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Yet Another Big Solar Flare
philthedrill writes "CNN is reporting that the sun has fired another large solar flare towards Earth. This one could arrive as early as Thursday (Oct. 30th) afternoon. (insert end-of-the-world statement here)."
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Do these flares affect humans (or even wildlife) at all? You know, even if it is the same way that pets can sense when an earthquake is about to happen....
Probably by sheer luck and bad timing, I had 3 monitors all fail on the same day while I was at a customers. Couldn't explain the failure (it was definitely an anomoly) but maybe it had something to do with bad power that may have been caused by fluctuations in the power grid?
I wonder how it'll affect the BPL test sites. Most BPL (broadband over powerline) would be affected somehow since they operate on HF frequencies. Additionally most shortwave radio was adversely affected.
I saw some of last night's aurora from my location in SE Arkansas. Anyone else see the aurora?
Aurora pictures from last night
The above page has pictures taken in places like Georgia, Iowa, Oklahoma, Texas... some *great* views in Colorado, too. Alaska? The entire sky was green and red last night.
It was too windy here ( SF bay area ) for me to have ventured out last night. Ok, I admit, I forgot to look. My view to the north sucks anyway.
It was cloudy and raining when I posted the last time.
However it cleared up by evening. I was working late keeping an eye on the Real-Time Aurora Map which was looking pretty quiet when all of a sudden almost the entire northern hemisphere is coverd in a big red circle.
Went outside and sure enough, the Northern sky is aglow in blue and red.
Very cool.
If you don't want to repeat the past, stop living in it.
One interesting effect from the fires in California (specifically San Diego) is that the smoke has made it very easy to view the sun. Since the smoke has been so dense, the sun has appeared as this rich red-orange disc in the sky, with little dark dots on it where the solar flares are. I wish I had taken a picture, but I'm sure somebody can dig one up on google.
According to the BBC, magnetic north varied by 5 degrees in 25mins starting from 0830 GMT, as the storm swept passed us.
http://www.nasa.gov/vision/universe/solarsystem/pe rfect_space_storm.html
... was this: ... From August 28 to September 2 several solar flares were observed. Then, on September 1, the Sun released a mammoth solar flare. For almost an entire minute the amount of sunlight the Sun produced at the region of the flare actually doubled."
... just a couple days ago.
"Remarkably, science has documented solar events a hundred times more intense... But none of them interacted with the Earth in such a violent manner."
"What transpired
"The question I get asked most often is, 'Could a perfect space storm happen again, and when?'" added Tsurutani. "I tell people it could, and it could very well be even more intense than what transpired in 1859. As for when, we simply do not know."
Perhaps we're looking at something similar now. Interestingly, the article I grabbed these quotes from was published 10.24.03
For those of you wondering, this is a reference to Larry Niven's "The Fourth Profession". This is considered one of Niven's best short works.
... spaceship captain ... teleporter .... translator ... but Ed can't remember how many pills he took, or if the confusing overload of information in his head shadows the terrible secret of their mission.
---
Summary is as follows:
An interstellar trading ship arrived in the moon's orbit two years ago, and the few aliens who have descended to Earth have stayed in their landing craft or at the United Nations building in New York City. When one of the aliens unexpectedly shows up in a Los Angeles tavern, bartender Ed Frazer awakes the next morning with the strangest hangover of his life. Ed barely remembers taking the pills offered by the alien; each pill flooding his brain with the knowledge of an alien profession
++
There isn't enough force developed to make a perceptible change in our orbit, even over geologic time.
However, hundreds of tons of our upper atmosphere is ejected into space and, to some degree, carried off downstream in the solar wind, during these events. So, a small part of our planet has it's orbit profoundly altered by these events. The loss rate is modest and partly compensated by acquired material from dust and meteorites. But this could influence atmospheric composition over geologic time. The plume coming from Venus has been detected near Earth.
ThosEM