Posted by
Hemos
on from the wham-bam-thank-you-sun dept.
glyneth writes "No, it's not a child of Storm and Magneto, but this weekend Earth has a 40% chance of experiencing a geomagnetic storm, according to this article. It could likely affect satellites in orbit along with power on the ground, as happened in 1989 in North America."
NASA has done loads of studies on radiation and astronauts. There's a really good write-up of it here.
-- -- V was its Victim who cried out "But why?" --
kick ass, told you i was smart to prepare for y2k
by
Tritium+Media
·
· Score: 2
hehe i told you all it was smart to prepare for y2k heh, i still have all my ammo and all the dehydrated food i bought, hehe know any were i can get a dehydrated keg:)
a smaller one hit us on Wednesday
by
fence
·
· Score: 3
Today's solar flare was predicted, and was expected to be larger than the one that hit us on Wendesday. --- Interested in the Colorado Lottery?
--
Interested in the Colorado Lottery or Powerball games?
check out http://colotto.com
Re:a smaller one hit us on Wednesday
by
sjames
·
· Score: 2
According to CNN, we were hit by a massiv e solar flare on Wednesday at around 6:30am EDT. Wednesday's flare caused a few blackouts. Today's solar flare was predicted, and was expected to be larger than the one that hit us on Wendesday.
It's the same flare. First, the X-rays hit the atmosphere and generate bursts of RF energy as they interact. Ther the reletivly slow charged particles hit a few days later and potentially cause a geomagnetic storm. The latter event affects technology more than the former.
(Insert gratuitous/. reference of your choice here)
If this generates a few mutants, I predict that next year's X-men sequel will be old hat.
-- Help achieve Liberty in your lifetime - join the Free State Project - http://www.freestateproject.org
I think there's something we can all learn...
by
Dirtside
·
· Score: 4
...from this:
The sun is a mass of incandescent gas, a gigantic nuclear furnace, where hydrogen is built into helium at a temperature of millions of degrees.
-- "Destroy science and religion. Science would re-emerge exactly the same; but not religion." - Penn Jillette, paraphrased
Re:I think there's something we can all learn...
by
Dirtside
·
· Score: 2
Incandescence is the emission of visible light by a hot object. No doubt the fusion process itself produces some photons (although I could be wrong), but when matter is heated (i.e. energy is added to its electrons to raise them above the ground state), the electrons will spontaneously emit photons so as to lower their energy states. This is the exact same thing that happens with an incandescing light bulb. So the sun actually is incandescing.
Fluorescence is different but I'm not really clear on how it works; I don't know whether the sun fluoresces or not.
Keep in mind this is all based on my understanding; I am not a physicist and I could be completely wrong.
-- "Destroy science and religion. Science would re-emerge exactly the same; but not religion." - Penn Jillette, paraphrased
Anything to do with the VHF skip?
by
DMDx86
·
· Score: 2
There has been some great VHF band openings for the past few days. I heard several people in Dallas (I'm in Houston) talking on 2 meters. I also heard some people in Indiana down on 6 meters. Cool stuff.
Re:Anything to do with the VHF skip?
by
Tau+Zero
·
· Score: 2
Yeah, it probably has a lot to do with the VHF skip. The X-rays from the flare probably generated a lot of strong ionization, and I understand that often pushes the MUF up pretty high. --
-- Time is Nature's way of keeping everything from happening at once... the bitch.
Want to see the charts?
by
Quincunx42
·
· Score: 4
Go here to see charts and graphs of solar activity. You will also notice the little red box in the upper corner is displaying a "Storm!" happening right now. I noticed it doing the same earlier this week.
-- These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
Re:oribtal tanning saloon
by
Claudius
·
· Score: 2
Unless it is an especially violent geomagnetic storm it should pose no huge threat to astronauts on the ISS. The ISS lives in low earth orbit (unlike many satellites which are at geosynchronous orbit) and as a consequence it is shielded quite well by Earth's magnetic field.
Geomagnetic Storms are cool. There should be great northern lights this week for the northerners. Does anyone know why power grids are specificallly affected?
I recall within the last couple weeks, there was an extremely large 'Coronal Mass Ejection' heading towards earth. It was posted on/., and the TV crews explained about geomagnetic storms, power fluctuations, etc. possibly happening. Is this one that much bigger than the one a couple weeks ago?
Now, to my eye, there's more "higher colour" on today's picture (the 14th). The yellow band goes across the ocean, instead of breaking up. The orange patch over Moscow is larger. The purple patches over Indo-China are huge on Friday.
I suspect there was more UV today than would have been without this solar flare.
And I'm now quite pink. If only I'd had my peril sensitive sunglasses: I'd have just *known* that a major astronomical event had happened, and was about to threaten my life!
You can view movies of the event taken by instruments on the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) satellite here. These are pretty neat to see as you can see the actual coronal mass ejection (CME) as it shoots out from the sun. This is the largest such event of this solar cycle. Another great space weather resource is the NOAA site here.
In case you were wondering...
by
evanbd
·
· Score: 3
The reason that power grids are affected is reasonably simple. There is a large influx of charged particles coming our way at high speeds. Charged particles in motion set up magnetic fields. A changing magnetic field produces currents in loops of wire. A power grid contains LOTS of wire. You can read all about it in any physics text, under Ampere's law, and the Biot-Savart Law, and Faraday's law of induction. This will occur in any loop of wire, but we care about the electrical grid because we care about what form of current comes out of it, and that could change. The earth's magnetic field means that the majority of the particles come in near the poles, causing more problems for those in the north or south. Of course, the northern hemispher is pointed closer to the sun right now (that's why its summer), so the north gets affected more than the south (south of the equator that is).
Part of the reason that Hydro Quebec suffered such major losses the previous time is that they run their main distribution network at a higher voltage; I think it's at 635kV instead of the 500kV that most other distribution networks use. Now, under normal circumstances, higher voltage => lower current for the same power => less I2R losses, and thus a more efficient system. Unfortunately, the cost of the more efficient system is that it's a lot more prone to corona effects, which causes problems when the air starts to get ionized, as happens in a thunderstorm or heavy solar storm.
Other problem with Hydro Quebec is just the sheer length of the lines, which of course they can't do much about given the sheer size of the province. Solar storms play hell with local magnetic fiels, and the longer a power line is, the more power gets induced in it when the magnetic field changes...
Of course, given how much of the system had to be replaced after the ice storm a couple of years back, hopefully they've better isolated some of the distribution lines by now.
-- Bryan Feir
Re:oribtal tanning saloon
by
Tau+Zero
·
· Score: 2
Not shielded that well. Especially over the South Atlantic Anomaly, high-energy protons can come in and give astronauts quite a dose. One of the astronauts who flew on Mir mentioned that he could see the Cerenkov radiation flashses inside his eyes as the protons went through his head while Mir went through the SAA.
Fifty miles of atmosphere is a shield that's going to be awfully hard for a space station to equal, let alone beat. --
-- Time is Nature's way of keeping everything from happening at once... the bitch.
When the magnetic field is depressed away from the sun and as the earth rotates you have a changing magnetic field. Now in northern Canada the ground is solid non-conductive rock. On top of this rock plane was a loop of high tension wires spanning thousands of miles. When you have a loop of conducter and a changing magnetic field you generate electricity.
Unfortunately the power grid was designed to carry AC high voltage, low current power. The storm produced DC low voltage, high current power. When they tried to bleed the power off into the ground they discovered that a non conductive ground doesn't work very well as a power sync. As a result wires melted, transformers blew, and all power was disrupted.
Since then they have broken up the wire loops so there is little to no induction. Bored their grounding spikes deeper into the ground to insure that they could actually ground circuits. And placed many more circuit breakers into place.
I think if there is a problem it won't be a result of a power overload in the grid itself.
...he could see the Cerenkov radiation flashses inside his eyes...
While I don't doubt that he saw something, and it may well have been correlated to enhanced levels of radiation experienced in the SAA, claims of GeV+ protons produced from geomagnetism are difficult to believe. (Electrons are accelerated to relativistic speeds in solar flares and coronal mass ejections, the most violent geomagnetic phenomena in the heliosphere, but the ions remain non-relativistic). IMO a more plausible explanation for what the cosmonaut saw would be that shielding from the cosmic ray flux was lower in that region due to a thinner atmosphere/ionosphere above him, so more ambient cosmic rays could pass through his body.
Fifty miles of atmosphere is a shield that's going to be awfully hard for a space station to equal, let alone beat.
I agree with you, but my point was that the danger from energetic particles of heliospheric origin would be much lower for the ISS than for a satellite in geosynchronous orbit. Shielding from ambient cosmic ray flux is a different matter altogether--irrespective of the level of solar activity, people living in Santa Fe (7000 ft.) receive a much higher dose of cosmic rays than people living in Los Angeles (sea level). In LEO, away from the magnetic poles, Earth's magnetic field offers quite good protection from energetic plasma streaming from the Sun. The plasma can still find its way into the magnetosphere eventually, but this is an indirect process, with most of the highly energetic plasma confined to magnetic flux tubes far above the orbiting space station.
High-Frequency Active Auroral Research Project Homepage here This is a controversial project that might be of what you are talking about. There is a book out about it Angels Don't Play this HAARP by Dr. Nick Begich and Jeane Manning. Pretty good read. Basically states that depending on the frequency that they push up into the sky, they can do some really funky stuff. Good references to some work Tesla has worked on too...
Slashdot Mirror
If this happens, I may have to shut down my PC over the weekend and go out in the sun.. Have you seen that thing? Its Hot!
air and light and time and space
Should also produce some awesome auroras over most of the U.S., maybe tonight and probably tomorrow night!! kewl!!
NASA has done loads of studies on radiation and astronauts.
There's a really good write-up of it here.
-- V was its Victim who cried out "But why?" --
hehe i told you all it was smart to prepare for y2k heh, i still have all my ammo and all the dehydrated food i bought, hehe know any were i can get a dehydrated keg :)
According to CNN, we were hit by a massiv e solar flare on Wednesday at around 6:30am EDT.
Wednesday's flare caused a few blackouts.
Today's solar flare was predicted, and was expected to be larger than the one that hit us on Wendesday.
---
Interested in the Colorado Lottery?
Interested in the Colorado Lottery or Powerball games?
check out http://colotto.com
(Insert gratuitous /. reference of your choice here)
If this generates a few mutants, I predict that
next year's X-men sequel will be old hat.
Help achieve Liberty in your lifetime - join the Free State Project - http://www.freestateproject.org
The sun is a mass of incandescent gas, a gigantic nuclear furnace, where hydrogen is built into helium at a temperature of millions of degrees.
"Destroy science and religion. Science would re-emerge exactly the same; but not religion." - Penn Jillette, paraphrased
There has been some great VHF band openings for the past few days. I heard several people in Dallas (I'm in Houston) talking on 2 meters. I also heard some people in Indiana down on 6 meters. Cool stuff.
Go here to see charts and graphs of solar activity. You will also notice the little red box in the upper corner is displaying a "Storm!" happening right now. I noticed it doing the same earlier this week.
REPENT OR BE STRUCK DOWN BY FIRE AND BRIMSTONE!
Or if nothing else more charged particles and radiation will hit you.
Oh never mind. I guess it wasn't that funny anyway.
Disclamer - Opinion of Person
...the only thing that can produce significant OpenBSD downtimes.
The Second Amendment Sisters
Finding God in a Dog
www.spaceweather.com
if it ain't broke, then fix it 'till it is!
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
Unless it is an especially violent geomagnetic storm it should pose no huge threat to astronauts on the ISS. The ISS lives in low earth orbit (unlike many satellites which are at geosynchronous orbit) and as a consequence it is shielded quite well by Earth's magnetic field.
Geomagnetic Storms are cool. There should be great northern lights this week for the northerners. Does anyone know why power grids are specificallly affected?
-- Moondog
Yes. I realize.
/., and the TV crews explained about geomagnetic storms, power fluctuations, etc. possibly happening.
I recall within the last couple weeks, there was an extremely large 'Coronal Mass Ejection' heading towards earth. It was posted on
Is this one that much bigger than the one a couple weeks ago?
If you want more than charts and graphs, check out this realtime picture of Auroral Activity in the Northern Hemisphere.
It's usually cool to look at, but now it's fascinating!
Kevin Fox
Kevin Fox
"I will bring your satellites, your power grids, your cellular phones, and your governments too their knees unless you give me... $1 million dollars!"
No boom today. Boom tomorrow. There's always a boom tomorrow. - Cmdr. Susan Ivanova
Time to stop the local nutcase, steal his aluminum foil hat, and head for the hills!
There is more information on the Solar eruption over here on Spaceref.com.
"The first time I got drunk, I got married. The second time I bought a chimpanzee, after that I stayed sober" Arian Seid
I think it's already affecting the ))DF)(#$*)0fa0d*)#*$)*#$)0808myasdfjthgkbndjfvaerk t ad ertkh ah
I got a sunburn this morning, around 10am to noon. I don't think I was in the sun long enough to have normally been burned.
And this two days after my doctor nagged me about being careful with sunburn.
I'm currently hunting for a UV index chart. I wanna see if I just experienced really bad timing...
--
--
Don't like it? Respond with words, not karma.
You can view movies of the event taken by instruments on the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) satellite here. These are pretty neat to see as you can see the actual coronal mass ejection (CME) as it shoots out from the sun. This is the largest such event of this solar cycle. Another great space weather resource is the NOAA site here.
The reason that power grids are affected is reasonably simple. There is a large influx of charged particles coming our way at high speeds. Charged particles in motion set up magnetic fields. A changing magnetic field produces currents in loops of wire. A power grid contains LOTS of wire. You can read all about it in any physics text, under Ampere's law, and the Biot-Savart Law, and Faraday's law of induction. This will occur in any loop of wire, but we care about the electrical grid because we care about what form of current comes out of it, and that could change. The earth's magnetic field means that the majority of the particles come in near the poles, causing more problems for those in the north or south. Of course, the northern hemispher is pointed closer to the sun right now (that's why its summer), so the north gets affected more than the south (south of the equator that is).
Part of the reason that Hydro Quebec suffered such major losses the previous time is that they run their main distribution network at a higher voltage; I think it's at 635kV instead of the 500kV that most other distribution networks use. Now, under normal circumstances, higher voltage => lower current for the same power => less I2R losses, and thus a more efficient system. Unfortunately, the cost of the more efficient system is that it's a lot more prone to corona effects, which causes problems when the air starts to get ionized, as happens in a thunderstorm or heavy solar storm.
Other problem with Hydro Quebec is just the sheer length of the lines, which of course they can't do much about given the sheer size of the province. Solar storms play hell with local magnetic fiels, and the longer a power line is, the more power gets induced in it when the magnetic field changes...
Of course, given how much of the system had to be replaced after the ice storm a couple of years back, hopefully they've better isolated some of the distribution lines by now.
-- Bryan Feir
Fifty miles of atmosphere is a shield that's going to be awfully hard for a space station to equal, let alone beat.
--
Time is Nature's way of keeping everything from happening at once... the bitch.
the liftoff of the habitation module in Russia?
When the magnetic field is depressed away from the sun and as the earth rotates you have a changing magnetic field. Now in northern Canada the ground is solid non-conductive rock. On top of this rock plane was a loop of high tension wires spanning thousands of miles. When you have a loop of conducter and a changing magnetic field you generate electricity.
Unfortunately the power grid was designed to carry AC high voltage, low current power. The storm produced DC low voltage, high current power. When they tried to bleed the power off into the ground they discovered that a non conductive ground doesn't work very well as a power sync. As a result wires melted, transformers blew, and all power was disrupted.
Since then they have broken up the wire loops so there is little to no induction. Bored their grounding spikes deeper into the ground to insure that they could actually ground circuits. And placed many more circuit breakers into place.
I think if there is a problem it won't be a result of a power overload in the grid itself.
...he could see the Cerenkov radiation flashses inside his eyes...
While I don't doubt that he saw something, and it may well have been correlated to enhanced levels of radiation experienced in the SAA, claims of GeV+ protons produced from geomagnetism are difficult to believe. (Electrons are accelerated to relativistic speeds in solar flares and coronal mass ejections, the most violent geomagnetic phenomena in the heliosphere, but the ions remain non-relativistic). IMO a more plausible explanation for what the cosmonaut saw would be that shielding from the cosmic ray flux was lower in that region due to a thinner atmosphere/ionosphere above him, so more ambient cosmic rays could pass through his body.
Fifty miles of atmosphere is a shield that's going to be awfully hard for a space station to equal, let alone beat.
I agree with you, but my point was that the danger from energetic particles of heliospheric origin would be much lower for the ISS than for a satellite in geosynchronous orbit. Shielding from ambient cosmic ray flux is a different matter altogether--irrespective of the level of solar activity, people living in Santa Fe (7000 ft.) receive a much higher dose of cosmic rays than people living in Los Angeles (sea level). In LEO, away from the magnetic poles, Earth's magnetic field offers quite good protection from energetic plasma streaming from the Sun. The plasma can still find its way into the magnetosphere eventually, but this is an indirect process, with most of the highly energetic plasma confined to magnetic flux tubes far above the orbiting space station.
High-Frequency Active Auroral Research Project
Homepage here
This is a controversial project that might be of what you are talking about. There is a book out about it Angels Don't Play this HAARP by Dr. Nick Begich and Jeane Manning. Pretty good read. Basically states that depending on the frequency that they push up into the sky, they can do some really funky stuff. Good references to some work Tesla has worked on too...