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Sunspot Grows to 20 Times Size of Earth
TheHedgehog writes "A sunspot group aimed squarely at Earth has grown to 20 times the size of our planet and has the potential to unleash a major solar storm. 'The implications of this spot have scientists on the edge of their seats,' NASA said in a statement Friday. 'If the active region generates coronal mass ejections (CMEs), massive explosions with a potential force of a billion megaton bombs, it will be a fairly direct hit to Earth and its satellites and power grids.'"
Although it could potentially knock out some satellites, I think we should be sympathetic toward the sun as it goes through this difficult period.
If moderation could change anything, it would be illegal.
I, for one, welcome our new mass coronal leaders.
woot first post
So where are the solar control panels located?
7 November 2006: The day Americans realized corruption and incompetence weren't addressing 11 September 2001
Good thing it hasn't developed into a flare yet, otherwise this post wouldn't quite make it to the se
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
Is this bigger than the series of flares last year, which caused some (mostly unnoticed) trouble with satellites?
I should never go outside again. Now I have proof.
The July 2004 issue of National Geographic had a large article about the sun and how we've come to understand how it works.
It was a fascinating read in the print magazine. I'm not 100% sure that the online article is 100% of the printed article.
Did you know that the radiation that eventually becomes visible light takes 100,000 years to escape from the center of the sun to the corona, due to how dense matter is packed in the middle?
From there it's only 8 minutes to earth.
The corona of the sun itself is hundreds of times hotter than the surface of the sun.
National Geographic sun article
It was a big, scary sunspot on July 23rd. SpaceWeather.com are currently reporting: Sunspot 652 is decaying, but it still has a "beta-gamma-delta" magnetic field that harbors energy for X-class solar flares. And it's not pointing at Earth anymore, it's on the right limb of the Sun.
Welcome our new solar powered overlords.
It seems like everytime something along these lines happens, we get news reports detailing all the various ways that our lives will be disrupted and/or the world can come to an end. And in the meantime, I have *yet* to actually have *anything* noticeable happen as a result of a sunspot/solar flare. No loss of cell service. No random computer crashes. Nothing even close to actual power loss. Much like how constant terror alerts reduce the feeling of eminent danger, I'm now to the point that I'd say "meh" to anything short of a Texas-sized asteroid hurtling directly towards earth.
I mean, I can't wait for auroras to show up ! Me and my camera are waiting !
Judging by the latest SOHO images, it looks like the sun spots are already past us... But IANAA (I am not an astronomer).
At first I thought that was the mother of all goatse.cx pics!
With all of this intense solar storm activity we've been seeing lately, how can anyone with a properly raised consciousness doubt that human beings are upsetting the delicate solar environment? In fact, I hear Michael Moore has another documentary coming up which will PROVE that Americans in general, and Republicans especially, can be entertainingly blamed for most of it.
"Those who have never entered upon scientific pursuits know not a tithe of the poetry by which they are surrounded."
I actually saw the thing during my morning commute - must have been on Friday. There was just the right amount of fog and clouds so that you could "look" at the sun. I saw a black dot - reminded me of the pictures of the transit of Venus a while back. It occurred to me that if it was a sunspot, and I could see the thing that clearly, it must be gigantic.
And when it swooped down to attack, I could see that I was right...
I was driving to work and the sun was coming up through some haze and I could clearly see this big ass sunspot in the lower left-hand quadrant. I kept meaning to find an article about it, maybe some pix, too, but better late than never, I guess.
Danke tres mucho, tovarishch.
Flares must have destroyed it in the past hour! The latest SOHO images only show a black rectangle saying "NO VIDEO".
SOLAR WARMING!
The Ludwig von Mises Institute. The reasoning individuals economics
No, it's not bigger then the X17 event last October.
Remember, you can always get up to date information from NOAA's space weather site, including the page that has updated X-Ray images of the sun, auroral maps, and measurements of the magnetic field among other things.
So which SPF of sunscreen should we use?
And will it mean one ethnic group will survive the onslaught, and another won't?
"Give orange me give eat orange me eat orange give me eat orange give me you." -Nim Chimpsky
I'm asking all the science geeks out there (I'm a geek, just not a astronomy geek) to help me answer, what if this massive sunspot zit thing burst? What is the worst case scenario of all that solar wind?
-Christopher Wu
http://www.christopherwu.net/
What? We only have enough escape pods for 6 people? Well, the other 5-point-something billion people will just have to hold their breaths.
I like to place meaningful quotes in my sig, so people will know that I know what meaningful quotes are.
It's all in the plan... Bush starts wars, get's everyone scared of everything that doesn't happen, gets laws passed to remove rights granted to us decades and even centuries ago, pushes for the "one world government" with the FTA...
Coronal Mass Ejections, Supervolcanoes (Yellowstone National Park is largest known and 40k years overdue), MegaTsunamis (launched from an island off Africa, will wipe out Miami to NY), all the close-fly-bys of asteroids (several well within the moon's distance from the earth in the last few years), etc.
Armageddon.
(and I'm not religious!)
Let's hope it knocks out the powergrid to the Eastern Seaboard, so we can have a week off work, while they restart the generating stations... like they had to after Ohio First Energy fumbled the branches.
I had to laugh at this thread. Too bad I can't mod them all up and down simultaneously as "Funny Flamebait"
Human being (n.): A genetically human, genetically distinct, functioning organism.
Floppy disks are a fairly convenient way to look at the sun. In my experience it usually looks like a dim red LED. (Assuming that you remember to slide the metal guard first!)
Chika Chik-ah... do-e ow ow.