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The Sun Unleashes Coronal Mass Ejection At Earth
astroengine writes "Yesterday morning, at 08:55 UT, NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory detected a C3-class flare erupt inside a sunspot cluster. 100,000 kilometers away, deep within the solar atmosphere (the corona), an extended magnetic field filled with cool plasma forming a dark ribbon across the face of the sun (a feature known as a 'filament') erupted at the exact same time. It seems very likely that both eruptions were connected after a powerful shock wave produced by the flare destabilized the filament, causing the eruption. A second solar observatory, the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory, then spotted a huge coronal mass ejection blast into space, straight in the direction of Earth. Solar physicists have calculated that this magnetic bubble filled with energetic particles should hit Earth on August 3, so look out for some intense aurorae — a solar storm is coming."
It's cosmic bukkake!
Fine, just don't get it in our hair.
I hope this isn't some hyped up story about something the sun does regularly.
sooo are you saying i should check out the sweet sunset that evening, or prepare for oblivion, or put on some sunscreen, or what? i beg your pardon, i'm just not sure what the proper reaction is when a huge coronal mass ejection blasts a magnetic bubble filled with energetic particles at me.
i could live a little longer in this prison
If we can land on this coronal-flare and drill a hole into it. Carefully placing a nuke inside the hole, we can divert it so that both halves will miss the earth and everything will be OK.
If you want a warning when auroras are likely to be occuring without paying Spaceweather for alerts (so you can scurry outside and look), check out the NOAA's SWPC mailing lists. Go for the K-Index lists, and sign up for all those that apply for your location.
To figure out which minimum k-index results in visible aurora from your location, check out this helpful page; just enter in your latitude and longitude, and it'll give you your "magnetic latitude"; match that up with a k-index using the table, and you know which mailing lists to sign up for.
If your phone does email, you can get the alerts anywhere; if your phone doesn't but your provider has an email-to-sms gateway, you could just forward emails for the same effect. :)
Wouldn't it be ironic if this solar flare knocks SOHO out of commission?
So now when the network dies tomorrow it really will be solar flares. So much for my running joke.
I don't believe in karma, I just call it like I see it.
I don't have a clue how common of an event this is supposed to be, but from the tone of the article I think tinfoil will offer sufficient protection from it. My guess would be that the real story is that the birth of this "solar storm" was recorded.
I would think that a coronal mass ejection hitting the ISS would be much like a tidal wave hitting a twig. It's the atmosphere that diverts the particles, which is what the auroras are. The ISS wouldn't do a whole lot if it were in the path.
Rhymes that keep their secrets will unfold behind the clouds.There upon the rainbow is the answer to a neverending story
Do they mean it's traveling a straight line? Or do they mean it's is moving in such a way so as to collide with us when we come around to a certain point in space?
I judt got a nre Kinesis keybiartf so please excusr ant egregiou typos.
Stop playing with that Sun, you'll put your eye out!
Python: 'And then suddenly you have a language which says "we're all stuck with whatever the whiniest coder wants".'
If this were a typical science fiction movie, they would have an astronaut deflect it using a mirror made from a candy wrapper and a tongue depressor. When that, surprisingly, fails, the radiation will strike the Earth, waking Godzilla, who will then proceed to destroy Japan. Since I don't live in Japan, I say let him have his fun.
Who would win this election: Andrew Weiner vs Andrew Weiner's weiner.
If a solar flare leaves the star Sol at 8:55am traveling at 540 miles/second and a plane takes off from Houston 9 days later, will the flight be affected by the solar flare?
No.
It just means I get to take more pictures like these.
I wrote an application that keeps track of auroral potential WRT photography. It's public domain, and you can get the latest version of the project here. Linux, OSX. Nothing for windows, sorry. At least, not without substantial linux-like underpinnings. Love to hear about it if you did get it running under windows, of course.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
Last time we had a decent CME along with clear skies, I went outside and saw Aurora spread across the sky .. and this was located a 30 minute drive outside of New York City. Grabbed my Canon point and shoot camera and set it for 10 second exposure and this was the result:
http://photo.omnistep.com/aurora11072004/
I heard they were seen as far south as the Carolina's.
I wouldn't get too excited. Only a C3.2 flare (ratings in order of severity are A,B,C,M,X) and not even a blip of high energy proton flux. Maybe we'll get some minor geomagnetic storming with the plasma cloud arrival and some auroral activity at least...
Here are the classifications, and a C3 means few if any noticeable impact on Earth. It is the X class flares that we need to be concerned about:
http://www.spaceweather.com/glossary/flareclasses.html
Unless they hit Germany and the radioactive wild pigs become sentient, hack into the EU's carbon trading system and make enough money to buy their own Island near the island of Doctor Moreau.
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
I expected a misstep or two with the takeover, but Oracle REALLY screwed up this time!
Weird, I had a dream this morning involving this theme, and I hadn't seen this story until after I woke up. In the dream, my game console was making a weird noise that wouldn't stop. I disconnected it, but it kept making the noise. Then I went into another part of the house and everything was making that noise, and there was no power. I thought it was an EMP or something from a nuclear blast, but then realized that would be very short, not continuous.