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Predicting Space Weather

Posted by Hemos on Mon Dec 11, 2006 12:20 PM
from the but-don't-use-space-based-lasers dept.
Space Science
eldavojohn writes "Recently, a new discovery has been made explaining how & predicting when space weather occurs. Hopefully this will allow us to predict when and where these extreme forces of magnetic flux occur so that we can prepare to repair satellites or shut them down for safety reasons. Recent activities on the sun have surprised scientists including the explosive "solar tsunami" that happened last week. From the article, "The new study shows that the Northern Lights, also called aurora, and other space weather near Earth are driven by the rate at which the Earth's and Sun's magnetic fields connect, or merge, and not just by the solar wind's electric field. The merging occurs way out in space, at a spot between the Earth and Sun, roughly 40,000 miles above our planet's surface. Researchers have now developed a formula that describes the merging rate of the magnetic field lines and accurately predicts 10 different types of near-Earth space weather activity, such as the aurora and magnetic disturbances.""
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  • Space Weather (Score:5, Funny)

    by JeepFanatic (993244) on Monday December 11 2006, @12:23PM (#17196478)
    I have enough problems getting accurate forecasts for my LOCAL weather. How am I supposed to trust the "Space Weatherman"?

    • Re:Space Weather (Score:4, Informative)

      by uab21 (951482) on Monday December 11 2006, @12:33PM (#17196626)
      I know that you were shooting for funny there, but actually it should be easier to predict this than your local weather. It is a much simpler system (two objects of interest) with reasonably well understood rules at the scale of interest. Local weather, OTOH, is influenced by a much more complex system (the global atmosphere) with myriad influences (many heat sources, water sources, pressure variations, friction), multi-phase flows, as well as poorly understood rules at influential scales (turbulence - see the Navier-Stokes millenium problem). I would think that this sytem would lend itself to accurate prediction far more easily (now getting enough accurate data to make that prediction may be where the difficulty lies, currently)

      • Space weather may be a slightly simpler system than terrestrial weather, but terrestrial weather has one huge advantage which you alluded to. We have many in situ observations on Earth. The largest problem with understanding what is going on in space is that, we never have enough data. There are very few spacecraft taking measurements, particularly measurements outside of geosynchronous orbit.

        In some sense you are right that there are only two objects of interests for Space Weather (the Earth and the S

      • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

        by The_Wilschon (782534)
        Plasmas, even very rarefied ones like the solar atmosphere, are very complex and chaotic systems. The atmosphere (of Earth) is subject to the laws of hydrodynamics. The solar atmosphere (the domain of space weather) (and yes, the solar atmosphere does extend out quite far, way past Earth's orbit) is subject to the laws of Magnetohyrdodynamics [wikipedia.org]. I would say that space weather ought to be immensely more difficult to predict. You have essentially one source of heat, but sources of magnetic fields are plent

        • At risk of being called a troll ---> I am going to do a decent kind open discussion of what is known. This usually gets called troll on this forum. ---> It isn't troll rest assured!

          There has been developing a serious discussion in the IEEE [lanl.gov] and in other groups of scientists who work with really hard science that cosmology as we have been generally told is just wrong. In particularly the electrical engineering technology provides accurate scalable and reliable methods and models to predict what is go

          • I am a physicist, and I have been to cosmology conferences (for instance PASCOS 2006 at Ohio State University) (although my field is High Energy Physics, which incidentally not only depends on special relativity, but has provided a lot of the compelling evidence in favor of SR), and I do attest that the parent is in fact a troll, or at best, someone who has been really taken for a ride.
          • I'm afraid I don't know much more than I have said already... Not my field (which is HEP). If you like, email me at Jon und_erscore Wilson2 (yes that's a '2', the numeral) a@t DONTbaylorSPAMME do.t eduCATIONAL, and I'll give you the emails of a couple of profs in our department who do plasma physics, specifically space plasma physics. They aren't the leaders of the field, that's for sure, and space plasma physics isn't the only thing they do, but they know more than I do.

            I agree, the N-S equations are
    • The local weather forecast can suck at times. The forecast in my area was heavy rains a few days ago. When it sounded like it was raining pretty hard, I looked out the window to see no rain at all. Turned out it was raining into my bathtub (broken pipe from upstairs apartment). The forecast was correct but the area was wrong.
    • The 'Space Weatherman' doesn't have a bad track record.

      Though, that could change once some company [wikipedia.org] finds a market for that data.

    • How am I supposed to trust the "Space Weatherman"?
      I know, but look at it this way. At least they'd finally deserve the title "meteorologists".
    • I have enough problems getting accurate forecasts for my LOCAL weather. How am I supposed to trust the "Space Weatherman"?

      Because...50% of the time it works, everytime!

  • Great! (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 11 2006, @12:25PM (#17196496)
    Now I'll know way in advance when to put on my lead lined underwear!
  • They say the view is nice, but the atmosphere stinks.

  • News Flash: Evidence of Space Warming (Score:4, Funny)

    by aquatone282 (905179) on Monday December 11 2006, @12:29PM (#17196570)

    Researchers have found evidence that human-based carbon emissions are causing a 0.000001% increase in background radiation throughout the known universe. This man-made change will cause the extinction of life-forms on other worlds sometime in the next 50 billion years.

    Al Gore will address the United Nations at 1 p.m. with a new 123-slide PowerPoint presentation outlining the new taxes that must be implemented immediately to stop Space Warming.

  • Tomorrow's weather: (Score:5, Funny)

    by Tribbles (218927) on Monday December 11 2006, @12:36PM (#17196666) Homepage
    Cold again, with a distinct lack of atmosphere.
  • For the longest time, when my laptop wasn't being used, I would have it connected via serial port to my Medcom Geiger-Muller counter. I was trying to see if I could detect any spike in background radiation when a solar flare occurred. (the initial event is an X-ray burst that deionizes the ionosphere) I never did have the laptop on when one hit.

  • arecibo (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Speare (84249) on Monday December 11 2006, @12:38PM (#17196710) Homepage

    Sadly, although Arecibo Radio Observatory in Puerto Rico does a lot of "space weather" kinds of analysis, its funding is in danger of being reduced to begin paying for other observational projects that are still in development. I just visited ARO last week, it's mindboggling to look at the spherical primary reflector which covers nearly twenty acres of land, and to think it might be mothballed in the near future, just as people realize the importance of space weather in their daily lives.

  • You know you're going to get space rain if you've just washed your space car or watered your space lawn.

  • Summary a little misleading (Score:3, Informative)

    by Vellmont (569020) on Monday December 11 2006, @03:43PM (#17199376)

    The merging occurs way out in space, at a spot between the Earth and Sun, roughly 40,000 miles above our planet's surface.

    40,000 miles isn't really that far, relative to what we consider "home". Geosynchronous satellites orbit at roughly 26,000 miles, and the moon orbits at more than 200,000 miles above earths surface.

    In comparison to the average Sun-Earth distance is 93 million miles, so 40,000 miles is .04% of the distance. If your neighborhood grocery store is 3 miles away, .04% of the distance would be 6 feet.

  • The Space Weather forecast for next week. (Score:4, Funny)

    by autophile (640621) on Monday December 11 2006, @05:47PM (#17201076)

    Space Weather advisory week 2006.49:

    Sunday: Highs in the upper -270K, dark. Chance of atmospheric distrubance: 0%

    Monday: Highs in the upper -270K, dark. Chance of atmospheric distrubance: 0%

    Tuesday: Highs in the upper -270K, dark. Chance of atmospheric distrubance: 0%

    Wednesday: Highs in the upper -270K, dark. Chance of atmospheric distrubance: 0%

    Thursday: Highs in the upper -270K, dark. Chance of atmospheric distrubance: 0%

    Friday: Highs in the upper -270K, dark. Chance of atmospheric distrubance: 0%. Occasional space probe passing through.

    Saturday: Highs in the upper -270K, dark. Chance of atmospheric distrubance: 0%.

    • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

      by uab21 (951482)

      But of course, the tranmission and the particles are traveling at the speed of light so the transmission doesn't get there in time

      Actually the particles are not travelling that fast, see http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/solarstorm_s peed_040614.html [space.com] which states

      Potentially disruptive solar storms can't reach Earth in less than half a day, scientists have determined

      So there should be time.

    • I would have thought that predicting events that have not yet occurred would negate the need for FTL communication. Being able to predict future activity based on current activity would be useful, although any predictions would have to be accurate and timely, i.e. time for communication to get back to earth + time required to do something about it.

    • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

      by timtwobuck (833954)
      According to wikipedia, solar flares & the solar wind travel at around 1 million km/h.

      Just for reference, the speed of light is 1 billion km/h. We may not need to worry about subspace just yet.

    • But of course, the tranmission and the particles are traveling at the speed of light so the transmission doesn't get there in time

      You can't outrun lightning on the golf course, either. But you can check the radar before you book a tee-time. I suppose the point is that there are some indicators of when we will have some fast-as-light (or very-fast-particles) crap coming our way - based on other behaviors - and that, like predicting earthquakes (another thing you can't outrun), we can still take a few prec
    • The more you know about the mechanisms, the farther back in time you can identify an event that may lead to a problem, and thus the more warning you get.
    • And the universe begins to look more electric

      I don't think that theory is very well grounded. *rim-shot*

      Thank you, I'll be here all afternoon. Try the cold pizza.

    • When a global dust storm that engulfed Mars coincided with the Earth's magnetosphere tail touching Mars, the coincidence was ignored because it was thought that the contact was too small to possibly be the cause of the dust storm. Maybe we should rethink this now?

      Whoa. Cite please. Is there any evidence that the Earth's magnetosphere extends that far, much less that it has actually crossed the path of Mars some time during human history?

      • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

        by pln2bz (449850) *
        I don't have a citation, but it's not really the facts that are in dispute. It's the interpretation ...

        http://www.thunderbolts.info/tpod/2005/arch05/0511 09dustmars.htm [thunderbolts.info]:

        There is also another aspect to the interplanetary circuitry affecting Mars. The greatest storm on Mars (2001) occurred when the planet was nearing perihelion and was the closest it had been to Earth in about 12 years. At that time it was also being "tickled" by the Earth's plasma sheath, or magnetosphere, establishing a temporary electric

        • Even though charged particles fill space and even though the electric force is the strongest force in the universe, we're told that currents cannot be moving through space to an extent that they actually *do* anything.

          First, it's not actually demonstrated that Mars passed through the Earth's magnetosphere at that point. Second, last I checked, gravity was a inverse square law, while electromagnetism was a inverse cube law or worse. The problem is that you never seen stable naked charge. It's always pair

          • Yeah, exactly. Except you mentioned in the inverse cube law, and this guy doesn't really do math. Well lemme explain it a little for him.

            Forces like magnetism and gravity fall off in different ways. Gravity falls off via the inverse square law, as does light intensity and other things. What this means, in layman's terms, is that if you double your distance from a light source, it's one quarter as intense. Double it again, and you get a quarter of that intensity. So if you're one meter from a (point) light,

            • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

              by TapeCutter (624760)
              Check out his posting history, logic and math will not alter this guy's rigid dogma.

              The EU theory preys apon the same ignorance as "Chariots of the Gods" did in the 70's. The entire "theory" is a book that uses real observations to demolish a straw man argument. The authour can be somewhat excused since he seems to be suffering from persecution complex concerning the "scientific establishment", however I do find it drepressing that he is dragging gullible people down with him.

              The best thing the GP cou
              • Yeah, but I'm trying. Really the point I was trying to impress on him was that if you don't understand math, you can't understand physics. Maybe encourage him to go learn something about magnetism and electricity and then maybe he'll apply that knowledge to that theory and see how ridiculous it is.
                • All credit for trying, I was simply warning you (and others) that this guy seems like a lost cause. As Albert once said to a journalist, "How can I tell you about baking a cake when you know nothing of butter, milk and flour."
                • "I would think that open-minded people would want choices to compare and evaluate."

                  Agreed, but EU has already been compared and evaluated, in the early 60's it was found to be hoplessly inadequate compared to the currently accepted theories. Black holes and CBR were predicted by current theory and found by observation, EU theory tacked on a bit to explain them after they were discovered, see the difference yet?

                  I first met you because of a comment about global warming and you may have noticed I pay sca

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by danpsmith (922127)

      Take the red pill and learn about Electric Universe Theory.

      I took the so-called "red pill" [wikipedia.org], and discovered the following: "Suffice to say for now that if science is what you are looking for, you will find none where the electric sun is concerned, save that which shows it to be an untenable hypothesis."

      Please don't push your misguided psuedo-science off as something grounded in reality. Remember, scientists look for facts and work them into theory, quacks make up a "theory" and then try to find facts to f

    • Why cant they just send them up there with the proper shielding in the first place?

      Because (in addition to the weight issue) proper shielding for solar mass ejection events makes damage from cosmic radiation FAR WORSE. The small number of horrendous-energy particles, absent shielding, mainly pass through tissue causing litte damage. But run them through a "shield" and each kicks out a storm of lower (but still high) energy charged particles that are going slow enough to each cause a LOT of interactions in
    • As the space weather has a very big influence on HF propagation, information services about it have been available for many years.
      Maybe thats one of the few groups who really use such information on a day to day basis

      If I recall correctly it was RCA's international radio message service (back before transatlantic phone cables) that started space weather prediction. Different space weather means different ionospheric conditions and different bands are open or closed at intercontinental distances. Once they
    • I actually sat in on a lecture a few months ago by a scientist in Berkeley (don't remember where he was actually from) whose model was also accurately predicting space weather. He showed us 300 minutes of simulation and then showed us what the sun actually did during that time period and they matched very closely, so theoretically he could predict 300 minutes into the future. However, when asked how much computer time was spent to get those 300 minutes he said, "3 months...on a 2000CPU machine".

      He menti

    • Solar storms do not travel at the speed of light. A few hours or few days warning is a BIG deal. Large flares can knock out (and physically damage) power grids for example.

      Warnings can save lives and a LOT of money.

    • Bringing them back in is the best method for LEO satellites. Super sync is the best for geo and semi-synch as it takes too much fuel to bring them back in, fuel that could extend life for months and probably years. The risk is small, particularly if 1) enough fuel is budgeted to easily target an ocean impact and 2) if the vehicle is composed of ablatable materials (aluminum for example instead of titanium). MIR was the biggest concern due to its size. The Shuttle debris, also large in mass, was a somewh

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