Coronal Mass Ejection Hits Earth

astroengine writes "On Tuesday, the Earth was hit by a coronal mass ejection (CME), triggering a 'moderate' geomagnetic storm, igniting aurorae at high latitudes. The CME in question was launched from the sun early on Sunday and space weather scientists predicted its arrival on Aug. 3 — the vast magnetic bubble of solar plasma arrived on schedule."

Comments

Induction Magnetometer

[lazarus]

Monitor the results.

Re:EMP?

[tlhIngan]

Could something like this have the same effect on electronics as an EMP?

Imagine the chaos if all the microprocessors on the planet burned out at once. Or just in one hemisphere.

On the surface, not so much - the magnetosphere funnels those charged particles to the magnetic poles, where they interact with the atmosphere and create the stunning light shows we call auroras. That said, they can induce currents to flow, especially in long lines (think power lines) which can cause circuit breakers to trip, cutting off the grid and causing power outages.

In space, they cause lots of havoc with satellites - ranging from simple loss of communication (moving charged particles generate EM radiation, after all - same ones that cause power outages mentioned above), to complete destruction if it burns out some control circuits. So not only are the electronics rad-hard, but there are shut down protocols to temporarily turn satellites "off" to prevent damage. A dead satellite is a huge cloud of space junk waiting to happen, after all, especially if you can't deorbit it.

Of course, the magnetosphere is supposed to be weakening in time for a supposed pole reversal, in which case life will get pretty interesting.

This CME didn't result in any damage to satellites, though. Not sure if there weren't other effects (power outages, notable) caused, though.

The good and the bad

[dtmos]

The additional bit of good news (if you're a VHF amateur radio operator, or FM or TV broadcast DXer) is that there should be interesting propagation of VHF radio signals refracting off of the aurora, perhaps as far as 2000 km. The bad news is that the same ionization that refracts the VHF signals attenuates HF signals, so if you're an HF amateur radio operator or short-wave listener, the paths over the poles will be closed for a few days.

I guess the additional bad news if you're a VHF broadcaster (FM or over-the-air TV) is that you can expect a lot of calls from the public complaining about poor reception, as signals from far away interfere with yours. :-/