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Predicting Space Weather
Posted by
Hemos
on Mon Dec 11, 2006 01:20 PM
from the but-don't-use-space-based-lasers dept.
from the but-don't-use-space-based-lasers dept.
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)
Re:Space Weather (Score:4, Informative)
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Great! (Score:5, Funny)
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You hear about that new restaurant on Venus? (Score:2, Funny)
News Flash: Evidence of Space Warming (Score:4, Funny)
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)
X-ray bursts (Score:2)
arecibo (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
Wouldn't you know it.. (Score:2)
Summary a little misleading (Score:3, Informative)
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
The Space Weather forecast for next week. (Score:4, Funny)
Not a waste! (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:Not a waste! (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:Not a waste! (Score:4, Informative)
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Actually the particles are not travelling that fast, see http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/solarstorm_s peed_040614.html [space.com] which states
So there should be time.
You avoid lightning by looking at clouds. (Score:3, Interesting)
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
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I don't think that theory is very well grounded. *rim-shot*
Thank you, I'll be here all afternoon. Try the cold pizza.
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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
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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
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
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