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X17 Solar Flare Sends 2B Tons of Plasma at Earth
Dr. Zowie writes "This morning a very large solar flare erupted from a
large sunspot group that is crossing the face of the Sun. The explosion sent over 2 billion tons of material hurtling across the solar system toward Earth. Movies from the SOHO spacecraft show the flare
in UV and the associated
coronal mass ejection in visible light as they happened, and the impact of high energy protons that the flare launched at about half the speed of light. NOAA's Space Environment Center shows that the Sun's X-ray brightness went up 100x during the flare. Expect more aurora and geomagnetic effects in the next day or two!"
sun is fun :)
So will I be able to see an aurora from my latitude when it hits (40 deg. N)? And when will it hit earth, and over what time period?
We need more warning next time!
more
Sunspots.
"Remember, any tool can be the right tool." -- Red Green
Think there is a connection?
Too slow! Sorry! Modding you down now.
Kruzen! DHITB!
selling tinfoil hats.. 5 dollars
Now I can put out my plasma nets and catch some of it. I was beginning to worry that I'd never be able to restock my dwindling supply!
I am a filthy pirate.
Skinner: Ah, there's nothing more exciting than science. You get all
the fun of sitting still, being quiet, writing down numbers,
paying attention...[chuckles] Science has it all.
That's 1700 WTCs.
this will prolly get modded down, but it looks as if Shamash, the mesopotamian sun-god is finally voicing his opinion.....
xao
xao
http://TheHillforum.hopto.org
And I for one welcome our new plasmotic overloards!
The sunspot cycle (which takes 11 years) peaked in 2000, yet there's an unusually large amount of activity of late. There was a somewhat intense solar flare a few days ago, and now this one, which is believed to be the third-largest one on record. Are there any explanations for this large amount of activity at what should be a non-peak time?
Time to find the ethernet cables and plug in all those wireless laptops...
No 802.11b, 1 year!
The explosion sent over 2 billion tons of material hurtling across the solar system toward Earth
When I read this my heart missed a beat. The poster of this artical should have really made it more clear what he was talking about, people with weak hearts might have a heart attack. This isn't a joke...
When anger rises, think of the consequences.
Confucius (551 BC - 479 BC)
Well suppose its time to get out the factor 5000 and lay on the beach.
Rus
Cheap UK and US VPS
Why next day or two? At the half of speed of light, this stuff should hit us in about 16 minutes. So you can't really "prepare" for something like this. What am I missing?
How far south are we going to able to see them ?
Personally I could care less which spelling they use. As long as u understand what's said, for all intensive purposes it doesn't matter.
I'll have to take off my tinfoil hat!
I knew it... sooner or later those evil aliens would find a way to read my mind.
watch out for mutate sunomanbitches!
Forget Iraq, the 2004 Election, the economy...
And people question our space exploration budget!!! Silly people!
D.O.U.O.S.V.A.V.V.M.
M$ Winbloze sucks! :)
And the plural of beeeeeeeeotch is beeeeeeeotchae!
I just went outside and stared at the sun for ten minutes. I don't see anything.
At our shop, we have dozens of E4000, E4500 Sun servers running with 400mhz processors. From what I'm told, (its sounds stupid as hell but true) some of the 400 mhz processors were not shielded correctly, so on occasions such as this (CME's) we actually had machines panic on us...
If we don't stop these constant barrages from the Sun then the terrorists will win!
I thought this story was a dupe, but it turns out that this was what I was thinking of.
/. story about a huge flare in 1859 that knocked out communications across the northern hemisphere.
For those wondering, the link is a
-Ryan
AUWYHSTOT (Acronyms are Useless When You Have to Spell Them Out Too)
Why is the meadia scare mongering is making lots of people feel they should be hiding in underground bunkers.
"Go into the hall of mirrors and have a bloody hard look at yourself" - HG Nelson
I thought the classificatons ran only up to 9.
The owls are not what they seem
Gotta go tan. Look for something witty when I recover from my sunburn.
Thank god we've got all that extra CO2 in the atmosphere to protect us!
Anybody want a peanut?
So, this supports the previous story! Bravo SlashDot!
Eve Fairbanks says I drive a hybrid!LOL
We should have let X10 keep there pop unders with out charging them the fee for patent infringement. Now there mad and have launched there improved X17 plasma at us!
That blast on the last few frames of the CME mpg file is the CME that occured earlier today. The end of the movie looks like someone polka-dotted the screen, but from the NOAA's website, that's actually the high-charged protons from the CME hitting the camera's lens. This is one whopper of a storm.
Rule #1 -- Politics always trumps technology.
This unprovoked attack on the planet Earth cannot be allowed to go unpunished! I say we take a page from the Israelis and build an orbital wall that will prevent any further such incursions in the future!
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
"Movies from the SOHO spacecraft show the flare in UV and the associated coronal mass ejection in visible light as they happened, "
You meant about 8 minutes after they happened, right? Or did the government finally unveil their partnership with the space aliens on faster than light communication? *pulls tin foil hat down over ears*
BG
We have probably 30-40 different Sun servers at our shop that actually are affected by this. I guess (it sounds stupid as hell but its true) certain models of Sun's 400 mhz processors (used in anything from Ultra 10's to E4500's) were not shielded properly and actually can panic when substantial CME's like this occur.
but sometimes i just cant help it, this one time i took a pair of binoculars and stared at it for over an hour
I'm going to write my congresman right now, so that he can enact legislation (enforcable worldwide) to preclude the sun from spewing such trash throughout the solar system and ruining the environment. This is much greater than any SUV can produce and so we must stop the greatest offenders! This lack of responsible behavior must stop!
Is it getting warmer in here, or is it just me?
...does it run Linux? ;-)
This is just what California needs! And we thought the fires couldn't get any worse.....
In other news today, California requested 3000 Intergalactic Firemen.....
Fellowship 9/11
I told the sun last night that those eight beef soft taco supremes were a bad idea. But did he listen to me? NOOOooooo.
"I'm a leaf on the wind. Watch how I soar."
-Hoban Washburn
And people told me my tin-foil hat wouldn't come in useful!
tasks(723) drafts(105) languages(484) examples(29106)
What happened to the sunstorm from last week? space.com said it was a level 3 (out of 5) and we'd experience 12-18 hours of sporadic communication problems.
This is a test. This is a test of the emergency sig system. This has been only a test.
Am I the only one worried that this sounds like one big pile of something that could whack into Earth? Or is it just a bazillion tiny particles that add up to 2 billion tons?
I Am My Own Worst Enemy
The Sun is probably gonna explode. That would explain the sudden overtly visible urge to get rich quick (by some factions on this Earth), and the lack of interest towards fixing global warming.
It's just The Hindmost adjusting our orbit from the control center hidden in Mars. Soon those bussard ramjets are going to be glowing with plasma as the push us back on course.
Oh, and a couple million inhabitants will die in the process, but that's just collateral damage.
I'm disappointed.
If we start finding a bunch of Carbon 64 all over the world and it's resonating with these solar flares, we're in deep doodoo...
that's the first thing I thought
Someone bring a towel
DJCC
I just want 42" of it.
He was implying that Bush is an industrialist-Nazi.
moron.
Batten down those scintillation counters! Unhook the HF radios!
...-.-
SOHO London? Cool place, but I didn't think they had the resources to send their own spacecraft.
I did get hit on by a lot of guys, though. Which was kind of wierd since I'm a guy.
You may notice Radio TV, and even cell phones will be effected (briefly) by this storm. I am on a Broadcast Engineer's mailing list and there have been sporadic reports of problems in the last few days.
The engineer at WBRC reported a rash of viewer calls in the past few days about reception problems including a call from a distant (100 miles) cable system with 4 separate headends, each exhibiting the same poor signal for minutes at a time then clears up.
Also, NOAA describes the geomagnetic affects on radio blackouts as "severe" in the last 24 hours . http://www.sec.noaa.gov/SWN/
Are any of you having similar listener/viewer complaints?
...NASA. I believe the power failures we've experienced world wide were not caused by a lightning strikes, terrorists or simple system failure. I believe they were caused by various events that are harbingers of the approach of Planet X. I believe that the failure in the northeastern United State in August was caused by a chunk of cometary material or a meteorite that hit the grid in Canada. The failures in Europe (Italy and Switzerland) and the UK were caused by electrmagnetic disturbances brought about by the gravitations effects of Planet X on the planet Earth and the Sun. I also believe the the two meteorites that hit in India last month are further evidence of Planet X's arrival. All of these events are just a small sampling of what is coming when Planet X arrives. It will rain oil and fire and water over the entire earth. Everything that depends on electricity will cease. Screw Bush, the Taliban or Saddam. It's not going to matter after Planet X is does it's work. Just search with Google for Planet X and the Niburu and you will find tons of info that the government and the ruling class don't want you to know. This event is just further proof. The solar flares with that volume of material can only occur because the of the massive pull of a large body in space... namely Planet X. Some of us will survive, I hope to see everyone on the other side once this is done.
How does this affect inhabitants of the ISS?
I blame SUV's! Also at fault are Big Oil, Big Tobacco, and George Bush.
No, no, no!
It's all the fault of the GPL. If you don't believe me, just ask SCO!
He was right!
They really did kill OJ!
The Earth is going to be destroyed when the Sun goes NOVA, soon!
Mars has polar ice caps that are melting.
Recently we see articles in the media talking about glaciers melting in Chili. I never this mentioned w/respect to the sun going thru a period of increased activity. Which it does every 11 years. Are they connected? I think so. A very small increase in energy output by the sun has an effect on Earth (and Mars!). But Global Warming advocates never seem to realise this.
He is the best sailor who can steer within fewest points of the wind, and exact a motive power out of the greatest obsta
My mum told me about this a day or two ago - I can't believe she beat slashdot to a story! WAY TO GO MUM!
I think it was already fried
X11 popup under Solaris plasma displays?
Ok, here's my new pet theory, stop me if you've heard it. It wasn't an astroid that knocked out the dinosaurs, it was a severe period of solar storms.
Interesting, non?
Mod me down with all of your hatred and your journey towards the dark side will be complete!
If you're interested in looking at the offending sunspots in question here they are...
I suspect that the story is incorrect and, while the sun has indeed ejected 2 billion tons of matter, only a small proportion of it is headed _towards this planet_ and the rest of which will pass by, tens of thousands of miles or more away from us ?
Journalists. Bah.
Slashdot Editors. Bah Bah.
The solar flares will burn all life from the Eart-
What? You mean they already hit us and nothing happened?
Never mind.
"Live Free or Die." Don't like it? Then keep out of the USA
Does this mean I get to talk to my father, over an old ham radio?
Check out the one that happened on July 14th, 2000:
here
that Peter-head de Jaeger should be warning about and not that Abundance-crap or Y2K.
that was the moment the space-time cone of the event touched earth, so if you are a local observer, this expression isnt wrong per se.
HI O WISE PRINCE. WHT TOOK U SO DAM LONG?
Astronomers from Tacoma to Vladivostok have just reported an ionic disturbance in the vicinity of the Van Allen Belt. Scientists are recommending that necessary precautions be taken
Technology, the cause of and solution to all of life's problems.
...that tinfoil lining will come in handy.
Ignorance is the root of all evil.
Due to a fight on Capitol Hill, NOAA's Space Environment Center (which tracks these events and other 'space weather' items) will not have any funding in 2004. The part of Congress that oversees NOAA does not think NOAA should have to pay for this, and has decided to cancel its funding in hopes that they can force NASA or the Air Force to pick up the tab.
- 128.htm
There is a hearing on the situation on Thursday the 30th.
http://www.house.gov/science/press/108/108
"Fifty million Americans can't be wrong," said Rep. Billy Tauzin. Gore - 50,999,897 Bush - 50,456,002
1) Pffft.
2) Yawn.
3) Been there, done that.
4) All day every day.
5) My hole's twice as big.
6) The term is "slashdot janitor", thank you very much. I've had this job for quite a while now.
- Michael Sims
michael@slashdot.org
The mighty and powerful X10 Corporation is now exacting its revenge upon its enemies! No popunders, you say? Fine! They have now upgraded from X10 to X17, and instead of simply displaying popunder windows they will now bombard the Earth with fireballs!
(...and the followers of Mammon shall tremble.)
Tired of FB/Google censorship? Visit UNCENSORED!
Director James Kennedy has announced that the coronal mass ejection is the work of extraterrestrial terrorists! Run for your lives!
it's official
have on the earth and how rapid a rise would we see if it does effect us? Seems like last weekend got hotter then usual her in N.Cal. and I remember somewhere reading the sunspots while dark had a much higher temperature then the rest of the surface of the sun?
Si vis pacem, para bellum! For evil to succeed good men need only do nothing!
why bother fighting over oil when there is so much free plasma to be had? 2 billion tons of plasma is enough power for 500,000 people.
this sig limit is too small to put anything good h
This may be purely coincidental, but I see myself and others around me acting much wackier than normal since friday. Included are a couple of meetings that just were completely bizzare because we couldn't focus on the subject, a strange car accident in the parking lot where an SUV drove over three other cars for whatever reason...
Anyone else notice an elevated wackiness level?
grisha.org
It's cloudy and rainy in Vancouver. :-(
If you don't want to repeat the past, stop living in it.
Imagine what would happen if it hit a Beowulf Cluster?!
See that Mr Anderson, that is the writing of the inevitable Beowulf cluster joke.
I for one welcome the invention of foil wrap by our aluminium overlords.
AT&ROFLMAO
torrent link since the movies were getting a bit sluggish :)
Your hair look like poop, Bob! - Wanker.
We will not be scared of these "solar evil-doers." The Sun is part of an "axis of stellar evil" that we must stamp out. We will make no distinction between solar flares, and the stars that sponsor these flares. Our nation will launch a campaign to stamp out all stellar terrorism in our galaxy. These nukyular furnaces of fear will no longer terrorize our nation, or Texas. Anybody wanna peanut?
Duck...and COVER!
alternate plan:
Turn off your cellphone, place your hands behind your head, put your head between your knees, and kiss your data communications goodbye. For a little while. And don't forget to stare at the pretty Northern Lights tonight! (hopefully)
We need to be sending people to Titan to study those damn machines. We can't let the "Others" destroy us as well...
"Since the dawn of time, Man has yearned to destroy the Sun."
- Montgomery Burns
Now you know why. Stupid Sun.
http://solar-center.stanford.edu/solar-weather/pig eons.html
That does it. We're back to stone age.
(Fortunately for you Ra is not paying attention, or he would certainly mod you down).
=========
Together, we will drive the rats from the tundra.
Any sufficiently unpopular but cohesive argument is indistinguishable from trolling.
"Must be that damn ozone layer/ greenhouse gas again."
--"Sorry for the inconvience." Gods Last Words to his Creation
DNA, So Long and Thanks for all the Fish
Okay, for those of us in the northern hemisphere, anyway. You southern hemisphere people...well, too bad.
Those videos are amazing! It's a shame they didn't record the sound though. We all now stuff like the goes WHOOOOOSH :)
Is anyone geek enough to see how the Enterprise fares through this storm?
...not working properly?
There's a face in that sunspot! Doesn't look like Christ or the Virgin Mary. Looks kinda like T.S. Elliot. Hmmmm
If you're telekinetic raise my hand.
We need to get a hot red head to stand in the middle of a circle half naked and stare up at the sun before it moves and decides it wants to crash into the earth!!!!
Ave Molech Setting
150,000,000 kilometers from sun to earth, approx
1 hr /60min)= 20 hrs.
CME moving at 2125km/second according to post #7331999
(150,000,000km)(1second/2125km)(1min/60second)(
Event occurred at 6 AM EST 10/28/2003, so that puts the arrival of the cloud of doom at 2 AM EST 10/29/2003, according to my rudimentary estimations.
The claim made in #731999 is "Preferred Predicted Impact Time: 08:00 UTC, 29 October 2003 (3 am EST on 29 October)"
Looks right to me, since there's really only one significant figure in my estimate anyway.
Is that you? I knew you were out there somewhere.... Smithers
thatz c0z u r /\ suX0r and I R l33t
I'm trying to hunt down some local space-watcher's group in the Boston area, who can recommend the best location/time to watch the expected Auroras tonight.
An Indian-American Hindu committed to non-violent thought/speech/action alarmed by the global explosion of radical Islam
Could I possibly harness this plasma to generate 1.21 gigawatts? If so, it could really help me out of a little jam I'm in.
Nothing as of yet...however the other day my Verizon phone went out... could this be something I'm not gonna want to look forward to? :-\
Even a stopped clock gives the right time twice a day.
Personally I could care less which spelling they use. As long as u understand what's said, for all intensive purposes it doesn't matter.
That's "intents and purposes".
Beauty is in the eye of the beerholder.
So much for getting any work done tomorrow. I live in southern Mexico where electricity is sketchy on a good day. In fact, just about a week ago I had a transformer explode about 20 meters in front of me. I think it's safe to say that tomorrow I should stay inside and unplug the computer. Bummer.
Makes you feel teeny weenie small, doesn't it?
"What does the sun have to do with the size of your weiner? you're weird."
oh c'mon moderators...it was a joke. For all we know he has a really big weiner.
So that's why the baby monitor was buzzing last night. I thought it was the flourescent light in the kitchen.
The Chandra X-ray telescope is buttoning down the hatches so to speak!
It is by the juice of the coffee bean that thoughts acquire speed, the teeth acquire stains. The stains become a warning
Pretty nifty! It states a comment should vaporize before impacting, but it is still kind of ironic!
I bet it was an alien spaceship or missile and its doomsday! :P
The preferred time of arrival is ***TONIGHT***, TUESDAY NIGHT (before you go to bed that night) near or after 3 am Eastern Standard Time).
That's 2 am Central Standard Time on TONIGHT.
That's 1 am Mountain Standard Time on TONIGHT.
That's MIDNIGHT Pacific Standard Time on TONIGHT.
I see America is safely facing away from the Sun when this all starts hit. It will certainly be taken by the rest of the world that America is out to get them with this new, super-weapon.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
X10 server send 2B spam messages to Earth
They are worried about the Palestinians voting in a future Israeli election !!!! Better to keep dipshits like Arafat alive. If the Palestinians wake up and demand citenzenship, Zionism is doomed.
If this keeps up, soon there won't be a Sun anymore.
Or maybe the Sun (as opposed to "Sun") finally decided to jump on the bandwagon and go open source, and is throwing out all the old, proprietary mass.
Aren't we an awful small target for the Sun to be hitting so regularly these days?
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
Last friday I could clearly see one dark spot on the sun, just a little to the right from it's centre.
I could clearly see this by looking straight into the sun through the fog in the morning.
This morning I saw two similar black spots on the sun, one in the middle and one just below it. This time more clearly than last friday.,\
I live in Holland.
Does this have anything to do with the explosions?
This is no hoax...
If you mod this up, your slashdot background will turn into a beautiful sunset!
I am trying to hold my face on after that one. 'Blinker Fluid'
"Sometimes, I think Trent just needs a cup of hot chocolate and a blankie." -Tori Amos on Nine Inch Nails
yeah whatever, someone just did this in photoshop
...that Media hasn't picked up on this and tried to run a weeklong series of: "scare you into being more afraid so you'll buy more shit to feel secure" reports.
I mean lookit the possibilityes:
"SOLAR FLARES! THE SKIN DAMAGE IT CAN DO TO THE CHILDREN"
"WHat if THE CHILDREN need to make an emergency sell phone call! It wont go through BECAUSE OF THE SUN!"
"Solar Flares: Terrorism?"
oh, wait.
this science.
science hard to understand.
science make channel changer change channel.
put science in minute 29.
s'wut i sed.
I lived in Juneau for a while, and got to see it a couple of times. V-e-e-e-r-y cool.
Johnny: "Hey Ben, /. says there is going to be a strong solar storm at the same time we have the launch planned tonight.." Ben: "Bah, don't worry about it. If there was a problem Reed would have figured it out by now." excelsior!
How much is that in elephants?
I dunno, but in the Astronomical standard of Volkswagens, with each VW Bug weighing in at 2769 lbs, or 1.3845 tons, it ends up being 1,444,564,824.85 Volkswagens.
In the immortal words of Keanu Reeves:
"Whoa"
I'm really NOT trying to start a fight but there is still a problem here! Unfortuantley everybody said "Oh... don't worry about it" back then too! I'd rather hope this data will be around after 2101 not just 2001. What about 2201? 2801? 3001?. Then you DO have a problem.
I mean, I'll probably be long since dead but I hope the astronomers then can rely on us recording good data now! Next thing you know someone has "sorted" the data with 2 digit years, it's completely garbled screwing up centuries - maybe millenia of data...
Maybe....
"None of this shit works" -W.Shatner
The above article references the 1989 geomagnetic storm. During that storm, large blackouts occurred in Quebec due to induced currents circulating in the power grid. Transformers are built to transmit AC current and do not like it when large quasi-DC currents appear out of the sky. The transformers tend to overheat and fail, and in a fragile power grid, this can lead to cascading failures and blackouts.
More information about this phenomenon (and an engineered solution to it) is available on my company's website.
Take off, every Hoser
How many geeky astronomers are going to go home to their wives/girlfriends tonight and ask them if they want a "Coronal Mass Ejection" of their own?
There are no solar flares! The mass ejections have been driven out of the solar system, and are committing suicide as we speak! The rumors that the so-called flares are nuclear powered are fueled by the delusions of madmen who are sick in the head! Sick, I tell you!
Wouldn't that mean a lot of rain in the coming weeks?
If you think about it: tons and tons of solar material hitting earth - this matter being mostly hydrogen.
Hydrogen and the Oxygen of our atmosphere (boom!) => Water!
So thats how Rain is _Really_ made!!
perl -e 'printf("%x!\n",49153)'
Not that I'd be able to see much in this land of light pollution, but there are some relatively light-less areas I could reach... if it weren't SO DAMNED CLOUDY.
I don't know about you, but I'm shutting off the computer tonight--just in case.
Someday, you're going to die. Get over it.
Do you mean a Dyson Sphere? link Actually, scientists have been planning since 1991 to blow up the moon, so maybe the sun is just the next step.
Wer mit Ungeheuern kämpft, mag zusehn, dass er nicht dabei zum Ungeheuer wird. --Nietzsche
Have you ever noticed in the movies from SOHO that the camera has a disc placed to block out the sun? How then can it see what's coming directly at it?
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
ehhhh. Palestinians are Semites too, aren't they?
I am excited about the prospect of going and seeing the (possible) auroras tonight, as that is something one so rarely gets any chance to see in Los Angeles-- but so much of Southern California is on fire right now, and the air is so full of smoke and falling ash, I simply do not know which way to drive to find clear skies :(
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Is this going to affect magnetic media at all? Shoud I put my laptop in the basement just in case? Or is this only going to cause large-scale problems but nothing that will personally affect my data?
Just how strong is this really?
-Don.
Cwm, fjord-bank glyphs vext quiz
My Cingular phone kept cutting out last week, probably won't be any better now...
This story had me wondering if the SOHO satellite at the 1st LaGrange Point was at risk, but I guess NASA has already adressed that:
Fascinating. I suppose it makes sense to assume that any kind of space photography is mostly going to be of blackness, and so the image data should be highly compressable. But with an event like this, it must be like the satellite is being passed over by a misty fog, and the compression algorithms will break down.
But stilll, space is big. Fantastically big. And two billion tons of material? You may think that's a lot, but to space that's just doodley squat. </bad-hhgttg>
So with that in mind, how much of this material is likely to actually interact with SOHO? How much damage, if any, is the satellite likely to sustain in an event like this? It seems like losing that satellite would be almost as bad as losing Hubble...
DO NOT LEAVE IT IS NOT REAL
And it always happens when I just sent my lead-lined underwear out to the cleaners!
"Freedom means freedom for everybody" -- Dick Cheney
The smoke in San Diego (Pacific Beach, for locals) this afternoon was just the right density to attenuate the sun just the right amount to let you see the two giant sunspots with the naked eye. Now that makes you feel small ;) Now let me get back to hacking up a lung...
1984 was supposed to be a warning, not an instruction manual.
That would make up for losing cell phone service.
I wonder what effect this, and the smaller, earlier, storm will have on the ISS and its occupants? I know, they most likely used SOS (silicon on sapphire substrate) semiconductors, so the station itself should be OK,but still, this is supposed to be a big storm. Are the astronauts going to be OK? Is there any particularly rad-hardened section they can stay in, or are they just plain SOL?
Goddess, I hope they'll be OK. If they get a fatal dose of radiation from this, coming so soon after the shuttle disaster, I fear we might scal way back on manned space exploration in the near future, andthat would be a real shame.
Lemon curry?
Forgive me for the double-faux-paus of off-topic posting and replying to my own post, but I found the answer to my own question, and it is to cool not to share. http://activefiremaps.fs.fed.us/ has active fire maps showing the location of all current fires which might be obstructing the sky with their nasty smoke (and heartlessly burning things too) http://activefiremaps.fs.fed.us/large_fire/large.p hp
If you watch the C2 movie from SOHO's website, it looks like moments before the flare errupted toward earth a Trilithium torpedo was fired toward the sun. Watch it! You can see it!
8P
So, the resulting aurora should be on par with the 1989 event.
:(
Actually, we won't know if this flare and CME will cause auroras or not. If the magentic field associated with this flare is in the same direction as the Earth's, the high energy particles are largely deflected away from and past us, with no pretty light show.
But if the magnetic field is opposite to ours, then the solar wind can be funnelled directly into our upper atmosphere. I don't think there's any good predictor -- we just have to wait for it to get here.
- Peter
INsigNIFICANT
Sun is starting to get pissed at SCO too....
OH THE SHAME I fell off the wagon and use sigs again!
I'm posting this as a reply to my message, since a couple people were interested in knowing good locations for Aurora watching around Boston:
From what I read on the www.spacew.com website (they have a forum) before it went down, Wachussets mountain (near Princeton, MA) is a GOOD place to look for Auroras. It's on 290.
Another good resource I found was:
www.darksky.com, which has about 5-6 good locations for sky watching in Mass.
I wasn't sure of the places listed there (click on Dark Sky Finder on the site), so I may stick with Wachussets Mountain. Looks like the best bet.
Hope this helps.
An Indian-American Hindu committed to non-violent thought/speech/action alarmed by the global explosion of radical Islam
sneezes, and we get 2B tons of sun snot.
It's George Bush's fault. There, I've said it, saving 99.9% of the readers from having to waste time commenting. I'm generous like that.
Oct. 28, 2003 | WASHINGTON (FX) -- President Bush blamed both the Sun and Moon for the recent rash of potentially devastating solar flare attacks in and around Earth.
"Basically what they're trying to do is cause people to run," he told a Rose Garden news conference Tuesday. "That's what terrorists, major weather phenomena, fires, and large things in space do." Bush said the United States was working closely with Papau New Guinea and Mongolia to prevent foreign fighters from going to the Sun in order to help it "cause more trouble".
"The Sun is dangerous because it believes that we are soft, that the will of the United States can be shaken by major stellar eruptions," he said in a 45-minute exchange with reporters. However, he said that experts in his administration had warned him that, rather like North Korea, that the Sun was equipped with nukular weapons therefore to attack it would be dangerous.
The Moon on the other hand, had clearly not provided an eclipse to shield the Earth from a solar flare. While some academic paper-pushing bureaurcrats (denounced by Bill O'Reilly as a "bunch of pansy telescope wankers") argued that this was a natural consequence of the Moon's orbit, Bush hinted that if the Moon "really wanted to" it could have protected the Earth from this attack.
"The Moon is much weaker than the Sun and we already have people in the military who know how to get there" Bush argued. "And we have intelligence documents showing that lunar-driven tides helped a ship containing Nigerian yellowcake reach a dock in Iraq in 1991."
...anyone without 2,000,000 sunblock is going to have a really bad day.
|plastic....or gasoline?|
The solar flare launched
2,000,000,000 tons
The moon weighs about
73,500,000,000,000,000,000,000 tons
the plasma tvs will become cheaper now.
Desi Noise, Live!
of the 2nd intifadah, the majority of Palestinians have supported suicide bombings. If one is talking about suicide bombings against settlers in the West Bank or Gaza, it's almost universal. If one is talking about civilians in Israel proper, the support erodes a bit, but it's still a majority. That's quite some group pathology when a majority of people think it's a perfectly good idea to have someone blow themselves up in a pizza cafe dismembering women and babies. Or hand out candy celebrating after the immediate aftermath of September 11th (when initial estimates were ranging up to 30,000 dead). What a great day for Palestinians and Muslims.
And then the kicker...people like 'alex ant' that jump in and defend the suicide bombers and call people who criticize the Palestinians racist. Awesome. Just remember folks, killing minorities isn't racist as long as it's Shyloks and Kykes we're talking about.
General Boykin mentions God and Satan in a speach and these guys fall into an apoplectic fit rushing over each other in the bid to be the first to condemn him and any would be Christians who dare to invoke some sort of moral imprimatur to the war in Afghanistan or Iraq. Yet criticize the Palestinians or defend the Israelis and these same people rush to defend the right of Palestinians to celebrate the death of 3000 Americans and to practice their Allah given right to blow up little Jew babies.
they're lame.. ;)
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Well there goes the neighborhood. :-)
IF it's a good one maybe we can see some aroura down here. I hope this doesn't effect the health of the folks on the ISS.
I hope this doesn't trash the Ham bands for to long either.
If you don't like what I write don't be a CS and mod it down. Refute it.
Yea I can't spell. So what is your point?
When exactly will it hit? One modded-up reply said it would hit at 8am UTC (2am CST) on the 28th, which is a few hours from now. But this news story says midday CST tomorrow. So my question is, what are some estimates of when it will strike, and who is in a position to know? Where does this data come from? Also, when will we know what the polarity of the cloud is?
Litigious bastards
It's fucking raining on almost the entire US East Coast ... maybe there will be a remnant tomorrow ...
....there are gonna be a lot of really mad wireless laptop users come mid-week
thats why i love my T1 college internet
Man, if you have to go to the liquor store to get Corona, I feel sorry for you. Too late, sucka, bwahahahahahaha!!!
Anyone else been getting increased "blockiness" on digital satellite TV for the last few days, despite a strong signal and clear weather? Could be related.
When I am king, you will be first against the wall.
I just got DirectTV installed on Monday. Wouldn't you know that one of the largest solar flares in history would screw up my reception.
My personal purchasing history:
* Bought a VW Corrado (hence the nichname) - 6 months later they stopped making them.
* I am a "recovering" Amiga fanatic
* Bought a copy of BeOS - 'nuff said
*WARNING* *WARNING* *WARNING* *WARNING* *WARNING*
I am thinking of purchasing a couch in the next few days. Who knows what will happen to the furniture business. Oh the carnage!
*WARNING* *WARNING* *WARNING* *WARNING* *WARNING*
KangarooBox - We make IT simple!
Houdy, I just got to see a super dooper aurora in Salem, Oregon. I had to get out of town to see it, but it was worth it. First it just looked like a light blue haze in the northern sky. Then, as my roommate put it, the blue turned blood red. Anyone who's still up should really try and see it. I'm suprised I was able to see it this far south...
42 degrees North lattitude is what I think we are at. About 1 hr from San Francisco and around 12:30 to 12:38 we saw an amazing light display.
Hope others saw it as well. 8)
You will be mine, oh yes, you will be mine...
Manipulate the moderator system! Mod someone as "overrated" today.
We'll all fry together when we fry
We'll be french fried potatoes by and by.
There will be no more misery
When the world is our rotisserie,
Yes, we will all fry together when we fry.
how is this offtopic?
As an amatearu radio operator, I have not seen the effect yet? At least on the frequencies I have been on. Has it passed us by or is it still comming?