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Flare Sends A Gigaton Of Solar Detritus Toward Earth

Posted by timothy on from the ball-of-incandescent-gas dept.

Dr. Zowie writes: "This morning at about 10:00 UT, a major explosion occured on the Sun. The solar X-ray output went up by over 1,000 times. About a billion tons of material are speeding toward Earth at over a million miles per hour, and should hit sometime in the next couple of days. Low latitude aurorae and anomalies in radio communications and power service are likely consequences. You can see the event from the SOHO spacecraft's home page -- images and movies are here. In the movies, watch for the burst of radiation hitting SOHO about 13:00 UT -- that's a high energy proton storm caused by the flare itself. You can also see the earthly effects of a similar event from last year."

7 of 148 comments (clear)

  1. Human Behaviour by darkPHi3er · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    apparently even Sol feels like throwing up when he sees the way supposedly sentient creatures treat each other....

    "if they do this in a green tree...."

    now, if we could only steer this stuff towards Northern Afghanistan....?????

    Damn It! Where's Bruce Willis when we NEED him????

    --
    Ten quid, she's so easy to blind. And not a word is spoken...
  2. Now, if only... by jwales · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    Now, if only we can catch Osama Bin Laden in time to launch him into space to catch this thing in the face...

    --
    Wikia
    1. Re:Now, if only... by Xx_DrNicotine_xX · · Score: 0, Offtopic

      chmod a+x /bin/laden

  3. Who's responsible? by migstradamus · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    Hasn't anyone decided who to blame for this yet? We must have someone to blame or we can't really talk about it. Everything should either be blamed on Osama bin Laden or on Bill Gates from now on, just for simplicity. It would make things so much easier for those poor news anchors out there currently struggling with big words like consequentialism and causation.

  4. It must be Bin Laden again ! by javaDragon · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    No need for evidence, let's blame Bin Laden as last week's event. After all who can make a better scapegoat ? Any forgotten spacecraft operation manual written in arabic in the incoming garbage ?

    --
    -- javaDragon is an instance of JavaDragon.
  5. Can we blame Bill Gates for Osama Bin Laden? by Perianwyr+Stormcrow · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    That would fit in with the general "The Gates Satan" theme here.

    --

    What we call folk wisdom is often no more than a kind of expedient stupidity.-Edward Abbey

  6. Most important effect by Jethro · · Score: 1, Offtopic

    I don't see any mention of the most important side effects - this thing messes up pagers and cellphones.

    To be on the safe side, I wrapped my cellphone and pagers up in tinfoil and left them in the trunk of my car, the most radiation resistant location I could think of.

    --


    In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is kinky.