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Posted: 29-10-2003 02:09 Post subject:

You are right, Fenris;
the universe will cool down, mostly because of expansion ; eventually there will be occasional atoms, a few photons getting redder and redder due to red shift, and some galactic black holes at fantastically low temperatures;

the only way to survive would be as ethereal ghost beings.
And how you get to be one of those I don't really know.

Oh by the way it looks like being cloudy Wednesday night-

it would be nice to see the aurora again-
I saw it in about January 1992 in York...
curls of violet-grey light followed by green and red patches.

Posted: 29-10-2003 02:46 Post subject:

I have never seen the aurora before, only pictures. It looks spectacular and magical.

Posted: 29-10-2003 19:49 Post subject:

Earth buffeted by big solar flare

Posted: 29-10-2003 20:11 Post subject:

Posted: 29-10-2003 20:37 Post subject:

Posted: 29-10-2003 21:59 Post subject:

Geomagnetic readings are very high at York uni as of 20.00 ut . Anyone lucky enough to see aurora outside their windows now? Lots of cloud here and we are very far south, but we did have two succesive years with a single display, but nothing seen here last year.

Looking out towards the n.w. I did in fact see the auroral glow, green this time, which lasted until around 02.00, impressive for this far south!

Posted: 31-10-2003 20:37 Post subject:

Solar storm surge 'not over yet'

Posted: 02-11-2003 22:18 Post subject: The Sun Has Gone Crazy:OFFICIAL

http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99994321

Last edited by ttaarraass on 05-11-2003 02:46; edited 1 time in total

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/3242353.stm

Posted: 18-03-2004 02:34 Post subject:

Posted: 26-07-2004 19:59 Post subject:

Posted: 27-07-2004 17:11 Post subject:

Very high activity at the moment http://www.dcs.lancs.ac.uk/iono/aurorawatch/

Posted: 28-07-2004 18:46 Post subject: Fortean coincidence?

While this giant sunspot was taking aim at the Earth, the band Sunspot was scheduled to open for the 1970s band Foghat.

http://www.jsonline.com/news/wauk/jul04/246834.asp

Posted: 22-02-2011 11:47 Post subject:

Solar storm 'could cause more damage than Hurricane Katrina'
A powerful solar flare hit the Earth last week – and experts are now warning that the next one could be catastrophic
By Steve Connor, Science Editor, in Washington
Tuesday, 22 February 2011

Havoc wreaked by a solar storm – such as the one that occurred last week – could be equivalent to a "global hurricane Katrina" that would cost up to $2 trillion dollars in damage to communications satellites, electric power grids and GPS navigation systems, scientists said yesterday.

Thursday's solar flare was the biggest for four years and ejected billions of tons of matter travelling at a million miles per hour towards Earth.
When it hit our magnetic field it generated magnetic storms and power surges which disrupted communications and grounded flights.

Senior government advisers have warned that the world has never been more vulnerable to the effects of such an events, which buffets the complex and delicate electronic technology that now controls almost all aspects of modern society.

An increasing reliance on electronic equipment, such as GPS satellite navigation and the computers controlling smart grids for electricity distribution, has meant that solar storms can now produce unprecedented damage on a global scale, they said.

Professor Sir John Beddington, the government's chief scientific adviser, said that the growth in the use of complex electronic machinery over the past 10 years has made society far more susceptible to catastrophic disruption than a decade ago when the last solar activity cycle reached its peak. "Space weather has to be taken seriously. We've had a relatively quiet period of space weather and we expect that quiet period to end," Sir John told the American Association for the Advancement of Science in Washington.

"At the same time, over that period the potential vulnerability of our systems has increased dramatically, whether it is the smart grid in our electricity system or the ubiquitous use of GPS systems," he said.

The approximately 11-year solar cycle is now emerging from one of its quietest periods in 50 years and is expected to reach a solar maximum in 2013, when the number of solar flares on the Sun which generate electromagnetic storms reaches a peak.

"[Last week's] event was the strongest solar flare in four years and as a consequence airlines re-routed flights away from polar regions in anticipation of the possibility that their radio communications would not be operable," said Jane Lubchenco, the head of the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). "In addition to that, communications problems were reported on flights from Hawaii to southern California and the flare disrupted communications in parts of the western Pacific region and Asia.

"Clearly this is something we need to take seriously. That particular event was not a very serious one, but as we enter a period of higher solar activity it is reasonable to expect more and more events and they may vary in magnitude," she said.
"This is an area that we're beginning to pay much more attention to, not only because we are entering a solar maximum, but because so much more of our technology is vulnerable than was the case even 10 years ago when we had the last solar maximum," she added.

Thomas Bogdan, director of the Space Weather Prediction Centre in Boulder, Colorado, said that GPS systems are highly vulnerable to the massive bursts of electromagnetic radiation from the Sun, which energise the charged particles of the Earth's ionosphere.
"That ionosphere sits between us and the GPS satellites and the thicker that ionosphere, the longer the time delay between the GPS satellite and when you pick it up," Dr Bogdan said. "In the worst-case situation, on the day-lit side of the Earth, we could see the loss of GPS not only for navigation but for its critical timing capability used in business transactions."

About 10 or 20 hours after the initial blast of electromagnetic radiation, a second burst of high-energy charged particles will hit the Earth.
These have the ability to induce dangerous electric currents in power lines and oil pipelines, Dr Bogdan said. A 14-year-old early-warning satellite is the only way of directly detecting the potential magnitude of the danger this wave of charge particles within a solar storm poses to pipelines and electronic systems on Earth, he said. "Any storm coming from the Sun has to pass over that spacecraft before it hits Earth. If it takes 20 hours to go from the Sun to Earth, it's going to take about 20 minutes to go from that spacecraft to Earth. So our last warning is a 20-minute warning, which will tell us how big, how strong, how nasty that storm might be," he told the meeting.

"The trouble is, it's 14 years old and what keeps me awake at night is worrying about whether that satellite would be running next morning when I get up," he said.

Sir John Beddington added: "There are two things we need to be thinking about. We need to think about prediction – the ability to categorise and give warning about when particular types of space weather is likely to occur. The second is about engineering. Thinking about particular sectors and their vulnerability to particular types of space weather – that is a complicated issue and we need to think hard about how to do that," he said.
"What is absolutely critical is that we do have to take space weather seriously. This is an international issue and it is international collaboration that is how we are going to deal with it."

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/solar-storm-could-cause-more-damage-than-hurricane-katrina-2221706.html

Posted: 07-03-2012 20:07 Post subject:

Doomed, we're all doomed I tell ye.

Solar storm headed toward Earth may disrupt power
http://www.physorg.com/news/2012-03-solar-storm-earth-disrupt-power.html
March 7th, 2012 in Space & Earth / Space Exploration

This handout image provided by NASA shows a solar flare heading toward Earth. An impressive solar flare is heading toward Earth and could disrupt power grids, GPS and airplane flights. An impressive solar flare is heading toward Earth and could disrupt power grids, GPS and airplane flights. Forecasters at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's (NOAA) Space Weather Prediction Center said the sun erupted Tuesday evening and the effects should start smacking Earth late Wednesday night, close to midnight EST. They say it is the biggest in five years and growing. (AP Photo/NASA)

The largest solar flare in five years is racing toward Earth, threatening to unleash a torrent of charged particles that could disrupt power grids, GPS and airplane flights.

The sun erupted Tuesday evening, and the effects should start smacking Earth around 7 a.m. EST Thursday, according to forecasters at the federal government's Space Weather Prediction Center. They say the flare is growing as it speeds outward from the sun.

"It's hitting us right in the nose," said Joe Kunches, a scientist for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. He called it the sun's version of "Super Tuesday."

The solar storm is likely to last through Friday morning, but the region that erupted can still send more blasts our way, Kunches said. He said another set of active sunspots is ready to aim at Earth right after this.

But for now, scientists are waiting to see what happens Thursday when the charged particles hit Earth at 4 million mph.

NASA solar physicist Alex Young added, "It could give us a bit of a jolt." But he said this is far from a super solar storm.

The storm is coming after an earlier and weaker solar eruption happened Sunday, Kunches said. This newer blast of particles will probably arrive slightly later than forecasters first thought.

That means for North America the "good" part of a solar storm - the one that creates more noticeable auroras or Northern Lights - will peak Thursday evening. Auroras could dip as far south as the Great Lakes states or lower, Kunches said, but a full moon will make them harder to see.

Auroras are "probably the treat we get when the sun erupts," Kunches said.
But there is the potential for widespread problems. Solar storms have three ways they can disrupt technology on Earth: with magnetic, radio and radiation emissions. This is an unusual situation when all three types of solar storm disruptions are likely to be strong, Kunches said.

That means "a whole host of things" could follow, he said.

The magnetic part of the storm has the potential to trip electrical power grids. Kunches said power companies around the Earth have been alerted for possible outages. The timing and speed of the storm determines whether it will knock off power grids, he said.

In 1989, a strong solar storm knocked out the power grid in Quebec, causing 6 million people to lose power.

Solar storms can also make global positioning systems less accurate, which is mostly a problem for precision drilling and other technologies, Kunches said. There also could be GPS outages.

The storm also can cause communication problems and added radiation around the north and south poles, which will probably force airlines to reroute flights. Some already have done so, Kunches said.

Satellites could be affected by the storm, too. NASA spokesman Rob Navias said the space agency isn't taking any extra precautions to protect astronauts on the International Space Station from added radiation from the solar storm.

More information: NOAA Space Weather Prediction Center: www.swpc.noaa.gov

NASA on solar flare: http://www.nasa.gov/mission-pages/sunearth/news/News030712-X1.5.html