Sun Produces Strongest Flare Ever Recorded 422
idontneedanickname writes "The BBC is reporting about the newest flare unleashed by the sun. According to NASA's SOHO website, "Today word came from the SEC that their best estimate was X28. We have a new number 1 X-ray flare for the record books." As usual there are magnificent images to be admired."
This one's not headed straight for us...
Too bad it isn't heading this way (Score:5, Interesting)
It's been a decade since last I saw any.
Re:Could this be from a colission? (Score:0, Interesting)
even bigger then 20 (Score:3, Interesting)
"I'd take a stand and say it appears to be about X40 based on extrapolation of the X-ray flux into the saturated period," DeForest told SPACE.com.
That estimate may even be conservative, he said
x40.. holy crap.. and that number might be low
So big it exceeds capacity (Score:5, Interesting)
M-class solar flares' order of magnitude is 10e-5W/squared meter, X-class' is 10e-4W/ squared meter, and anything beyond 10e-3W/squared meter
- was unheard of until a few days ago.
- is a Y-class MEGA FLARE! Tin-foil hat time.
On unrelated news, X-Plane [x-plane.com] now supports borealis auroras...
Cool word! (Score:4, Interesting)
eructation ( P ) (-rk-tshn, rk-)
n.
The act or an instance of belching.
Source: The American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
Copyright (C) 2000 by Houghton Mifflin Company.
Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.
Re:Too bad it isn't heading this way (Score:2, Interesting)
Well, actually if I did it would be a really bad thing so I hope I don't...
Re:Could this be from a colission? (Score:5, Interesting)
Highly unlikely. The heat from the Sun would vaporise anything long before impact.
Flares (including this one) tend to be linked with sunspots which are relatively cool (emphasis on the relatively there) areas of the Sun. The Sun is made of plasma - super-hot electrically-charged particles. The plasma convects, transferring energy to the surface of the Sun. As the plasma moves it creates enormous magnetic fields. Normally these are confined within the body of the Sun, but occasionally, the magnetic flux extends beyond the surface of the Sun as an enormous loop. At each point where the line emerges and re-enters the Sun are a group of sunspots.
Hot plasma streams along the line of flux, it usually confined to the magnetic flux, but occasionally it will break away as a so-called prominence.
Flares are relatively common, but their cause is not yet understood (if any solar activity experts are hanging around - please feel free to step in right about now :)). From memory, the most well-regarded theory is that ever-increasing amounts of energy is stored in the magnetic fields of the sun spot. As the field becomes twisted and tangled, the energy continues to build until a point when the magnetic field snaps back into a less-tangled state. At that point an enormous amount of energy and plasma are blasted into space in a very short period of time.
Best wishes,
Mike.
Re:Impressive, (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Could this be from a colission? (Score:3, Interesting)
This is unexpected. . ? (Score:3, Interesting)
Floods, Earthquakes, Heatwaves, Plagues, Mad Cows, Wildfires and Hurricanes in odd locations, anyone? Sure, this stuff happens, but all within such a short period of time?
Mind you, I doubt very much that the Earth is in any danger from the recent Solar activity. A few power problems, perhaps. (Not like those are anything new these days, either.)
It's the asteroid impacts, I expect, which could cause the, um, deepest impression.
No need to be afraid. It's happened before, it'll happen again. Kick back and enjoy the show. It's why you're here.
Oh, and the deadline for getting the heck out of the U.S. is rolling ever nearer. The government has been quietly re-staffing [salon.com] draft boards. [guardian.co.uk] But then nobody listens to the tin-foil hatter. It's easier to laugh than to actually do something.
Knowledge protects. Ignorance endangers.
-FL
solar wind power? (Score:3, Interesting)
How about we send a bunch of satellites into LSO (low solar orbit), within the orbit of Mercury, with solar photocollectors powering their wait. When a flare does come by one or more of them, a large, diaphanous electromagnetic antennae are charged by the approaching particle storm, converting the power into electricity, which charges a laser array. The lasers fire from the "lucky" satellite into a power grid among all the satellites. The satellites nearest the Earth fire the power at a receiver on the Moon, which charges a gigantic battery bored beneath the surface. Over months or years, lower powered lasers send the power to collector platforms floating on the seas, which send electricity over cables to the electric grid on land.
Sure, we'd have to wait years before a flare was captured. And it likely would destroy at least one of the satellites capturing it. But there would be several seconds during which the satellite could capture more joules of power than consumed since we invented fire. So after a patient wait, playing the odds, we'd win the solar lottery. If we started now, repurposing all that expensive, dead-end Star Wars spacewar technology, we might be ready by 2020. Then we could power not just our homey little Earth, but all our exploration/communication needs within the planetary systems.
Re:Here's a good Q&A (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Other source (Score:3, Interesting)
Soace Station denizens (Score:3, Interesting)
One thing to note, the Soyuze capsules are really bad at shielding cosmic radiation, so they aren't a very good refuge for that. So, if a big sucka (say an X30+) came off the Sun, the Astronauts would not be able to ditch till after the radiation pulse. They would have to endure it on the station, then leave for treatment back home. De-orbit with radiation sickness would probably suck.
net power (Score:2, Interesting)
The satellite lifetime is like the Star Wars "Brilliant Pebbles" tech: while the satellite is destroyed by the wave of energy passing through it, it lasts long enough to convert some power to a laser. The laser transfers power to a receiver a distance/direction away that is unaffected by the large power passing through the satellite, but even the fraction received is large. In Star Wars, the destroying energy comes from a nuclear blast, and the receiver is a military target on Earth. With the solar wind web, the destroying energy comes from a solar flare, and the receiver is a prepared target on the Moon.
Some of the captured energy is used to make and launch replacements for satellites destroyed by the flare. Or not - even a significant fraction of a flare's energy would put us in an energy budget environment that makes today's tech look like rubbing sticks together.
Solar wind power is better than Titanic petrochemicals for many reasons, mainly the superior efficiency of sending energy across the solar system in an "inertialess" laser, instead of bound up in matter. Then there's the reduced pollution of capturing and processing the laser energy, as opposed to burning chemicals to go out, retrieve, ship back, and process Titanic chemicals. And the pollution issue is relevant not just on the Earth side, but possibly on the Titanic side: maybe there's some kind of life brewing in that ocean. Probably not, but why ruin it for the possibility of human farming sometime in the future? The kind of life that might be affected by depriving it of a small fraction of the power of a sporadic solar flare is too different from us to consider, when compared to finding a cleaner way out of our approaching energy bottlenecks. Plus, we could siphon all these Star Wars scientists away from war development, into the more secure and profitable plentiful-energy business.