Geomagnetic Storm In Progress 110
shogun writes "The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration reports a strong geomagnetic storm is in progress. The shuttle, ISS and GPS systems may be affected."
They think this storm was caused by a weak solar flare on April 3rd. As you may expect, this has caused some unusually impressive northern lights since it started. What you may not expect is a photograph from Japanese astronaut Soichi Noguchi aboard the International Space Station showing the aurora from orbit. He apparently tweets a lot of pictures from space. He and his crewmates have taken over 100,000 pictures since coming aboard the ISS.
MOO (Score:3, Insightful)
GNN NEWS FLASH:
Geomagnetic Storm in Progress in the Sol System
No ships may enter hyperspace during this turn.
Re:I dont buy it (Score:2, Insightful)
The Sun isn't "silent", it pulses and puts out massive amounts of energy in irregular fashion all the time. Now for a few years of its 8-10 billion year life it just hasn't been putting out enough to mess things up 93,000,000 miles away.
This week its sending out some energy, not a giant amount by its scale, just enough to screw with things and light up the sky.
The ball of fusion does have a lot of movement on its surface and convection currents under the surface, its not a featureless racquet ball except for the occasional sunspot or CME.