage a fast-moving cloud of magnetized solar particles could cause the global internet. Abdu Jyothi's research points out an additional nuance to a blackout-causing solar storm: the scenario where even if power returns in hours or days, mass internet outages persist.
There's some good news up front. Abdu Jyothi found that local and regional internet infrastructure would be at low risk of damage even in a massive solar storm, because optical fiber itself isn't affected by geomagnetically induced currents. Short cable spans are also grounded very regularly. But for long undersea cables that connect continents, the risks are much greater. A solar storm that disrupted a number of these cables around the world could cause a massive loss of connectivity by cutting countries off at the source, even while leaving local infrastructure intact. It would be like cutting flow to an apartment building because of a water main break.
“What really got me thinking about this is that with the pandemic we saw how unprepared the world was. There was no protocol to deal with it effectively, and it’s the same with internet resilience,” Abdu Jyothi told WIRED ahead of her talk. “Our infrastructure is not prepared for a large-scale solar event. We have very limited understanding of what the extent of the damage would be.”
That information gap mostly comes from lack of data. Severe solar storms are so rare that there are only three main examples to go off of in recent history. Large events in 1859 and 1921 demonstrated that geomagnetic disturbances can disrupt electrical infrastructure and communication lines like telegraph wires. During the massive 1859 “Carrington Event,” compass needles swung wildly and unpredictably, and the aurora borealis was visible at the equator in Colombia. But those geomagnetic disturbances occurred before modern electric grids were established. A moderate-severity solar storm in 1989 knocked out Hydro-Québec's grid and caused a nine-hour blackout in northeast Canada, but that too occurred before the rise of modern internet infrastructure. ...
https://www.wired.com/story/solar-storm-internet-apocalypse-undersea-cables/
SCIENTISTS HAVE KNOWN for decades that an extreme solar storm, or coronal mass ejection, could damage electrical grids and potentially cause prolonged blackouts.
The repercussions would be felt everywhere from global supply chains and transportation to internet and GPS access. Less examined until now, though, is the impact such a solar emission could have on internet infrastructure specifically. New research shows that the failures could be catastrophic, particularly for the undersea cables that underpin the global internet.
At the SIGCOMM 2021 data communication conference on Thursday, Sangeetha Abdu Jyothi of the University of California, Irvine presented “Solar Superstorms: Planning for an Internet Apocalypse,” an examination of the damage a fast-moving cloud of magnetized solar particles could cause the global internet. Abdu Jyothi's research points out an additional nuance to a blackout-causing solar storm: the scenario where even if power returns in hours or days, mass internet outages persist.
There's some good news up front. Abdu Jyothi found that local and regional internet infrastructure would be at low risk of damage even in a massive solar storm, because optical fiber itself isn't affected by geomagnetically induced currents. Short cable spans are also grounded very regularly. But for long undersea cables that connect continents, the risks are much greater. A solar storm that disrupted a number of these cables around the world could cause a massive loss of connectivity by cutting countries off at the source, even while leaving local infrastructure intact. It would be like cutting flow to an apartment building because of a water main break.
“What really got me thinking about this is that with the pandemic we saw how unprepared the world was. There was no protocol to deal with it effectively, and it’s the same with internet resilience,” Abdu Jyothi told WIRED ahead of her talk. “Our infrastructure is not prepared for a large-scale solar event. We have very limited understanding of what the extent of the damage would be.”
That information gap mostly comes from lack of data. Severe solar storms are so rare that there are only three main examples to go off of in recent history. Large events in 1859 and 1921 demonstrated that geomagnetic disturbances can disrupt electrical infrastructure and communication lines like telegraph wires. During the massive 1859 “Carrington Event,” compass needles swung wildly and unpredictably, and the aurora borealis was visible at the equator in Colombia. But those geomagnetic disturbances occurred before modern electric grids were established. A moderate-severity solar storm in 1989 knocked out Hydro-Québec's grid and caused a nine-hour blackout in northeast Canada, but that too occurred before the rise of modern internet infrastructure. ...
https://www.wired.com/story/solar-storm-internet-apocalypse-undersea-cables/
Solar storm warning: Get ready! NASA forecasts 'significant' flare – 'blackout' fears
"A SOLAR storm is set to cause a radio "blackout" across vast swathes of the earth after the sun blasts out its most powerful kind of flare.
"NASA predictions confirm impact by early October 31.
"Expect aurora to mid-latitudes, as well as GPS reception issues and #amateur radio disruptions on Earth's nightside!"
The US Space Weather Prediction Centre has issued a G3 (Strong) Geomagnetic Storm Watch warning."
https://www.express.co.uk/news/scie...ning-forecasts-sun-flare-radio-blackout-fears
"A SOLAR storm is set to cause a radio "blackout" across vast swathes of the earth after the sun blasts out its most powerful kind of flare.
"NASA predictions confirm impact by early October 31.
"Expect aurora to mid-latitudes, as well as GPS reception issues and #amateur radio disruptions on Earth's nightside!"
The US Space Weather Prediction Centre has issued a G3 (Strong) Geomagnetic Storm Watch warning."
https://www.express.co.uk/news/scie...ning-forecasts-sun-flare-radio-blackout-fears
Gizmos Mama
Ephemeral Spectre
- Joined
- Sep 23, 2015
- Messages
- 426
- Location
- Southern Alberta, Canada
Here's an interesting video that suggests we may be in for a lot of Aurora in the near future.
TIP: You can use your oven (or any metal box) as a Faraday cage to protect small electronics.
Unplug the oven, turn off the electronics and put them in the center of the rack, in or on top of something electrically isolating. A ceramic or glass bowl would be perfect. Once the event is over, your stuff should still work.
Nothing else may be working, like power, GPS, phone and internet, but your devices won't be fried, at least!
TIP: You can use your oven (or any metal box) as a Faraday cage to protect small electronics.
Unplug the oven, turn off the electronics and put them in the center of the rack, in or on top of something electrically isolating. A ceramic or glass bowl would be perfect. Once the event is over, your stuff should still work.
Nothing else may be working, like power, GPS, phone and internet, but your devices won't be fried, at least!
RaM
Justified & Ancient
- Joined
- Mar 12, 2015
- Messages
- 3,807
- Location
- NW UK
Live Aurora cam from Lapland think the bottom one is true live the first replays.
https://www.youtube.com/c/AuroraBorealisLIVE/live
https://www.youtube.com/c/AuroraBorealisLIVE/live
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DrPaulLee
Justified & Ancient
- Joined
- Aug 7, 2002
- Messages
- 2,031
I regularly follow this website and it's twitter feed https://www.spaceweatherlive.com/
DrPaulLee
Justified & Ancient
- Joined
- Aug 7, 2002
- Messages
- 2,031
I also create my own auroral oval which I update every so often
http://www.paullee.com/misc/aurora/auroramap.php
http://www.paullee.com/misc/aurora/auroramap.php
- Joined
- Jul 19, 2004
- Messages
- 29,622
- Location
- Out of Bounds
Newly published research reports evidence of a very powerful solar storm that hit earth circa 9,200 years ago. Even more disturbing is the fact this storm occurred during a solar minimum. This implies we don't understand solar cycles as well as we think we do.
Paleari, C.I., Mekhaldi, F., Adolphi, F. et al.
Cosmogenic radionuclides reveal an extreme solar particle storm near a solar minimum 9125 years BP.
Nat Commun 13, 214 (2022).
https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-021-27891-4
FULL RESEARCH REPORT: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-021-27891-4
FULL STORY: https://www.livescience.com/ancient-solar-storm-solar-minimum
Paleari, C.I., Mekhaldi, F., Adolphi, F. et al.
Cosmogenic radionuclides reveal an extreme solar particle storm near a solar minimum 9125 years BP.
Nat Commun 13, 214 (2022).
https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-021-27891-4
FULL RESEARCH REPORT: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-021-27891-4
- Joined
- Jul 19, 2004
- Messages
- 29,622
- Location
- Out of Bounds
A recently erupted solar flare is expected to have reached the earth, and its effects (e.g., auroras) should be evident for the next 24 hours or so.
FULL STORY: https://www.upi.com/Science_News/2022/02/02/world-solar-flare-hitting-earth-wednesday/5011643822548/
'Hunker down'. This is due to hit overnight.
Solar storm warning as 'strong triple threat' to hit Earth as soon as Monday
Experts say that there is a 20 per cent chance of the storm impacting the UK.
https://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/lifestyle/solar-storm-warning-strong-triple-26455286
Solar storm warning as 'strong triple threat' to hit Earth as soon as Monday
Experts say that there is a 20 per cent chance of the storm impacting the UK.
https://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/lifestyle/solar-storm-warning-strong-triple-26455286
ramonmercado
CyberPunk
- Joined
- Aug 19, 2003
- Messages
- 58,319
- Location
- Eblana
Dark plasma on it's way.
A cloud of "dark plasma" erupted from the sun on Sunday and is predicted to make contact with Earth on Wednesday, giving rise to the possibility of a minor geomagnetic storm.
The eruption of material is known as a coronal mass ejection (CME)—a cloud of charged solar gas and magnetic fields. It was launched toward Earth on August 14 from a region of the sun known as AR3076.
Observations from NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO), seen above, show the moment the CME was launched from the sun's surface, appearing as a brief dark cloud towards the end of the clip at around 11:30 UT.
https://www.newsweek.com/solar-plasma-cme-eruption-space-weather-1733624
A cloud of "dark plasma" erupted from the sun on Sunday and is predicted to make contact with Earth on Wednesday, giving rise to the possibility of a minor geomagnetic storm.
The eruption of material is known as a coronal mass ejection (CME)—a cloud of charged solar gas and magnetic fields. It was launched toward Earth on August 14 from a region of the sun known as AR3076.
Observations from NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO), seen above, show the moment the CME was launched from the sun's surface, appearing as a brief dark cloud towards the end of the clip at around 11:30 UT.
https://www.newsweek.com/solar-plasma-cme-eruption-space-weather-1733624