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Sun Produces Strongest Flare Ever Recorded
idontneedanickname writes "The BBC is reporting about the newest flare unleashed by the sun. According to NASA's SOHO website, "Today word came from the SEC that their best estimate was X28. We have a new number 1 X-ray flare for the record books." As usual there are magnificent images to be admired."
This one's not headed straight for us...
That Sun Microsystems was coming out with a new line of servers when they read the headline?
First the SunFire line, now the SunFlare line, the STRONGEST EVER!
This sig is the express property of someone.
Voyager got out just in time!
...who's trying to hack the Sun?
(Pun so totally intended.)
blog |
My guess would be... TERRORISM.
evil adrian
it's not like there doesn't need to be some additional light shed on us.
Space.com covered. it yesterday, with an update today. The bottom of the article has two cool animated gif's that showed the X-ray sensor blinded after the flare, and the subsequent coronal mass that was ejected.
Please direct all bug reports to
May I point out, you're asking the entirely wrong crowd.
This side up.
Impressive until we realize that we haven't been measuring solar flares for very long.
Were these parsnips CORRECTLY MARINATED in TACO SAUCE? -- WTF is that?
I'm not one to come out and harp on SUV owners, but with this abnormal solar behavior I think it's clear to see how much impact humans are having on not only our world but even beyond.
Emissions are way up and pollution is at an all time high in many areas. Add to that that the polar ice shelves are rapidly breaking up and falling into the ocean, and you've got yourself a recipe for disaster.
The sunspots that produced these powerful flares during last days moved across the solar limb. They are now on the far side of the Sun. However, such huge suspots can last quite long and it is likely they will still be active after two weeks when the appear again on the side of the Sun facing Earth.
Save the bandwidth. Don't use sigs!
...that Steve Ballmer hasn't just been eating a heck of a lot of Mexican food this week?
I don't know what you people expect from a giant ball of super heated gas undergoing fusion...perhaps large explusions of luke-warm gas and flaccid solar energy?
Next we'll see cloned sunspots from AMD and Cyrix, followed by a massive rebranding campaign by Intel...
Wait. What were we talking about again?
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
Hydrogen Hydrogen, the nuclear fruit
The more you burn, gravity can let it toot
The more you toot, the better your feel
So burn Hydrogen in every nuclear meal!
In Space...nobody can smell your vapors
-1 Troll (I wish I could think of something to post)
-1 Overrated (I wish my ADD would let me read and absorb all of this...functional illiteracy doesn't help either)
-1 Overrated (Too many big words for me to comprehend)
Could all this activity be caused by a colission of some object into the sun? I'm just wondering if the sun got pounded by some asteroids a few weeks ago and they screwed up the balance of the surface, causing geyser-like effects.
Is the sun moving into some more active part of the galaxy recently, are we in the tail of some massive previous event? Are other stars in the neighborhood showing signs of duress?
"Sometimes, I think Trent just needs a cup of hot chocolate and a blankie." -Tori Amos on Nine Inch Nails
I keep seeing that this is the most activity
since we've been monitoring the sun. How long
have we been monitoring the sun?
TiVo recordings of shows received from satellite TV might be interrupted.
"Provided by the management for your protection."
I *still* havent seen any of the promised Aurora Borealis [space.com] from previous flares.
It's been a decade since last I saw any.
Its strange how all of a sudden there are many reports of strong flares... Just as the Space Weather forecasting program comes up for budget renewal.
Sig- http://www.dreamhost.com/rewards.cgi?ayefly
With powerful products like that, they'll dominate the Enterprise!
There exists no way of exchanging information without making judgments. --Bene Gesserit Axiom
If God exists, why did he create something so terrible as me?
...
Maybe to serve as an exemple to others?
Taken from despair.com
I'd rather be sailing...
Craig DeForest, a solar physicist at the Southwest Research Institute, said others in his field are discussing the possibility that Tuesday's flare was an X40.
"I'd take a stand and say it appears to be about X40 based on extrapolation of the X-ray flux into the saturated period," DeForest told SPACE.com.
That estimate may even be conservative, he said
x40.. holy crap.. and that number might be low
Selling software wont make you money, selling a service will.
we've been monitoring since the 1970's... I would like to think the measurements in the 70s were accurate, but you never know... here's an interesting page with pictures and a graph of the solar cycle...
My guess would be "no", since there's absolutely nothing we can do about it if the sun blows up or something.
You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!
does looking at images of eructations that are larger than a planet make anyone else nervous?
-- The morphemes of your disquisition are ascertainable, but they have eschewed an ambit of transpicuous exposition.
there's actually a webcam pointed at the sun... i'ts updated every 4 hours and can be found here.
According to Space.com: The image is generated by the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) spacecraft, which sits partway between Earth and the Sun.
The solar flare produced proton wind in speed exceeding what the SOHO probe can measure. It also saturated the X-Ray detectors on NOAA's GOES satellites. X28 is an understatement, the actual value cannot be precisely determined, but is thought of being somewhere around X40 to X50. This is a logarithmic scale, NOAA says the peak X-Ray emission reached approximately 2 * 10e-3 W/ squared meter.
:
M-class solar flares' order of magnitude is 10e-5W/squared meter, X-class' is 10e-4W/ squared meter, and anything beyond 10e-3W/squared meter
- was unheard of until a few days ago.
- is a Y-class MEGA FLARE! Tin-foil hat time.
On unrelated news, X-Plane now supports borealis auroras...
Maybe we deserve this world ?
Well, what do you expect when you mix the words Gas, taco sauce and sun on to one page?
/PASS=IMALOSERFORFORGETTINGMYPASSWORD /NOPWEXP /PWDMIN=40 /PWDLIFETIME=1 /FLAG=GENPWD
Come get your new Solar Flame Servers by Sun today!!! Only Sun can provide the speed and power to melt the competition like heat of taco sauce gas (extra large Pepsi not included in BTU calculations)!!! New and improved, our RF emissions are going to make you glow at night, giving that special someone a warm fuzzy about YOUR choice in performance (absorbing charcoal not included)!!!
MCR UAF MOD user
Saw it yesterday, felt the earthquakes, surfed the tsunamis and dodged the volcanoes.
No doubt the delay in this news was a public-spirited attempt to avoid the mass panic of people rushing to hide in their basements.
If those sunspots were pointing at us just now, and this flare had a southward magnetic alignment - that would basically be IT, right?
I mean, Fight Club-style apocalypse, the temporary collapse of civilization for at least a month or so until order could be restored, that kind of thing, yes? Anything not in a Faraday cage blown to Hell and gone, etc.?
Does that about describe the situation we just missed? If so, can we please, please find some way to artificially induce exactly that situation?
--Ryv
Sounds like you've also been an idiot and/or a troll.
that the sun is blowing up. we will all be dead in a few months...well, existence was fun. maybe if the ancient greeks had put some of those technical ideas together, we could have had the industrial revolution 2000 years ago and been surfing the stars by now...oh well.
I am the Alpha and the Omega-3
Read a theory once that the sun would swell and engulf the closest few planets...
;-)
Perhaps this is a precursor?
The sky is falling!
The probability of this happening is a double secret statistical anomaly.
No, sunspots are systems far larger than and completely unaffected by any normal infalling material. Here's a good Q&A at space.com covering the flares in general.
I hadn't heard that one before. And yes, it is disturbing.
eructation ( P ) (-rk-tshn, rk-)
n.
The act or an instance of belching.
Source: The American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
Copyright (C) 2000 by Houghton Mifflin Company.
Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.
probably god demostrate his vastly mightly solar flare that exceed 28x that serve as warning if earthing don't shut up like wars, terrorism and on.
Hey, it only a theory... I, for one, don't belive in most of religious because i don't know which one is the true religion anyway.
On the sidenote.. I, for one, welcoming overlord wrath!
Anyone else think of the BOFH excuse of the day?
The thing about Revalation is that the events described in it actually started in Genesis 2. By Christian theology, the apocalypse started days after the beginning of the world, but won't get up to speed until the seven headed dragon rains diadems from the heavens.
OK... this whole thing is silly people. But I'll contribute to this thread since I find it entertaining. Farmlands could be pointless at such a time. Instead we will need to do away with agriculture and build on synthetic nutrients. If we can make artificial nutrients and nanomachines that get integrated into our bodies, it's likely there will be lots of improvements in human physiology. Imagine only needing to eat once a week and never sleep. Our civilization would progress at a much faster pace. As it is, we are barely evolved primitives compared to what we could be if we augmneted ourselves. Eating and sleeping are useless apendages that should be shed. We need to expand on our mental abilities and begin to eschew the physical. This will prepare us for the eventuality of becoming nebulous, sentient entities with no physical form whatsoever. Or not.
Un-news
Don't know if anyone else saved the GOES XRay Flux image:
http://cyberial.com/images/cme.gif
Pretty impressive saturation!
Doesn't anyone else find it disturbing that the sun is halfway from its 11 year peak and it's now spewing out billions of tons of matter at an unprecedented rate?
Perhaps, now just perhaps, the sun is gearing up to go nova and shed its entire outer layer. In that case, I think I'd want to be at the Sudbury neutrino observatory. =)
Still #1 -- Lonely Gay Geek
I am a power supply design engineer among other things. (no guessing!) Please don't use words like "Flare", Burn-In, or "Let's fire it up!" when you are talking to me. At 220 volts and 10 amps, those are very unwelcome words.
... and as usual the Astronomy Picture of the Day, already has a good picture posted
Use your head, can't you, use your head,
You're on earth, there's no cure for that - S. Beckett
Her name is Liserle and she is there to observe the photino birds which are destroying our universe. (Stephen Baxter's The Ring)
Yes, I too.
I for one welcome my new lead underpants.
(gotta protect the boys)
* evolving night vision
* digging an extensive system of tunnels underneath all Wendy's locations
* building a large metal Sphinx-like thing that wails periodically
* keeping an eye out for Weena
Who's in?
The Law of Falling Bodies
As Sun lost marketshare and IBM and others gained I think the SunFlare will be the last flailing of Sun. Sun is a company predicted to be swallowed up by someone.
What was Sun's latest line of products? Oh Linux on top of AMD processors. Why would I want to do this with Sun rather then someone else? I wouldn't... They have under 8 years left.
My bet is God is Angry about SCO. I expect that there's going to be a lot of smiting going on Real Soon Now. Keep an eye out for old guys building arks.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Yeah, but you can't get faith unless God gives it to you first. So, in the final analysis it's God who (at least from our point of view) pre-determines who goes to Heaven and who goes to Hell.
Who knew "The Dot" could really take such punishment?
So if you're on a 4 hour flight at 30.000 feet,
what is the dose rate??
<sarcasm>
The sun is angry; we are doomed. These flares are just the beginning, they will increase in magnitude until they are so big, they penetrate the Earth's magnetic field, destroy the entire ozone layer and sanitize the surface of the Earth with UV rays - just like an autoclave. Not even bacteria will survive except underground and deep in the Ocean.
The signs are showing, this is the END OF THE WORLD! The sun has been showing more activity since 1940 than it has for the last 1000 years put together. Doom is imminent!
Scientists don't act worried, they think they understand the sun and how it works, but science it just guesses. Maybe the sun is made of iron instead of hydrogen where would all the theories that say we are safe be then, if such a basic 'fact' about the sun turned out to be wrong?
As the flares grow in size and number you will all see that my theory is correct! "What is my theory?" you ask. It is that since the END OF THE WORLD makes a good movie plot point, that it must be happening NOW! These are going to be interesting times... We should all start storing canned food and porno mags in bomb shelters now before it's too late and we get cooked by the MASSIVE RADIATION STORM!
And what if the sun should stop flaring, and I should get proven wrong. WE ARE STILL DOOMED! In the same way that load from a light socket makes the generators in a power plant harder to turn, so geomagnetic storms transfer the kinetic energy of megatons of speeding charged particles directly to the magmatic dynamo at our planet's core. Small purturbations can affect this chaotic fluid flow in unpredictable ways but the most worrying is that the shock from the kinetic energy of all those particles will cause avalanches at the core/mantle boundary this will cause massive vulcanism that will cover the earth with lava!
If that doesn't get us, terrorists wielding viruses will.
Get out your sandwich board and whisky! Walk the streets and warn! THE END OF THE WORLD IS NIGH!!!!
<sarcasm>
Eat at Joe's.
Well damn! If its all predetermined, I'm going out to get a hooker!
"What the American public doesn't know is what makes them the American public." -Ray Zalinsky (Tommy Boy)
Who gave the Sun an extra Chalupa?
the pateNTdead eyecon0meter is reporting these incidents as positive events.
this stuff provides unlimited newclear power. it's also unbreakable. don't be afraid. it's a gift.
it's more of what everything is really made of.
it's not surprising that the universe is reacting in what appears to be an adverse manner.
it gets a little fuzzy as to what else can happen, deepending on yOUR intentions/behaviours.
The area of sunspots responsible for this latest spat of solar activity are FIFTEEN TIMES THE SIZE OF THE EARTH. Just to make this perfectly clear, THE SUN IS FUCKING HUGE! The whole fsking EARTH could smash into it and the sun wouldn't even blink. So no, it's highly unlikely that some heavenly body about 100 times the size of Jupiter smashed into the sun and we didn't see it coming or notice it happening. Solar weather just goes through weird phases, just like earth weather. That's all.
-73, de n1ywb
www.n1ywb.com
I guess from the point that God has given us free will you could look at it as pre-destination. But if you truly want salvation God will not deny it to anyone who believes.
There is room in Heavan for everyone...
John 14:2
In my Father's house are many rooms; if it were not so, I would have told you. I am going there to prepare a place for you.
Sounds like God wants as many people in Heaven as possible.
It's God who judges us but it is up to us to WANT to get into Heaven.
Sanity is overrated...Being CRAZY is much more fun!!!
Maybe it's just the satellite reacting to interference? I have no idea but it fuels my irrational paranoia that all of humanity is going to look really stupid next week when we're all cracking jokes about solar flares and stuff and then the sun collapses and our existence is forever unknown to the entire universe. Yeah, the egg will really be on our faces then.
But seriously, can anyone explain that frame? It's pretty interesting looking.
The numbers after the letters range from 0 to 20 so there are C5, M17, X8 etc.
My question is this: What do the numbers mean? Is it like the richter scale ( powers of 10 ) or what?
Eat at Joe's.
We, on the other hand, are still traveling along that curve like a numerical algorithm integrating a differential equation. We only know about the past and present but not about the future. We think we have free will, but in reality we're only following the grand solution and coming up with explanations to justify our actions later on.
So, sure you can go out and get a hooker. If you do it, it was so scripted in the beginning.
There are astrologists all over the world smoking a cigarette right now after these last few weeks of solar activity? I would guess that this is akin to locking a sex addict in a porn shop overnight. BTW, if the sun blows up I'm gonna be pissed. My fantasy football team is kicking ass this year.
MMORPG Fan? Prove your worth!
How would this have effected things on our little sphere of dirt if it had been directed towards us?
Keep Austin Weird!
It doesn't work like that. If you ask for Faith God will give it to you but you have to want it.
Sanity is overrated...Being CRAZY is much more fun!!!
I remember theories about solar activity changing our climate patterns. Anyone here know more about that?
up to us to WANT to get into Heaven.
But wanting is an act and in the Bible it clearly says that salvation comes only through faith in Christ. If you want faith and want to be saved, isn't that an act of man? Just like hoping to earn salvation by going to church every Sunday or obeying a complex set of rules like the theocratic elite did in Jesus' days.
The human free will is a problematic concept if one agrees that salvation should come only through faith in Christ and not because you were a good man or went to church every Sunday.
Floods, Earthquakes, Heatwaves, Plagues, Mad Cows, Wildfires and Hurricanes in odd locations, anyone? Sure, this stuff happens, but all within such a short period of time?
Mind you, I doubt very much that the Earth is in any danger from the recent Solar activity. A few power problems, perhaps. (Not like those are anything new these days, either.)
It's the asteroid impacts, I expect, which could cause the, um, deepest impression.
No need to be afraid. It's happened before, it'll happen again. Kick back and enjoy the show. It's why you're here.
Oh, and the deadline for getting the heck out of the U.S. is rolling ever nearer. The government has been quietly re-staffing draft boards. But then nobody listens to the tin-foil hatter. It's easier to laugh than to actually do something.
Knowledge protects. Ignorance endangers.
-FL
Didn't he also something like:
"I got a fever and the only prescription for it is more cowbell!"
I think the numbers are logarithmic, like decibels. An X20 would be 10x as powerful as an X10. Corrections welcomed.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
It would take longer than eight minutes. Probably more on the order of a few hours. But I think if the governments of the world let the cat out of the bag on the alien forces they are hiding in various locations on the planet, we can probably work something out in that time. The ships orbiting the earth would probably be able to direct some heat our way. Or not. ;P (I take off my foil hat)
Un-news
Expected to splatter over Earth's face soon
May choke communications temporarily
The power of these flares spewing into space must be truly ginormous. Sure, they're unusual, and unpredictable. But if we could harness even a tiny fraction of even a single one, we could supply all the Earth's energy needs for the forseeable future.
How about we send a bunch of satellites into LSO (low solar orbit), within the orbit of Mercury, with solar photocollectors powering their wait. When a flare does come by one or more of them, a large, diaphanous electromagnetic antennae are charged by the approaching particle storm, converting the power into electricity, which charges a laser array. The lasers fire from the "lucky" satellite into a power grid among all the satellites. The satellites nearest the Earth fire the power at a receiver on the Moon, which charges a gigantic battery bored beneath the surface. Over months or years, lower powered lasers send the power to collector platforms floating on the seas, which send electricity over cables to the electric grid on land.
Sure, we'd have to wait years before a flare was captured. And it likely would destroy at least one of the satellites capturing it. But there would be several seconds during which the satellite could capture more joules of power than consumed since we invented fire. So after a patient wait, playing the odds, we'd win the solar lottery. If we started now, repurposing all that expensive, dead-end Star Wars spacewar technology, we might be ready by 2020. Then we could power not just our homey little Earth, but all our exploration/communication needs within the planetary systems.
--
make install -not war
strongest. sunflare. ever.
I also hold, as a personal belief, that God knows all that can and will happen from the beginning until the end of time. But this does not mean that our lives must be predetermined. Time is not linear, though it looks that way to us. We are presented with choices and divergent paths all the time. Do you think our decisions are already made? Do you feel that way?
If all is predetermined, how can we be responsible for our actions? Not just in a law enforcement kind of way, but a personal growth kind of way. If we don't have free will, what's the point?
"What the American public doesn't know is what makes them the American public." -Ray Zalinsky (Tommy Boy)
...or NAFTA. Or maybe it's SUVs.
At any rate, this WOULD NOT be happening if Gore was in the Oval Office.
</sarcasm>
------ "Darn floor. Big bite." (Koko the gorilla's best attempt at explaining the experience of an earthquake.)
Yes yes, we already suspected that Sun was financing SCO campaign. And now it's flaming also.
sgis ddo ekil t'nod i
"I DO wanna express myself and i don't need an X37 flare to do it! There! Hows that! This is me expressing myself!"
Sol? Would you come here for a moment, please?
Sol: I'm sorry. I was late. I was having lunch.
I need to talk about your flare.
Sol: Really? I have 15 spots on. I, uh, (shows him)
Well, ok, 15 is minimum, ok?
Sol: Ok.
Now, it's up to you whether or not you want to just do the bare minimum. Well, like Sirius, for example, has 37 pieces of flare. And a terrific smile.
Sol: Ok. Ok, you want me to flare more?
Look. Sol.
Sol: Yeah.
People can get a sunburn anywhere, ok? They come to Earth for the atmosphere and the attitude. That's what the flare's about. It's about fun.
Sol: Ok. So, more then?
Look, we want you to express yourself, ok? If you think the bare minimum is enough, then ok. But some suns choose to flare more and we encourage that, ok? You do want to express yourself, don't you?
Sol: Yeah. Yeah.
Great. Great. That's all I ask.
Sol: Ok.
I knew Scott McNealy was gay!!!
Maybe there's a new push, but they never stopped looking for people
"But wanting is an act and in the Bible it clearly says that salvation comes only through faith in Christ. If you want faith and want to be saved, isn't that an act of man? Just like hoping to earn salvation by going to church every Sunday or obeying a complex set of rules like the theocratic elite did in Jesus' days."
I don't belive so. I can sit here at my desk and want some thing. I'm not really performing an action other than just firing off a few neurons to generate the thought. The acts the Bible are talking about are things like giving money, showing up to church, not hurting anybody, etc.
It's like the parable of the two people giving money at the temple. The rich man gave a lot of money that he had lying around and the poor widow gave her two last coins. Both perfomed an act, but it was the widow that had faith that God would provide for her.
Sanity is overrated...Being CRAZY is much more fun!!!
"Look out, Radioactive Man! The sun is exploding again!"
Thank goodness it wasn't from the Pentium IV region, or even the extremely Hot Athlon XP region, we'd be burnt to a crisp. Damn solar over-clockers, If they burn out this sun, where are we gunna get another one? The bidders have been grabbing them up on ebay like hotcakes.
See the Pictures of the Flood of '08
"If we don't have free will, what's the point?"
You think there is a point to all this?
Surely these flares are signs of world's impending doom.
causes pop unders, at x40, it blows up on the sun...
In a way yes.
Though the humour could be killed if the poster actually calculated the time for the flare to reach the heliopause and the p/cm3 at that distance.
I was thinking of the immortal words of Socrates, who said: "I drank what?" - Chris Knight (Val Kilmer)- Real Genius
WHy do you believe in this silly fairytale nonsense? Do you believe in leprechauns , elves and santa claus too? Do try and drag yourself into
the 21st century instead of speaking like some half witting medieval preacher who thinks lightning is goods anger and disease is caused by blasphemy.
Why don't you religious types just grow up or go see a shrink?
no text here, nothing to see, move on.
The Book of Revelations says the world will end with a war in the Middle East (three going on now) and when the Great Deceiver conquers Babylon (Bush now is the titluar head of Iraq). There something in there about the Sun's fury too.
You need to close your tag with Sheesh....nothing worse than sarcastic syntax errors
Think about. Voyager just leaves solar system. The Federation takes notice. My god, another intelligent species. My GOD, and their sun is about to explode...we have to relocate them to another system!
The Right Reverend K. Reid Wightman,
I'm no genius, but close to it, but could this ejection cause the suns orbital path along the galaxy to be nudged a new microns? This blast looks powerful enough to alter the suns trajectory somehow.
Noooo. Lightning is caused by charged particles in our atmosphere and disease is caused by germs, bacteria, and unclean conditions.
Where exactly do YOU think lightning and disease come from?
Scottcha+4 (thanks for modding me down)
Maybe the Sun wasn't getting enough response from its X-10 popups?
The only reason we have the rights we have is that people just like us died to gain those rights. -- Cheerio Boy
Is this yet another scheme from Scott McNealy?
That's great, it starts with an earthquake, birds and snakes, an aeroplane -
Lenny Bruce is not afraid. Eye of a hurricane, listen to yourself churn -
world serves its own needs, don't misserve your own needs. Feed it up a knock,
speed, grunt no, strength no. Ladder structure clatter with fear of height,
down height. Wire in a fire, represent the seven games in a government for
hire and a combat site. Left her, wasn't coming in a hurry with the furies
breathing down your neck. Team by team reporters baffled, trump, tethered
crop. Look at that low plane! Fine then. Uh oh, overflow, population,
common group, but it'll do. Save yourself, serve yourself. World serves its
own needs, listen to your heart bleed. Tell me with the rapture and the
reverent in the right - right. You vitriolic, patriotic, slam, fight, bright
light, feeling pretty psyched.
It's the end of the world as we know it.
It's the end of the world as we know it.
It's the end of the world as we know it and I feel fine.
Six o'clock - TV hour. Don't get caught in foreign tower. Slash and burn,
return, listen to yourself churn. Lock him in uniform and book burning,
blood letting. Every motive escalate. Automotive incinerate. Light a candle,
light a motive. Step down, step down. Watch a heel crush, crush. Uh oh,
this means no fear - cavalier. Renegade and steer clear! A tournament,
a tournament, a tournament of lies. Offer me solutions, offer me alternatives
and I decline.
It's the end of the world as we know it.
It's the end of the world as we know it.
It's the end of the world as we know it and I feel fine.
The other night I tripped a nice continental drift divide. Mountains sit in a line.
Leonard Bernstein. Leonid Breshnev, Lenny Bruce and Lester Bangs.
Birthday party, cheesecake, jelly bean, boom! You symbiotic, patriotic,
slam, but neck, right? Right.
It's the end of the world as we know it.
It's the end of the world as we know it.
It's the end of the world as we know it and I feel fine...fine...
Hopefully they'll collect enough data off the flares to correct the model,
hopefully this is part of a correct model, and not the beginning of the end of the sun's life. I'm not saying it will happen in weeks or years or even millenia, but the sun will start to die out soon (actually, it's constantly dying from when it's born), and hopefully this doesn't signal a change in it's rate of death...
Yes, a comet collided with the sun to produce these flares. The real question is, how will this affect Clark Kent's ability to control his super powers while Perry White is snooping around?
My question is this: What do the numbers mean? Is it like the richter scale ( powers of 10 ) or what?
X-Ray flux is measured in Watts per square meter (averaged out over a period of time, usually over a minute).
10^-8 is the lower threshhold of an A-Class
10^-7 is the lower threshhold of a B-Class
10^-6 is the lower threshhold of a C-Class
10^-5 is the lower threshhold of a M-Class
10^-4 is the lower threshhold of a X-Class
10^-3 is the lower threshhold of a X10-Class
10^-2 would be the lower threshhold of an X100-Class
So, the X-28 flare saturated the detectors of the GOES satellites with 0.0028 W/m^2 energy.
Daschle on the house floor today said obviously this past week's events of four of the strongest solar flares ever recorded are a direct result of the Bush administration's environmental policies and if a Democrat was in the White house this would have never occurred. Daschle went onto to say looking at the long term data clearly shows most of these tragic solar events occur during a Republican administration and that it's damn time that the American people don't allow for a repeat of these events to reoccur under the Bush administration and not be distract by Iraq. When asked for comment, the white house spokesman said, "What's the problem, the president and the first lady are out in the back lawn enjoying the auroras as we speak and that if Daschle wants to use this as an election time issue, I'll have the RNC raise the issue on why there are 5 times as many earthquakes under the Democrat watch".... reports blogx.org
How have these solar flares impacted the ISS? Have they been exposed to increased amounts of radiation?
the sun is on fire!!! run away!!!
But it makes you worry: what would have happened if that X40 flare was directed right at us?
...it's gotta be global warming.
-Looking for a job as a materials chemist or multivariat
The astronauts have about an 8 minute warning before the radiation for the flare gets to them. The actual plasma comes much later. NASA informs them, and they retreat to one of the Russian modules (Zveda I think) which has a small section that is densly shielded. Even there, I believe they receive about a 2 week dose of radiation (what we experience walking around on the planet on a daily basis for two weeks). Of course, that level is based on an X10 I think. I have no idea how much they receive from an X20, but obviously it's more. I don't think this will be a problem unless we get 4-5 more X20s in their stay. I am sure at some point, NASA would have to consider bringing them back early if the doses keep getting higher.
One thing to note, the Soyuze capsules are really bad at shielding cosmic radiation, so they aren't a very good refuge for that. So, if a big sucka (say an X30+) came off the Sun, the Astronauts would not be able to ditch till after the radiation pulse. They would have to endure it on the station, then leave for treatment back home. De-orbit with radiation sickness would probably suck.
"Curiosity killed the cat, but for a while I was a suspect."- Steven Wright
Curse you Sol, and your little dog too!!!
Because 486 is close to the Sun's western limb, the blast was not directed straight towards the Earth.
I object! I think it was on the east. Proposal to NASA: send somebody to the sun with a compass to find out which way is west. While he's there he can ask the sun how a spherical entity can be considered to have limbs.
Lack of eloquence does not denote lack of intelligence, though they often coincide.
During last week's solar event I read somewhere that airplane passengers were receiving fifty times the normal background radiation. For a couple hour flight, this would be like four extra days a year background. You get a 100 days extra over sea level if you live in Colorado.
Airpline employees however are getting like hundreds of days of extra radiation if they've worked regularly the past couple weeks.
Gooder English learning go.
The Sun has unleashed its largest recorded solar flare, capping 10 days of unprecedented activity for the star.
Solar Orgasm
So how high can the earth take before we are cooked/extinct?
I thought Glen Oaks produced flares in the 1970's? Sun have a long way to go if they are going to break into the clothing industry.
This comment does not represent the views or opinions of the user.
Could someone please explain how to parse reports such as the NOAA solar forecast? Thanks!
As you all probably read, the Sun "upgraded" to .NET a few weeks ago when all the flares started to appear. It appears to be a memory leak that Microsoft is working on, which are occurring as solar flares. Microsoft is going to release a patch soon. Looks like the Suns few billion years of uptime will sonn be gone, as the Sun will at least have to reboot once after it applies the patch and probably stay down longer so Microsoft audit it's license.
So what would happen on earth if an X40 solar flare directly impacted? I haven't seen anybody mention the effects of something so large.
Additionally, at what level should we throw our hands up in despair and declare the end is here?
..and I've booked little Kal-El on the secret Mars probe being launched tomorrow.
A cynic...how freaking original!
-Libertarian secular transhumanist
What does the Securities and Exchange Commission have to do w/ the sun?
[o]_O
If the Securities and Exchange Commission is busying themselves by estimating the size of solar flares, I guess that explains why the job market is in the pits.
"Neque enim lex est aequior ulla, quam necis artifices arte perire sua."
In another 6 or 7 billion years this place will not be fit to live in.
How long does it take for a "solar flare" to
Also, same question, but with respect to the Northern Lights. I've seen video animations of the lights vividly rippling in the night sky, like waves lapping at the shore of a pond, but do they actually move that fast? If I were to see them (and I never have), and I watched them for 5 or 10 seconds, would I see them move at all? Or are they, again, like clouds, and very slow moving?
Just wondering.
Like woodworking? Build your own picture frames.
These flares were a precursor to the sun actually burning it's self out? I mean really. How do we know when and how the fiery ball at the center of our solar system will die out for real? It's not like we have ever seen something like this happen before up close and personal. Maybe the science of today is totally wrong when it comes to stuff like this. We just don't know...
"The end times are nigh! Ours is deserved damnation!"
When I was a kid, it was a rare and noteworthy thing when even one of these sorts of events would occur.
Also within the last six months was the killer heat wave in France, and the drying up of numerous old rivers throughout Europe, and the crazy brush fires in California. --All of which, (with maybe the exception of the Danuabe drying up), are the sorts of things which would have been reported by the world press when I was a kid.
Now when it comes to earthquakes, perhaps you are right, but then who knows? There have certainly been dozens lately. And Old Faithful in Yellowstone has been spouting eratically for the last couple of years now, which has all the geologists wringing their hands.
As well, there have been a lot of big metorites in the last year, many actually striking the earth. --Another two events just since the beginning of November alone. Again, I don't recall any rocks falling out of the sky being reported when I was young, and that was during the seventies when the news industry was well established and quite robust. --And when all things related to space exploration were exciting and cool.
But think as you will.
-FL
Google for one solar mass in kilograms.
My amazing wife - Artist, Author, Philosopher - Laurie M
No, no, no! The sun's mass is one solar mass, or 2*10^30 kg, according to this page.
But its weight is a different matter entirely. Weight is a force, which means it should be measured in Newtons. Weight also requires the influence of a gravitational field. Since the Sun is in orbit around the center of the galaxy, and in free fall, it is weightless.
(Well, actually, the Earth ''does'' pull on the sun some, so we can calculate its "weight" in the Earth's gravitational field independently of its "weight" in other gravitational fields... this is from memory, so it may not be completely accurate...
All right, the sun weighs 3.6e28 Newtons. So there.
Sunlit World Scheme. Weird and different.
Guess this will put the kibosh on all those tree-huggers advocating solar as safe and benign.
Let's face it, it's time to shut down the sun before it kills us and step up use of safe energy sources like coal and oil. The sun has had its chance, and it blew it.
Never let a lack of data get in the way of a good rant.
The satellites only have to work *once* to have a net power benefit. The power in a single flare is vast compared to the total power consumption of producing, launching and monitoring a network of even hundreds of satellites. If the Earth were as close to the Sun as I propose the satellite orbit, it would be fried by a flare; the energy released making the satellites here on the Earth hardly makes a ripple in the ecosystem.
The satellite lifetime is like the Star Wars "Brilliant Pebbles" tech: while the satellite is destroyed by the wave of energy passing through it, it lasts long enough to convert some power to a laser. The laser transfers power to a receiver a distance/direction away that is unaffected by the large power passing through the satellite, but even the fraction received is large. In Star Wars, the destroying energy comes from a nuclear blast, and the receiver is a military target on Earth. With the solar wind web, the destroying energy comes from a solar flare, and the receiver is a prepared target on the Moon.
Some of the captured energy is used to make and launch replacements for satellites destroyed by the flare. Or not - even a significant fraction of a flare's energy would put us in an energy budget environment that makes today's tech look like rubbing sticks together.
Solar wind power is better than Titanic petrochemicals for many reasons, mainly the superior efficiency of sending energy across the solar system in an "inertialess" laser, instead of bound up in matter. Then there's the reduced pollution of capturing and processing the laser energy, as opposed to burning chemicals to go out, retrieve, ship back, and process Titanic chemicals. And the pollution issue is relevant not just on the Earth side, but possibly on the Titanic side: maybe there's some kind of life brewing in that ocean. Probably not, but why ruin it for the possibility of human farming sometime in the future? The kind of life that might be affected by depriving it of a small fraction of the power of a sporadic solar flare is too different from us to consider, when compared to finding a cleaner way out of our approaching energy bottlenecks. Plus, we could siphon all these Star Wars scientists away from war development, into the more secure and profitable plentiful-energy business.
--
make install -not war
could these two events be related?
With all of these flares right in our direction, makes me wonder if the sun is pissed at us.
So - how is this impacting HF ham radio?
The hams seem to have a pretty good handle on solar weather. Its also the first site I found that explains what this M3.5 X17 X28 etc scale is. Seems to be logarithmic scale of X-ray flux averaged over 5 minute periods.
I don't want to start a holy war here, but what is the deal with you SUV fanatics? I've been sitting here at my freelance gig in an SUV (Vortec 4800 V8 engine with 285 horsepower) for about 20 minutes now while it attempts to create a level 17 solar flare. 20 minutes. At home, on my Volkswagen Bug running diesel, which by all standards should be a lot slower than this SUV, the same operation would take about 2 minutes. If that.
I won't bore you with the laundry list of other problems that I've encountered while working on various SUVs, but suffice it to say there have been many, not the least of which is I've never seen a SUV that has run faster than its Rice-grinder counterpart, despite the SUVs' faster chip architecture. My six-disc in-dash CD changer and Bose speaker system runs faster than this 285 horsepower machine at times. From a productivity standpoint, I don't get how people can claim that the SUV is a superior machine.
SUV addicts, flame me if you'd like, but I'd rather hear some intelligent reasons why anyone would choose to use a SUV over other faster, cheaper, more stable vehicles.
Hey man, fuck you, I LIKE sleeping, okay? That once-a-week crap just wont cut it.
But you woudln't even feel the difference once you were assim^H^H^H part of the new civilization. Besides, sleeping is overrated. You can't be productive if you are asleep. As it is, I get 4-6 hours a night myself. ;)
Un-news
I think American news avoided this info to prevent panic. Here (Poland) they put a blunt fact in the news:
Was the flare directed straight at Earth, oceans would evaporate
45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B2
Anyone aware of what protection the current group of space station astronauts have against the flare radiation?
> Bruce Dickinson said it best when he sang, "The sun that gave us life yesterday is now the sun that takes our lives away" on his Accident of Birth album.
;-) :-)]
Um, yeah. Let's hope omega zero day isn't just round the corner.
[Parent post quoted in full because I like the album, and consider that any post that quotes it doesn't deserve -1 moderation
"'I pass the test,' she said. 'I will diminish, and go into the West, and remain Galadriel.'"
- JRR Tolkien.
I believe in free will. If it doesn't exist then nothing matters anyway and I'm just following my predestined path in believing in it. If it does exist, well what d'you know, I'm right!
"'I pass the test,' she said. 'I will diminish, and go into the West, and remain Galadriel.'"
- JRR Tolkien.
Why don't you religious types just grow up or go see a shrink?
Because they are afraid.
They don't want to realize that after they die, that's it. No heaven, only slowly rotting pile of wormfood.
-Northern areas snow fall
-rural areas bad roads, need to get places without roads
-need to tow, boat, camper, other
-Need cargo room to transport stuff
-need truck like vehicle for work, suv nicer for normal use than pick up
i'd rather have a sports car or luxury sedan but one cannot argue the usefulness of an SUV
I think your post should be modded up for humor. It better have been humour, otherwise you need an enema.
I was picturing McNealy lambasting about Microsoft... :-)
--- root@127.0.0.1
I, for one, welcome our new photon overlords.
Jeezes, was it that hard to put the simple word "The" in front of "Sun"?