Sun Releases Largest Radiation Storm in 15 Years

what_the_frell writes "Newscientist is reporting that a large cluster of sunspots has just released huge amounts of radiation toward Earth. The crew of the ISS reportedly had to move into the bulkier Russian section of the station, while airlines rerouted planes away from the most affected regions. Look forward to varying degrees of radio & cell phone reception and some pretty cool aurora boreali until January 22, when the sunspot storm turns away from the earth, pointing its radiation elsewhere."

Comments

Great

[Pan T. Hose]

As I have already said countless times on such occasions, now astrologers, psychics and other quacks are going to force their supersticious, geocentric, pseudoscientific, religious, flat earth, stupid mambo jumbo upon us, because those solar storms must surely have an influence on people. At least there will be something interesting to read on Randi.org, I guess.

Northern Hemisphere Bias

[Noodlenose]

As usual in Slashdot, the whole commentary is of course very northern hemisphere biased.

We down here at the end of the world on New Zealand's South Island look forward to view the magnificent Aurora australiensis, even if it is horribly misnamed.

Aurorae Boreales vs Aurora Borealesees

[PsiPsiStar]

It's curious that that pluralization to aurorae boreales has stuck around so long. It's certainly used. For example, Walt Whitman wrote

"
Amid pictures that dart upon me even as I speak, and glow and mix and coruscate and fade like aurorae boreales.
--Walt Whitman, "Notes (Such as They Are) Founded on Elias Hicks"
"

But why is this?

For example, "major general"
would be pluralized to "majors general"
when it was newly introduced into the language. The pluralization would follow its, I believe, french roots.

As the word stayed longer in our language it would be treated as an english phrase. We would eventually start saying "major generals"

Websters dictionary gives the following entymology for aurora borealis;

[New Latin aurra borelis : Latin aurra, dawn + Latin borelis, northern.]

My question is; why are we still treating 'Aurora Borealis' like a foreign phrase? In English, we certainly wouldn't say "northerns lights." Is it because it's considered a technical term so we still treat it as a latin phrase? Or is it just not popular enough in its usage to be treated as plain English?

I saw this sunspot last week

[GreatDrok]

I was driving down to Newcastle from Edinburgh last week (15th) wearing my usual dark glasses and there was low cloud which meant I could see the sun's disc without it blinding me. There, right in the centre, a little above the mid point, was a huge spot. I told my wife to look at it too as I thought it was interesting to see a sunspot so clearly without any visual aids other than dark glasses and some cloud. Man, that thing is big......

Satellites lost...

[Exocet]

Didn't Intelsat just recently lose a satellite? Like, just the other day? I saw some slashdot'ers speculating on various causes (metal whiskers were my favourite) but perhaps sunspot activity had something to do with it?

Admittedly, they lost it on the 14th, so perhaps this is a tenuous grasp at best.

Intelsat Loses Another Satellite