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Flare Sends A Gigaton Of Solar Detritus Toward Earth
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."
(sp?) If not, we would be Tater Tots in about 10 hours or so. Really, though, without an electromagnetic field, our planet would pretty much be blasted by the "solar wind" to the point that Mars or Venus would look like a vacation area compared to that version of hell. Another point not to forget is the ozone shield which filters out most UV radiation, where no shield was good at first (to cause mutations into higher lifeforms, like plants, but is now bad) but now is essential to not irradiate humans into extinction. Of course CO2 is bad/good because it will raise/lower global temperatures soon/never so our lives will be altered now/never. This last part is motly right.
Vote monkeys into Congress. They are cheaper and more trustworthy.
http://www.spaceweather.com has more information about this flare.
n Storms
It is a class S3 flare, which is strong enough to expose people travelling in commercial jets at high altitude to radiation equivalent to 1 chest x-ray. On average, the Sun only has about a dozen storms this strong or stronger every solar cycle (11 years). In other words, it's a fairly big one. (reference: http://www.sec.noaa.gov/NOAAscales/#SolarRadiatio
The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing. - Edmund Burke
Satellites will likely be affected, indeed some may either have their onboard electronics so disrupted they cease to function temporarily or permanently, in other cases the cameras they use for determining proper altitude may become so filled with transient glitches that they loose lock & station-keeping is compromised.
The Earth's ionosphere will expand and the Van Allen Radiation Belts will become heavily charged resulting in numerous radio transmission oddities ranging from increased static interference to long skips. Low Earth Orbit objects will experience increased drag and possibly require altitude increases. Inhabitants of the ISS should be protected by the magnetosphere though increased radiation counts will be experienced.
Long-distance electrical transmission lines will build up significant charge. The lines in Northern Quebec are especially vulnerable from to their high latitude and lack of grounding due to the ancient granitic nature of the Canadian Shield. However measures put in place since the "Great Northeast Blackout of 1965" should be sufficient to keep any failures local and not produce a domino effect.
To Geeks the result will be poor phone and dataline connections, possibly isolated electrical outages. TV signals will be poor as will most other forms of radio & microwave transmissions. Doubtless a few bits will flip from one state to another in the course of this but this will only be noticeable in very large samples.
The good news is we've just passed the first Solar Maximum of the Information Age without great issue and this bodes well for the future. Though storms like this current one are possible (with diminishing likelihood) for the next year or so it appears fears of widespread disruption due to Solar-Max of were unfounded and along with the GPS rollover, y2k, unix t_time going to 10 digits, various odd dates etc. we've managed to come through all remarkably unscathed.
I don't read ACs: If a post isn't worth so much as a nom de plume to its author then I wont bother either.
Yours Yazeran
Plan: to go to Mars one day with a hammer.
HF radio propagation, and to a lesser extent VHF, depends on the relative height and RF permeability of the D, E, and F1 / F2 layers of the ionosphere. Both of these properties can change dramatically when the earth is bombarded with charged particles and high-energy photons from solar flares.
:) I'm not sure about the exact mechanism of ionospheric excitation during a solar flare, for instance: it might be due primarily to heavy charged particles from the solar wind, or it might be due to high-energy photons knocking loose a few extra electrons here and there. Any physics types around who can clarify?
Normal ionospheric behavior is the reason why AM broadcast radio reception varies so much between daytime and nighttime hours. The lower (D) layer of the ionosphere is much thinner and higher at night when it's not being hammered by as much solar radiation. The AM broadcast band is near the very bottom of the high-frequency radio spectrum, and long-distance propagation of lower radio frequencies depends primarily on refraction by the D layer. So whenever the D layer rises, the "skip zone" around a given transmitter grows considerably. It's common to see nearby AM stations fade out at night, while even low-power transmissions become audible from thousands of miles away.
Solar flares have the same basic effect as the day/night cycle, but to a much larger degree. They usually just hose the entire HF spectrum, but sometimes the effect is very different. Under the right conditions, "ducts" and other layering effects can occur in the ionosphere, capable of propagating signals extreme distances with much less than normal loss. When you pick up a 5-watt ham radio station in Australia on your handheld shortwave radio in Texas, it's a safe bet that some unusual solar and/or geomagnetic activity is taking place.
Disclaimer: I'm a ham operator myself, but it's been a long time since I operated on any frequency below 10 GHz, so some or all of the details above may be shaky.
Dahlmann tightly grips the knife, which he may have no idea how to use, and steps out into the plain.
Also the qouted gigaton of mass loss is not really that much. The Sun has 2x10^30 kg, and loses 5x10^9 kg per second (one from solar wind, four more from conversion of mass into the radiated energy). So one gigaton is just 200 seconds of normal mass loss.
In times of solar flares, the BOFH recommends: "MAGNETS. Wrap your disks up in a pillow case with lots of magnets - Solar Flares hate that"
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