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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!"
more
spaceweather.com has an interesting service that will page you if there is an aurora in your locality. Check it out.
These events are already causing a slashdot effect on the solar weather sites without Slashdot even mentioning them, so here's a copy of the best report I've come across, from http://www.spacew.com/cme/index.html:
Event #49 - 28 October 2003
Issued: 16:30 UTC, 28 October 2003
SOURCE EVENT
Class X17.2 Flare in Region 486 at 11:10 UTC on 28 October 2003
Type II: 1250 km/sec
Estimated LASCO-derived Plane of Sky Velocity: 2125 km/sec
ESTIMATED TIME OF ARRIVAL OF SHOCK AT EARTH
Estimated Impact Window: 00:00 UTC on 29 October to 21:00 UTC on 29 October
Preferred Predicted Impact Time: 08:00 UTC, 29 October 2003 (3 am EST on 29 October)
Estimated Shock Strength (0=Weakest, 9=Strongest): 9
Predicted Behavior of IMF at Shock Impact
At Shock Impact, the Interplanetary Magnetic Field is predicted to initially turn:
SOUTHWARD
IMPORTANT TIME OF ARRIVAL NOTICE FOR NORTH AMERICANS
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.
EXPECT RESIDUAL ACTIVITY (LESS INTENSE) TOMMORROW NIGHT (WEDNESDAY, 29 OCT) AS WELL !
EVENT #49 NOTES:
This is the most energetic Earthward-directed event of the solar cycle.
SEVERE to MAJOR geomagnetic storming is expected to abruptly commence following the arrival of the shock front from this flare.
This flare was associated with a Ground-Level Event. It was also associated with very high energy protons at greater than 100 MeV (which are still climbing, over 5 hours after the event began). A magnetic crochet was observed over the daylit sections of the ionosphere. An exceptionally intense shortwave fadeout and polar cap absorption event are in progress. There are reports this event was observed in white-light. Intense radio bursts were associated with this event across the spectrum. The type II shock velocity is not representative of the observed velocity of this CME. The observed velocity as determined by SOHO was 2125 km/sec.
This event has the potential to produce the strongest geomagnetic storm since 1989. Auroral activity could become visible into the deep low latitude regions. This one is worth driving a good long distance over to find clear skies. It has better potential to produce low-latitude aurora than almost any other event observed in the past decade. Keep in mind that it is also possible the disturbance may not be nearly as geoeffective as many would like. It all depends on the character of the magnetic fields imbedded within the coronal mass ejection. However, we believe it will either be very large, or only modestly large in terms of its capacity to produce disturbed geomagnetic and auroral activity. We do not expect this disturbance to be small.
These predictions may be based on preliminary data and may be revised without warning. The predictions should not be used as a definitive indication of CME impact times or strengths and may frequently be in error. The proprietary methods used to estimate shock impact times are under continual development. Caution is advised.
They had an odd way of putting this. The proton flare caused a solar storm which hit Earth within minutes of the flare commencing. However, the associated CME is significantly slower (Still over 2000 kilometers per second) and will hit within hours. The CME will have higher total energy and is what will cause fluctuations in the gemmagnetic field, ie. a gemomagnetic storm. "Next day or two" is probably because they didn't know this was a high-speed event yet.
This list is based in part on "Large Solar Flares Since 1976" compiled by IPS Radio & Space Services.
Ranking Day/Month/Year X-Ray Class
1 02/04/01 X20.0
1 16/08/89 X20.0
2 28/10/03 X17.2
3 06/03/89 X15.0
3 11/07/78 X15.0
4 15/04/01 X14.4
5 24/04/84 X13.0
5 19/10/89 X13.0
etc.. etc..
"
I would have suggested classifications go to 11, but clearly they go much higher...
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?
http://www.spaceweather.com lets us know "DON'T PANIC: Some rumors spreading across the internet claim that the ongoing solar storm could wreak terrible havoc on Earth. Not so. There is a slim chance of power blackouts and communication outages, but the main side effect of this solar activity will be harmless and beautiful auroras."
However, all the predictions currently are that this event has the potential of causing a K-inded 9 geomagnetic storm (G5). NOAA's classification of G5 effects is:
Power systems: : widespread voltage control problems and protective system problems can occur, some grid systems may experience complete collapse or blackouts. Transformers may experience damage.
Spacecraft operations: may experience extensive surface charging, problems with orientation, uplink/downlink and tracking satellites.
Other systems: pipeline currents can reach hundreds of amps, HF (high frequency) radio propagation may be impossible in many areas for one to two days, satellite navigation may be degraded for days, low-frequency radio navigation can be out for hours, and aurora has been seen as low as Florida and southern Texas (typically 40 geomagnetic lat.)**.
In addition, Harvard-Smithsonian Center for
Astrophysics has issued a press-release warning that "In California, where raging wildfires have damaged many microwave communication antennas on the ground, satellite communications have been crucial to emergency efforts. Emergency personnel should be prepared for potential disruptions and communication interference."
All of this, however, is somethign that MAY happen, while it likely won't. A lot of factors about the nature of the event and the situation in the interplanetary space between Sun and Earth affect how it'll turn out. But there's still a lot of potential for this one.
ISS is moderatedly shielded for this kind of thing. And they are close enough to earth that the earth magnetic field will stop or dampen the CME enough for the ISS's shielding to work. If not, we would have a lot of dead/mutated/sterile astronauts long before now.
In US, you can easily buy enough major firearms to wipe out your neighbourhood but a few little fireworks are banned.
Are there any explanations for this large amount of activity at what should be a non-peak time?
Yes - it's not a large amount during a non-peak time.
It's a normal amount for this time period, the only difference is that the recent ones are actually being sent towards us, so they affect us more..
CME's are a pretty regular occurrence, and they do follow an 11-year cycle, but most of them never affect us, because we're not in the path of the flare. (Think about it - the earth occupies a pretty small percentage of real estate around the sun - so there's a pretty small chance that a CME will send stuff our way.)
The amount is normal for this time period, it's just that the recent ones are aimed at us.
Sounds like Sun (the company, not the bright thing that lights up the Big Room) blowing smoke up your ass. There's a cache coherency bug on some 400 MHz UltraSPARC II processors with 8 meg ecache that causes panics. *Maybe* this bug has a slightly higher chance of manifesting itself during a CME, but I doubt it (anything is possible). They denied this problem for a long time until some high-profile clients threw a fit and Sun offered to replace the affected processors. That free replacement program is almost certainly over now; we replaced dozens of these cpus at a previous employer.
It's Sun's fault, not the sun's fault.
-Isaac
I am not a lawyer, and this is not legal advice. For Entertainment Purposes Only.
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
torrent link since the movies were getting a bit sluggish :)
Your hair look like poop, Bob! - Wanker.
Sneakernet saves the day!
Good troll. Fact is, the only evidence for Planet X is woman who claims to be a medium for aliens, and all the other "evidence" I've seen has been reflections on camera lenses and black spots caused by overloaded CCDs. http://www.badastronomy.com/phpBB/viewtopic.php?t= 4708
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.
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
Or maybe not. [snopes.com]
.sig, there is only ZUUL
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