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Space Weather Warning

Posted by Zonk on from the going-to-have-to-cancel-my-space-picnic dept.

SallyMac writes "The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has issued a Space Weather Warning. On Friday, May 13th, NOAA detected a 'geomagnetic storm of extreme proportions'. From the article: 'This event registered a 9 on the K-Index, which measures the maximum deviation of the Earth's magnetic field in a given three-hour period...The scale ranges from 0 to 9, with 9 being the highest. This was a significant event.' See the article on the NOAA site for more information." Spaceweather.com has details on the resulting auroras.

3 of 229 comments (clear)

  1. I need to find a new primary news source. by Max+Threshold · · Score: 4, Insightful
    Shit, man. If they knew about the flare on Friday, how come somebody didn't say something, oh, Saturday or something? I totally missed the auroras.

    Is there a RSS feed where I can get this kind of news in a *timely* manner?

  2. Corrections by zerbot · · Score: 5, Insightful

    What was observed on the 13th was solar flare activity. It doesn't become a geomagnetic storm until it reaches the earth, which it did on the 15th.

    Is it really that hard to copy the right information out of sources?

  3. Is this related to Earth's changing magnetic field by goat_of_wisdom · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I've read that Earth's magnetic field is getting weaker and will soon reverse its polarity. I wonder if a weakening magnetic field is more susceptible to these kinds of solar flares. (i.e. a normal flare results in a larger perturbation of Earth's magnetic field.)