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NASA Notices New, Nasty Solar Storm Type 114
saskboy writes "Solar Storms generally aren't this bad, but in January unique conditions led to a "proton superhighway" that bombarded earth with fast moving protons that could have harmed astronauts caught without a radiation shield.
"Scant minutes after the January 20th [2005] flare, a swarm of high-speed protons surrounded Earth and the Moon. Thirty minutes later, the most intense proton storm in decades was underway."
Listen to the story here.
Archives from the January storms are also available from SpaceWeather.com"
Re:Also of note (Score:2)
No new super-heros? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:No new super-heros? (Score:3, Funny)
Fear me evil lusers for I am He-Nerd.
Re:No new super-heros? (Score:1, Funny)
It was terrible! (Score:2, Funny)
Re:It was terrible! (Score:1)
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/B00
Science Behind The Movie... (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Science Behind The Movie... (Score:1, Funny)
Re:Science Behind The Movie... (Score:1)
Mankind's effect on the solar system (Score:3, Funny)
Re:WTF (Score:3, Informative)
Re:WTF (Score:2)
Re:WTF (Score:1)
Re:WTF (Score:1)
Re:WTF (Score:1)
Decades ago, a newspaper columnist was writing what was supposed to be a parody of racism and the attempts at integration at the time.
He noted that people didn't seem particularly concerned about who they were near when standing in lines waiting for things, and only got concerned about being segregated when they go
Re:WTF (Score:2)
I've heard of the brown note [wikipedia.org], but the brown post? Holy shit!
Re:WTF (Score:1)
No, seriously. What the fuck? Really... what the FUCK?
Is this a sarcastic jab at hippies? Are you being serious? Trolling? This post makes so little sense it has left my frail geek mind in a state of disarray. It's a lonely, scary place in there right now.
In related news, scientists today discovered a hidden link between solar storm high-energy radiation exposure and Asperger Syndrome.
Re:Mankind's effect on the solar system (Score:1)
In all seriousness tho we need to take the next step and establish a permanent human habitation in the solar system - extraplanet or moon bases, oribiting colonies, etc. The earth is mearly the womb of self aware and self directed life. Forget petty wars and bickering over dwindling resources there a star agleam to guide us, let us go...
Re:Mankind's effect on the solar system (Score:1)
Re:Mankind's effect on the solar system (Score:1)
Shh. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Mankind's effect on the solar system (Score:1)
Your post makes no sense
mankind has nothing on a
solar proton storm
NASA Notices New, Tasty Solar Storm Type (Score:1)
As for the parents comment, think of all the debris that we are putting in our little part of space. This has been posted before, but the fact remains that every launch adds to the problem. Soon we will have a very serious mess, and no solution. A little paint chip will ruin your day. A loose nut will ruin much more.
KOA
Anchorage, Alaska Will Host National Policy Meeting on Technology [blogspot.com]
Wow... (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Wow... (Score:2)
What's this about? It's not in the original FF plot. Is there some joke I'm not getting, are you giving away parts of the movie plot that should have been a surprise, or are you just wrong?
Re:Wow... (Score:1)
Hint: Doctor Doom's origins are majorly revamped for the movie.
Re:Wow... (Score:2)
Re:Wow... (Score:2)
I understand he went on to become a project manager at NASA.
Re:Wow... (Score:2)
However, his joy turned to profound disappointment as it was pointed out that the penis contains neither bone nor muscle.
Re:Why Quentin Tarantino ? (Score:1)
I knew it... (Score:1)
Space Cowboy (Score:2)
The reason is obvious... (Score:1)
Narrator? (Score:2)
Auuuugh! (Score:2)
Re:Auuuugh! (Score:2)
I mean, I know everybody is fond of Goggles, what with their "Do Nothing" motto and all, but really... this article is nothing more than a Goggles Slashvertisement. Can't you people see that?
Yeah and it's not global warming (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm writing this for the record because I just know I'm gonna here this a few months down the road.
Re:Yeah and it's not global warming (Score:1)
Re:Climate Change (Score:2, Insightful)
Even if the climate changes this year aren't completely attributed to human produced pollutants in our atmosphere, the solar storms are NOT a reason to scale back efforts to clean up industries that have been way too dirty for way too long.
There are benefits to enacting immediate changes and regulations that do more than just ensure we aren't cooking our country with green house gasses. We can also reap economic benefits of saving energy, having fewer he
Re:Climate Change (Score:2)
I've heard, recently, that there's so much forrest, agraculture and so-on in the USA that it's taking carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere
Re:Climate Change (Score:2)
Re:Climate Change (Score:2)
Re:Climate Change (Score:1)
What do we know about the medium that our solar system is traveling through presently?
Re:Climate Change (Score:2)
Of course it is not going to be "exact" - this is a chaotic system we are talking about here. Here [realclimate.org] is a page that discusses the accuracy of the models in detail, including how they are validated and refined.
Re:Climate Change (Score:2)
Re:Yeah and it's not global warming (Score:3, Funny)
Everytime something like this happens there are unusual dead people discovered later on in the evening, and then people scream bloody murder that it is murder and demand immediate and overwhelming regulations be put in place right now.
Explains lousy ham propagation (Score:3, Informative)
It's too bad that we don't have a constellation of (Score:5, Interesting)
It would be really cool to be able to have data from the entire Solar surface instead of our currently limited view. It would also be handy to know if a solar storm was brewing on another part of the Sun and was likely to let loose when that portion of the Sun rotated to face Earth.
Re:It's too bad that we don't have a constellation (Score:3, Informative)
SOHO, STEREO, SDO, etc. (Score:5, Interesting)
Currently, there's the ESA-NASA project SOHO [nasa.gov], the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory, which sits near L1. You can't actually place it directly in the sun-earth line, because then you can't communicate with the satellite, because of too much noise from the sun.
Currently in testing are the two observatories called STEREO [nasa.gov], the Solar TErrestrial RElations Observatory, which will launch two satellites flung ahead and behind the earth (but because of the physics involved, they have no way of stopping them, because they won't have enough fuel to stop.
(and there's also the Japanese Solar-B [nasa.gov] project, which is the successor to Yohkoh, set for launch next year)
But in my opinion, the most significant solar observing satellite in planning is SDO [nasa.gov], the Solar Dynamics Observatory. (and I say this purely from an IT standpoint) SDO will be at an inclined geosyncronous orbit -- so it will be able to talk to a single antenna the whole time -- rather than storing up its data, and then sending it down to earth once a day, it will be sending a constant stream of full resolution data.
And we're not talking about the 1megapixel images from SOHO/EIT or SOHO/TRACE instruments -- or even the 4megapixel from STEREO/SECCHI. We're talking about 16 megapixel images, every 10 seconds from one of the instruments, with a planned terrabyte of uncompressed data per day.
Oh -- and I work for NASA contractor, and am assigned to work on STEREO and VSO [virtualsolar.org] (the Virtual Solar Observatory, a search engine for solar physics data).
Re:SOHO, STEREO, SDO, etc. (Score:1)
A couple of semi-off-topic questions here, and not about the SDO (as impressive as it sounds)... I don't know where else to ask them....
1) Just how fast were the protons moving? Faster or slower than light? I assume slower, otherwise that would have been just as noteworthy, if not moreso.
2) How long did they take to hit Earth?
3) How fast does the sun rotate?
4) Might this ("solar-planetary magnetic propulsion") be a possible means
Re:SOHO, STEREO, SDO, etc. (Score:2)
Solar Energetic Particles (Score:3, Informative)
NOAA maintains a list of 'Solar Proton Events [noaa.gov]'. My boss maintains a copy of the data, which has an extra footnote [nasa.gov]:
Looking up on the SOHO gallery (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Looking up on the SOHO gallery (Score:1)
How the protons got to earth so quick (Score:1)
TFA says it was unusual that the protons from the CME got to earth as fast as they did, and says it's a mystery how they got accelerated.
My question is: were the protons actually accelerated? Were they more energetic when they arrived here than normal?
Maybe the solar explosion warped space in such a way that the protons didn't have to travel as far. Or maybe some other spacial distubance caused both the explosion and the proton effect.
Re:How the protons got to earth so quick (Score:1)
Yeah, and the Japanese read too much Asimov.
Don't get too comfortable, booby. The universe is going to turn out a lot stranger than you imagine. And we already know it's pretty strange.
Re:How the protons got to earth so quick (Score:2)
According to Francis Cucinotta, NASA's radiation health officer at the Johnson Space Center (source [nasa.gov]), an astronaut on the Moon would have received a dose of 50 rem, enough to cause radiation sickness.
Id say they were decelerated. (Score:2)
What I believe we are seeing, is the deceleration of relativistic lone quarks and antiquarks, down to speeds that allow them to interact with us in the electromagnetic spectrum, as protons, neutrons, and other colorless particles.
The relativistic quarks and antiquarks would interact with nonrelativistic nuclei and electrons through the strong force, and would be known as "gravity".
However, the magnetic fiel
ObFuturama (Score:2)
Would the moon have a 'record' (Score:2)
Would the moon (lack of atmosphere and all) have a longer standing record of solar events? We've only been monitoring the solar wind since (oblig FF ref), would Lunar 'soil samples' reveal evidence of 100 or 500 year storms?
Re:Would the moon have a 'record' (Score:1)
Sunstorm (Score:1)
If not, pick it up. The book's called Sunstorm, you figure it out.
Re:Sunstorm (Score:1)
No worries (Score:2)
Phew! Good thing NASA was in another multi-year shut-down mode!
Really, America has become so pussified about manned space exploration that they might as well just give it up to the Chinese. No American will ever walk on Mars or even the Moon again.
Space Station Magnate. (Score:1)
So does it mean that I... (Score:1)
high-speed protons (Score:2)
Re:high-speed protons (Score:2)
Photons != Protons. Confused? Read on... (Score:1)
Photons are light.
They have zero rest mass, and always travel at the speed of light.
( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photon [wikipedia.org])
Protons are the neucleus of a hydrogen atom.
It takes a lot of energy to get them moving anywhere near the speed of light.
A star, a particle accelerator, or a supernova would do.
No matter what you do, they will never reach the speed of light.
Thy have roughly the same mass as a hydrogen atom
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P [wikipedia.org]
Holy Alliteration, Batman! (Score:1)
Re:Al Gore (Score:1)
Re:Al Gore (Score:2)
In theory that could raise the earth's temperature if more IR and other heating radiation makes it to the surface to warm the earth, but there's also a pollution effect known as "global dimming" taking place. This is likely particulate matter from exhaust pipes of all types, and is blocking some solar rays from even hitting the earth.
Global warming is real, and pollution is real. It's a different argument
Soooo.... (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Soooo.... (Score:1)
Re:Well, it's more offtopic than the others (Score:2, Insightful)
Sometimes we need to be reminded of this, and while the post wasn't of the caliber of Swift's "A Modest Proposal", it tried to get a point across.
Let it be.
Re:Well, it's more offtopic than the others (Score:1)
Re:Protein Storm (Score:4, Funny)
That won't affect us? Now they can kick us out of the basement.
--
A sig should be wise.