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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!
actually, i kind of hope it is!
i could live a little longer in this prison
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. :)
No, Alanis, that would just suck.
The enemies of Democracy are
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.
All organic life in the Northern Hemisphere is disintegrated at the subatomic level, Pacific Ocean boils away, Indian Ocean freezes solid, everybody in Uganda gets superpowers.
Not to be pedantic, but telegraph operators did drop dead during the Carrington Flare, if only because they were more or less attached to massive "antennas." Moreover, the usual threat of solar storms is not radiation to people, but to the radio equipment that makes modern life possible. This one should only graze the
Not to be pedantic, but telegraph operators did drop dead during the Carrington Flare, if only because they were more or less attached to massive "antennas."
Moreover, the usual threat of solar storms is not radiation to people, but to the radio equipment that makes modern life possible. This one should only graze the
One should hope that bqt421 wasn't attached to massive "antennas" while posting this message.
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.