Solar Storm - update

[indigobusiness]

Sun gone a bit bonkers.



Aurora likely tonight and tomorrow night.

Solar X-rays:
Geomagnetic Field:



http://www.n3kl.org/sun/noaa.html

[NoodleBoy]

1. that pic makes me want to play "Sonne" by Rammstein for some reason.

[indigobusiness]

2. of course

what about this one?

[NoodleBoy]

5. wow.

[Tuff]

7. .

The sun does cool stuff like that a lot.

[indigobusiness]

10. This is highly unusual...We are in the cyclical sunspot minmum...yet

Sunspot Grows to 20 Times Size of Earth



A sunspot group aimed squarely at Earth has grown to 20 times the size of our planet and has the potential to unleash a major solar storm.

---

No one can say if this sunspot group will let loose with a major storm, but it has the characteristics of a potentially big event.

"The implications of this spot have scientists on the edge of their seats," NASA said in a statement Friday. "If the active region generates coronal mass ejections (CMEs), massive explosions with a potential force of a billion megaton bombs, it will be a fairly direct hit to Earth and its satellites and power grids."


http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/hugesunspots_040723.html

http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/xtreme_flare_031105.html

http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/sun_mysteries_020716-1.html

====

Xray bombardment was recently off the charts. Just because you don't feel it now, doesn't mean you won't feel it later.

[The Night Owl]

3. Shields up, Mr. Sulu. Brace for impact!

:scared:

[indigobusiness]

4. "I'm doing all I can, Jim...

but she won't hold much longer."

[soothsayer]

6. I'm a doctor! Not a solar physicist... (n/t)

[The empressof all]

8. Will my tinfoil hat protect me (eom)

[NNadir]

9. It depends.

Do you have the shiny side in or out?

[indigobusiness]

11. Good point.

Most significant contribution, yet, to this thread.

[smirkymonkey]

12. What exactly would happen here on

earth (examples)? Please explain to us non-scientific types. Thanks! :)

[NNadir]

14. I'm not an expert, but here's my take.

1) Communications relying on electromagnetic radiation (practically all of them these days) might be disrupted. There may be signals lost or quality degraded.

2) The height of the earth's atmosphere will increase enough to put some drag on satellites, thereby shortening their lifetimes. The internal electronics of some may be damaged.

3) Power lines may be effected because of surges. In extreme cases there may be power outages.

4) People flying in aircraft or living at high altitudes will be subject to higher doses of radiation than they are normally subject to. (Flying or living in high altitudes already increases radiation exposure, but in this case the doses would be higher.) Astronauts will get an especially large dose, possibly comparable to having dental x-rays.

5) The Aurora Borealis will be exceptionally spectacular and may appear at much lower latitudes than they normally do.


As a result of effect #4 many radiation phobes here will turn into giant slugs and eat much of Las Vegas, Nevada as well as a few of the cabins on the North Rim of the Grand Canyon. Others will be transformed into giant radioactive ants and will move to Toyko where they will be employed in the Godzilla remake industry.

[smirkymonkey]

16. LOL!

Thanks for the info - especially the last part! Seriously, I appreciate your clear concise answer as I was in a conversation about solar flares this past weekend and nobody seemed to know exactly what the implications would be.

I am especially excited about the possibility of seeing the Northern Lights. Have to get out of the city, though. :)

[Amigust]

69. Anything from more dramatic auroras to an ELE on the side

of the planet facing the hit.

Obviously the hits are usually minor events, otherwise we wouldn't be discussing it.

Auroras, electronic interference, genetic changes (bursts of evolutionary change), toast. Name your poison.

[indigobusiness]

70. Welcome to the thread, Amigust

Please contribute to the new thread. We need all the insight we can get.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=115&topic_id=16404#

[benburch]

13. We simply do not understand our sun.

What we know is that it is not typical of stars of similar color and assumed age.

My favorite "left field" theory is that the sun is the core of an ancient supernova, made largely of iron, with a hydrogen envolope that surrounds it.

http://web.umr.edu/~om/webnewsreports/the_strange_case_of_ironsun.htm

The Strange Case of the Iron Sun

An iconoclastic theory of the solar system's origin shows how science tests its truisms.

By Solana Pyne

In the late 1960s, chemist Oliver Manuel made a small but staggering discovery about meteorites. He noticed that the abundances of certain elements in meteorites were distinctly different from those in the Earth and much of the solar system. This observation spurred research showing that our solar system probably formed from material generated in many different stars. For Manuel, it also spawned a radical theory about the origins of our solar system, which he has doggedly pursued for forty years. Nearly all astronomers agree that the Sun and the rest of the planets formed from an amorphous cloud of gas and dust 4.6 billion years ago. But Manuel argues, based on his compositional data, that the solar system was created by a dramatic stellar explosion--a supernova--and that the iron-encased remnant of the progenitor star still sits at the center of the Sun.

Manuel fits a popular stereotype, the lone dissenter promoting a new idea that flies in the face of the scientific establishment. In the real world, some of these theories eventually have been proven right but vastly more have been proven wrong. Manuel is under no illusions about the popularity of his idea. "Ninety-nine percent of the field will tell you it's junk science," he says. The evidence weighs in heavily against him. If he's right, however, we need to completely rethink how planetary systems form. Even if he's wrong, some scientists say, at least he has made people think.

Astrophysicists don't deny the validity of Manuel's original meteorite data. "It was a good observation," says cosmochemist Frank Podosek of Washington University. "This was something we hadn't observed before. It was a fruitful thing to notice, but he picked it up and ran with it very much farther than the basis could justify."

<snip>

[indigobusiness]

15. Fascinating. Thanks...here's another thread...

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=102&topic_id=706004#

[indigobusiness]

17. THE INFO UPDATES ITSELF In the original message

The big pic and the graphs and the storm and mag field, anyway.

For anyone that wants to monitor the mega-sunspot as it comes around again in a few days.

[indigobusiness]

18. Controversial scientist speaks about solar threat (real player)

http://www.jmccanneyscience.com/sh07-29-04-7megfile-bestsound.rm

Second half of show focuses on solar issues, I think?

[indigobusiness]

19. The huge sunspot cluster is nearing visibility again

on the left side of the self-updating picture.

The photo today is interesting in its hint of activity.

[indigobusiness]

20. Magnetometer...................Estimated Kp Index

..........................Magnetometer...........................Estimated Kp Index

[indigobusiness]

21. The Big Kahuna

comes into view.

And he looks angry.

[benfranklin1776]

22. Kick

:kick:

[indigobusiness]

23. Now this, to add to the concern...

Huge Swirls of Hot Gas Found Above Earth
By Robert Roy Britt
Senior Science Writer
posted: 12 August 2004
06:56 am ET


Pockets of superheated gas several times the size of Earth have been discovered swirling like bathtub drains high above the planet.

The vortices seem to suck high-energy particles from the Sun into Earth's otherwise protective magnetic shield. The finding should help solve a longstanding mystery.

The Sun spits out a constant stream of charged particles known as the solar wind. It travels at nearly 1 million mph and sometimes much faster. Earth's magnetic field blocks most of these particles, which slip past the planet around a teardrop-shaped magnetosphere.

When Earth's magnetic field is aligned opposite to that of the solar wind, gaping holes can allow the energized particles to pour in and collect in an outer region of the magnetosphere called the boundary layer. Scientists already knew this, and during solar storms the gaps can force a rain of particles at lower altitudes, generating tremendous displays of sky lights called auroras while threatening satellites and terrestrial power grids.

http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/magnetosphere_vortices_040811.html

[Trillo]

24. It looks like something may have impacted the Sun.

An asteroid?

[indigobusiness]

25. This gif is of the largest coronal mass ejection - X-28 - ever recorded.

The bright area is many times larger than Earth.

[Dogmudgeon]

26. You mean the initial flash?

I think it's an artifact of the charge-coupled device that SOHO (the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory) uses to image the Sun. The thing "saturates" from the intensity of the light/near-light and develops its own version of "lens flare". Sometimes, they take one or more of the cameras off-line, and they've shut down SOHO entirely one at least two occasions I can recall.

These artifacts have nurtured a whole community of UFO investigators who have claimed to find extraterrestrial craft near the Sun. While I don't like to rule any explanation out, I don't find it convincing, but it's an interesting development.

The SOHO observatory has caught a few comets diving into the Sun, too, but they don't seem to cause much of a disruption.

Actually, a number of interesting and puzzling developments have been seen in the solar system in the last several years. For one thing, nearly every planet other than Earth has also showed evidence of dramatic climatic changes -- Pluto, for instance, is still far warmer than it should be, and still has a gaseous atmosphere, when it should have become solid again several years ago. I suspect these changes are from a large cloud of dust that the solar system is passing through -- very tenuous, but dense enough to cause visible changes in "space weather".

--bkl

[indigobusiness]

28. The scale is difficult

to keep in perspective.

I don't like to rule anything out, either, but some of the recent claims are hard to wrap a mind around. But I respect researchers and theorists willing to take risks. Safe science is backward thinking.

[indigobusiness]

27. Solar Flares mpeg...etc

Within the past day the sun has released a dozen flares and looks more like a cosmic popcorn popper than a star that is your friend

Want to see the sun popping off like a popcorn popper (at solar minimum folks .... click on the following link ... file is not real big)

http://www.jmccanneyscience.com/current_c2.mpeg


Next look at the dead solar wind ... NASA and NOAA scientists would interpret this as a near dead sun ... inreality we are setting in a powerful vortex caused by the solar storms rushing out past us in one direction and the August return current sheet streaming in the other way as if two giant rivers were rushing into each other

And last but not least the dozen or so x-ray bursts from the sun that tell us our sun is convulsing unlike anything we have ever seen at solar minimum before ... in a few years if there are creatures looking at our star from the nearest star they will be saying ... "boy i sure would not want to be living around that star ... it looks like it is ready to blow !!!!"

[indigobusiness]

29. X Class flare today

Put on your lead hats.

[indigobusiness]

30. Is that the monolith from 2001?

[indigobusiness]

31. On a more serious note - RED level storm (today and yesterday)

Geomagnetic Field:

[indigobusiness]

32. CCD BAKEOUT...wtf?

What does this mean?

[Dogmudgeon]

33. The picture element is temporarily "saturated"

CCD means "Charge Coupled Device". It's an array of semiconductors which, in the case of LASCO, detect infrared light.

When the charge becomes too high and can't be "drained" fast enough, the charge builds up in the CCD. When it reaches a certain point, the CCD doesn't send useful data, just a very high-level signal that is analogous to a single beam of bright light (instead of a picture). It is said to be "saturated", "swamped", or "baked out".

Usually, turning the device off for a day or so fixes it. But LASCO is scheduled to send data every few minutes, so when the device is off, LASCO sends an error message instead of a picture.

--bkl

[indigobusiness]

34. Ok...I see. Thanks.

Thanks for the explanation. I just dropped in to see what condition it was in and was bummed to find it still baked-out.

You are a big help. But why don't they do something?

[Dogmudgeon]

35. Almost two weeks

They may have moved the current LASCO picture to a different place. If they dedicate a directory to each imaging device, this is probably what happened if the device failed entirely.

The Sun has been fairly quiet for the past month or so. Someone might actually get the impression we're at a sunspot minimum.

--bkl

[indigobusiness]

36. Well, there IS this

Auroral alert for Sunday evening 10/24


I just received this alert...watch the sky!

There was a solar event facing Earth on the 22nd of October. We estimate that the shock should arrive at Earth around 1900 Greenwich Mean Time on the 24th. If it is on time, that will be Sunday evening in Europe and the USA.

If it is early, it will be Saturday night in Alaska and Russia.

It is difficult to judge the extent of the aurora, but the shock will arrive simultaneously with a fast stream in the solar wind, so we would expect that the aurora will be visible in Southern Scandinavia, Northern Europe, Northern US, (perhaps in the northern sky from Oregon, Illinois, Pennsylvania, and points north).

Check the northern sky anytime during the night, but mostly around midnight on Saturday and Sunday nights.

Dr. Charles Deehr, Prof. Emer. Phys. Institute
University of Alaska Fairbanks
903 Koyukuk Ave N
Fairbanks, Alaska 99775-7320

[Dogmudgeon]

37. But sunspot count = 0

The Sun has been acting mighty weird.

Was this a full CME? I thought there had only been a Class M flare with low activity in the other indices.

--bkl

[indigobusiness]

38. Looks like plenty, to me.

edit-

removed the solar gif (same as original post)

[indigobusiness]

39. Sunspots

What's Up in Space -- 23 Oct 2004
Subscribe to Space Weather News

Never miss another meteor shower--or space station flyby--or lunar eclipse. Sign up for SpaceWeather PHONE.

SUNSPOT 684: Yesterday it was barely visible; today it's five times wider than Earth. Sunspot 684 is growing remarkably fast. Witness this 24-hour animation from the Solar and Heliospheric Observator (SOHO):



Sunspot 684 is the one near the middle. When sunspots evolve so rapidly, their magnetic fields can become unstable and erupt. This active region merits watching as a possible source of solar flares.

http://www.spaceweather.com/

AURORA WATCH: There is a small chance that a coronal mass ejection (CME) will hit Earth's magnetic field on Oct. 24th and cause a geomagnetic storm. Sky watchers in Alaska and Canada should be alert for auroras. The CME was hurled into space by an M-class explosion near sunspot 687 on Oct. 22nd.

[Dogmudgeon]

40. All that in just ten days!

Thanks for the info. I have been very lackadaisical lately about keeping up with cosmic events.

Here's the thread I started on the report of "no sunspots": http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=115x15710

October 11th and 12th were no-sunspot days, according to the article I read (referenced in the post).

The SOHO animation is impressive. I noticed that the MDI package detected a "spotty patch" on the Sun's backside, too.

This is certainly unusual activity for the Sun. I'll check outside tonight to see if we have an aurora. I live at 42°N (above Philadelphia) and the midnight sky here is reasonably dark.

--bkl

[indigobusiness]

41. I saw the MR thread. The Sun seems peculiarly disturbed

and Quixotic.

[fedsron2us]

42. Cool

I love that site and always read updates to this thread.

Someone has clearly forgot to tell the sun that this is supposed to be the quieter period in the sun spot cycle.

[indigobusiness]

45. X Class Flare today...watch for Auroras

Hellsapoppin'

[Dogmudgeon]

46. If this is a Solar Minimum, what will Solar Maximum bring?

Recent solar Coronal Mass Ejection (CME),
imaged by the SOHO space observatory.

I remember when I was an astronomy-obsessed kid in the 1960s and 1970s, there was an extraordinary event -- an X-Class solar flare. (I think they also called it something else back then.) The articles in the science magazines said that such flares were very rare and might happen only every several years ... or decades. I kept my Dad's shortwave radio on to monitor for any change in the static (it didn't change) and warned my parents to be ready to unplug the TVs in case the Earth's electrical field was disturbed too much.

We've had dozens of these flares in the last three years during a phase of decreasing solar activity.

In a year or two, the Sun will be entering a period of increasing activity. If the Sun is entering a long-term period of increasing activity independent of its 11-year cycle, I suspect that X-50+ flares will become common for a few years, with spectacular aurorae visible as far south as the equator.

The downside? It will be murder on electronics!

--bkl

[indigobusiness]

43. If we make it to Solar Maximum

Good post, thanks.

I've been wanting to ask you something:

Over the past few years, I've noticed a difference in the quality of sunlight, and the way it feels on my skin. Growing up under the west Texas sun provided an intimate relationship with the sun at its most intense, but I thought maybe it was just me. Then recently I heard than the Sun had changed from hydrogen fusion to helium fusion. the light IS therefore different, I assume?

Do you have any insight into this?

[Dogmudgeon]

44. It's not the Sun

If the Sun had switched over to helium fusion, we'd know about it very quickly. We might also be dead very quickly; IIRC, helium fusion produces -- liberates -- much greater amounts of energy. The Sun would become whiter, then go back toward yellow and red as it expanded into a Red Giant.

The Sun won't be burning enough helium to disrupt the ecosphere for another 900 million years, and the Red Giant phase won't start until about 3-5 billion years after that.

But the quality of sunlight has changed, and it's measurable. There is less sunlight -- and more clouds -- and with significant changes in the upper atmosphere, the quality of the light has changed, too.

The upper atmosphere is colder than it used to be. Sometimes, the measurable temperature at the tropopause is around -150F (that's where they got the figure for the "superfreeze" scenes in The Day After Tomorrow). It used to be warmer, barely sub-zero, as late as the middle 1980s.

I think this also drives the "Chemtrail" phenomenon. Newer jet fuel mixes produce different combustion by-products, which now freeze much faster -- explosively, even. The advent of the Chemtrail scare matches the beginning of the Global Warming/upper atmospheric cooling era. The Chemtrailers may be a little wacky, but they're wacky for a good reason. Their observations are keen even if their explanations are wrong. They are a new tribe of "modern primitives", sensitive to changes in the world but still painfully superstitious.

Put it all together, and it can scare even the most rigorous scientists among us. The Sun appears to be different from the Earth, it's far more active in its own right, and atmospheric changes have caused subtle meteorological shifts that are getting hard to ignore.

As a Texan, you've paid attention to the Sun. The Inuit noticed yellow jackets this Summer. The Irish just got soaked with an out-of-season tropical storm. Once-fertile China is becoming an enormous Asian Dust Bowl. The changes are coming quickly.

As always, I'll end with my predictions of a non-Apocalyptic Apocalypse: We can either strive to understand what's happening and survive with wisdom, or we can ignore our world and blunder to our collective death. We've known about our general quandary for over a century and have so far done nothing about it. It's time to heed the "signs of the times" and develop a little of that sapience that also provides our species' Linnean name.

--bkl

[indigobusiness]

47. Fascinating...Thanks for your insight. Terrific post.

Thanks for your thoughtful response. Very informative.

If I could remember which scientist I heard claim that the sun was burning helium, I would confront them, but I listen to so many intvws it escapes me. Maybe I just heard it wrong.

While I'm certainly not a scientist, I am a born naturalist, and I've been noting the apocalyptic impact of humans on the planet all my life.

Someone else I heard interviewed said the 20th century was the Apocalyptic Century and that humans tend think in self-satisfying time frames and don't grasp the significance of longer, meaningful time-spans of events. But the extraordinary sequence of events of the last century are the foundation of an Apocalypse.

Yellow-jackets in Inuit country? News to me, but I did hear about the melting of the permafrost and the drunken trees of Alaska. And I did hear about the marlin caught offshore Washington State. There are changes underway that bode ill for the chain of life that supports the top of the food chain.

The upper atmosphere HAS changed dramatically in the past few decades, and I suspected that had something to do withe chemtrail controversy. I heard the top of the upper atmosphere is one mile closer to the surface of the planet that it was just a couple of years ago. That seems shocking to me. No wonder our sun feels different.

No wonder our sun is angry.

[indigobusiness]

48. That should read "a couple of decades..."

not "a couple of years...".

[Dogmudgeon]

49. An Eight-Flare episode!

(Also known as The Thread That Wouldn't Die.)

A series of eight (8) M-class flares have occurred since Election Day, with no fewer than three CMEs in the direction of Earth. Aurorae are anticipated tonight (Friday), tomorrow night, and Sunday night.

As usual, Spaceweather has it all.

--bkl

[fedsron2us]

50. The Sun is really in an angry mood at the moment.

It must be a Democrat.

[fedsron2us]

51. M7 class solar flare yesterday. X1 class solar flare today

Things are getting quite lively

http://spaceweather.com/

[Viking12]

52. Wicked Northern Lights in NE WI tonight. eom

[indigobusiness]

53. Aurora firing!!! Minnesota photo Spectacular!!!!!!!!!

[Viking12]

66. Awesome photo. I took some pics but they didn't turn out well.

Too much ground clutter and a basic digital camera didn't capture the experience well.

[indigobusiness]

71. Need a good film camera for good pics

...but I'd just like to eyeball it. You're lucky.

[indigobusiness]

54. Auroral map --- self-updating (I think)

[Dogmudgeon]

56. Another reason to move to Canada, eh?

Too bad these aurorae have been mainly invisible to people in the Philadelphia area.

What we need is a good X-100 that blows an enormous CME in our direction, so it lights up the sky over the entire planet. And we'll have something pretty to look at when all the power goes out for about a month. :)

--bkl

[indigobusiness]

57. During my lost years in North Dakota

I saw Aurorae you wouldn't believe. What an awesome phenomenon. Helps put things in perspective. Beautiful isn't a big enough word.

[indigobusiness]

60. A direct hit from an X-100 (gulp) flare would

compress the atmosphere to the surface of the planet, and kill the millions, if not billions of people in the exposed area.

One half that size could do horrendous damage.

[Dogmudgeon]

61. Are you sure?

I'm not certain how the flare ratings work, but we had X-28 and X-50 flares in recent years; there was an even bigger one in the late 1800s that destroyed some of the early electrical generating stations but otherwise left the Earth intact.

Of course, with a truly major flare -- the kinds we watch other stars making -- we'd be verifiably toast. I think there was even a S-F novel about that happening to us.

A gamma-ray burst in our local area (<1000 LY) would likewise be a tremendous disaster. When you think about it, we've been lucky to have gone for 4.5 billion years with nothing worse than a few major asteroid/comet impacts. Mars appears to have taken a sizable hit that ripped half the crust of the planet away.

I did look for the aurora here in the Philadelphia 'burbs. Not a trace. Maybe I'll visit Alaska some day and get to see one.

--bkl

PS -- if anyone is still awake now (just after midnight on the East Coast on November 9th, 2004) look for Leonid meteors. There is supposed to a series of minor peaks of 50-200 meteors per hour.

[indigobusiness]

62. I think you are underestimating the potential

of the flares we've already seen.

Remember, the one that was estimated to have been an X-28 was merely a glancing blow. There is concern that a more direct hit from one that size could be catastrophic. A direct hit from one twice that size would be a safe bet to cause a world of hurt.

Too bad your skies aren't clear. You really need to get an eyefull, I know you truly would appreciate it...and never forget it.

[atommom]

55. Fascinating thread! Makes me wish I were outside the city limits now

so I could look for the aurora...

[indigobusiness]

58. That's why God made

cars.

[atommom]

59. Good point!

:D

[indigobusiness]

63. Another Aurora pic and Spaceweather link

http://www.spaceweather.com/

[indigobusiness]

64. Excellent Current Solar Data Page

http://www.lmsal.com/solarsoft/latest_events/

[indigobusiness]

65. Aurora Gallery - link

http://www.spaceweather.com/aurora/gallery_01nov04.htm

[RegexReader]

67. Looks like me

after Kerry conceded!:o

[indigobusiness]

68. X-class Flare Today...

X-2.8

[indigobusiness]

72. This thread continues here:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=115x16404