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Science

Solar Flare Interference From 45k Lightyears Away 154

Posted by CmdrTaco from the duck-the-flares-are-coming dept.
Wan2Be writes "Nasa has a story about a solar flare on Aug. 27 that affected our planet with radio bounces and blackouts - but it wasn't from old Sol, it was from SGR 1900+14, a neutron star about 45,000 light years away. "
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Solar Flare Interference From 45k Lightyears Away More

Solar Flare Interference From 45k Lightyears Away

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  • Just to clear something up (Score:5, Insightful)

    by erpbridge ( 64037 ) <steve&erpbridge,com> on Sunday September 14, 2003 @09:02AM (#6956569) Journal
    Slight misconception from the summary. The event happened on August 27.

    But that was August 27, 1998. Not just a couple weeks ago.

    • Re:Just to clear something up (Score:5, Funny)

      by saynte ( 659908 ) on Sunday September 14, 2003 @09:20AM (#6956652)
      Actually, if a person were to get picky, it happened August 27th, 45,000 years ago :D
      • And, if a person were to get real picky, it happened August 27th, 45,005 years ago :>
      • Actually probably more. The flares are from particles that are moving very fast. Close to the speed of light at best. On our sun a solar flare usually takes hours to get to earth while the sun is only 8 light minutes away. So the number is probably closer to 540,000 years ago.
        • Hmm, good point. But is it the particulate matter, or the magnetic waves and radiation that cause the disturbances? I'm definitely not an expert on solar phenomenom, I'm just guessing that the reaction (explosion?) which creates the flare would release such things? I was just assuming that the disturbances were caused by the radiation/magnetism, travelling at the speed of light. Oops :)
        • If you want to get really picky, as we received it in 1998 it would be 540,005 years ago.

        • Re:Just to clear something up (Score:4, Informative)

          by Viadd ( 173388 ) on Sunday September 14, 2003 @12:40PM (#6957735)
          In this case, the ionospheric disturbance was from the X-rays and gamma-rays (high energy photons, travelling at lightspeed) hitting the atmosphere. The main part of the pulse was a huge spike of gamma-rays, followed by bright tail of periodically varying gamma-rays (with the neutron star's ~5 second rotation period) decaying in the next few minutes.

          If there were a pulse of sub-light particles coming from the SGR, they would be no longer be a short pulse when they reached Earth fro two reasons: The particles travelling at 90% of lightspeed would come many years before the particles travelling at 89.99% of lightspeed; And the tangled magnetic field of the Galaxy would bend their paths all over the place so they'd be travelling different distances.

      • How do you know it was on August and on the 27th?

        According to my calculations and if one assume Warp 9 is possible it happened 5000 years ago. I would give a more definitive date but the Julian calender starts at 4713 BC.
      • I never thought about solar flares from other stars being any kind of problem for us. Especially ones that far away. Amazing.

        More Information [66.199.135.127]
    • Its more like the intrepetation of a "COUPLE" of weeks.
      The poster thinks allmost 300 weeks ago is a "couple" of weeks... Unlike the rest of the world.
    • More curious about the possible consequences on other planets closer to the star. How far would an Earth-like planet have to be not to be fried every couple years by this magnetar? Has anyone the willingness (and the numbers for the original energy release and how much energy is needed to cook all surface-dwellers of an earth-like planet - supposing mammal-like carbon-based critters)? If the "baking distance" is too big, there may be vast areas of the galaxy that cannot possibly sustain life as we know i
  • The energy of a radition source is decreasing with the cubic of the distance as everybody here surely knows. Now taking into account the vast distance a trivial calculations gives a huge amount of energy released at x=0. When you now take Einsteins formula for mass E=m*c^2 you see easily that the released enery equals the adverage mass of 2.3 neutron stars of brightness class M.
    I doubt that NASA got their calculations right otherwise we would have 2 large neutron stars (a neutron star and a anti-neutron s

    • Re:Have they got the numbers right ? (Score:4, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 14, 2003 @09:21AM (#6956660)
      Actually, since we are talking about electromagnetic radiation, the energy will drop with the sqaure of the distance, not the cube. This might impact your calculations just a little bit.

      - GK
    • Square of the distance not cube. Its an inverse square law. Inverse cube is for things like magnetic fields that are generated by dipoles.
    • Earth-orbiting satellites registered a surge of x-rays. Minutes later they were pelted by fast-moving solar protons.

      So, they are saying that after 45,000 years of travelling the shock of protons is just few minutes behind of x-ray (in fact - photons)? Give me a break, that means those fast-moving protons are moving really fast - essentially with a speed virtually equal to a speed of light (the difference would just 4.23e-12 %).

      Protons are pretty heavy particles. What would be the energy of such explosio

      • Re:Not only that (Score:2, Informative)

        by Anonymous Coward
        The article talks about two unrelated events about a day apart. The first was from our sun. That was the one which registered the solar protons. The second one was an extrasolar event which did not register any protons.
      • Please read more carefully, the intro from which you are quoting discusses an event from our own sun, which happens to be only a good 8 lightminutes away.
      • The article doesn't say anything about protons.. just X/Gamma detected.

        IT mentions in the first paragraphs what a flare from the sun looks like... EM burst followed by a proton shower... but that was only from our sun.

        There was no mention of particle detection from the far-away event.

      • neutron stars are able to accelerate electrons or protons up to 10e18 ev levels. These things get gamma values>10^7, so its quite possible.
      • oops, the proton shower was from our sun.

      • "Protons are pretty heavy particles. What would be the energy of such explosion to accelerate protons to such limits? Sounds like the parent is right: it may mean only we would have 2 large neutron stars (a neutron star and a anti-neutron star) colliding and annihilating here."

        It seems like several assuptions are being made that should not be made:

        Mass of material ejected -- no where in the article was any estimates made about the amount of material shed in the magnetar's flare. The mass material ejecte

    • "The energy of a radition source is decreasing with the cubic of the distance as everybody here surely knows." I was taught that about something like that called the inverse SQUARE law. Dont you just love it when those trying to find fault fall into a great big ole pile of hoseshit of their own screw up.
    • Square of distance... not cube.

      Furthermore, it's proportional.. howver much power is lost over distance distance D, 4 times as much is lost over 2D, and 8 times as much is lost over 3D, etc.

      It may be highly unlikely.. it's also highly unlikely for an event 45,000 light years away to cause disruptions HERE, over that distance as you said.
    • As a Mensa member you probably know that the cubic distance rule only applies to radiation that is spherically symmetric.
      If the source is, for instance, a beacon shape exiting from the poles, as would be expected from a rotating charged ball, the power would only drop linearly with distance.

      (I am not a Mensa member so I don't need to spellcheack or preview)

      • If the light is sent in a beam that doesn't spread out at all (like a theoretical perfect laser), then the power doesn't drop at all. Not even linearly with distance.

        If it does spread, the area that the beam "crosses", increases proportional to the square of the distance, so the power decreases by that.

        So it would never decrease linearly.

  • ...I'm getting crappy wifi signals!
  • Why didn't we see this coming? Did the scientists need an extra week or something?
    • And how exactly would they see it coming?

      Somebody correct me if I'm wrong, but AFAIK it works like this: Something 1 light year away blows up. 1 year later we see it blowing up. We couldn't see it blow up when it actually did, because the light from the event didn't reach us yet!

      So, how exactly are going scientists to see that before it reaches us?
      • Time, as you know, is all relative.

        As there is no absolute time... to say "it blew up but we didnt' see it yet" is actually inaccurate... it didn't blow up as far as we are concerned until we saw it. Before that, the effects of the explosion had no effect on the universe as far as we are concerned.

        It's not jjust the light from the event, but the gravitational and other effects as well.. for all intents and purposes, the event doesn't happen until we see it.

        • but it did happen. the information just hasn't reached us yet.

          i don't see what's so terrible with the idea of absolute time

        • to say "it blew up but we didnt' see it yet" is actually inaccurate... it didn't blow up as far as we are concerned until we saw it.

          Actually, since portions of the flare were moving slower than the speed of light, it is possible that we could have detected the disturbance in advance and prepared for it.

          Only problem is, we've had detection capabilities for, what, like 60 years or so now? The initial portion (moving at the speed of light) probably hit us centuries ago.

    • you can't see somthing coming until it gets here.

      you do realise that light is what allows us to get data from something right?

      ok, well if the thing that we are looking for is traveling at the speed of light, how then do we get information from it when no matter what we do, the transmition of the data from the event would arive at the same time as the event?
      • Yes, I understand the physics behind it, but I imagine that there would have been some precursors to its arrival. 45,000 light years is still a long time, and there should have been ripples beforehand.
        And you do realize that the theoretical speed of light is through a vacuum. It had a lot of shit to go through in 45,000 years.

        • I don't know about precursors, ripples and what not, but no matter how much shit the light had to go through we still can't see it till it gets here. If the star is 45,000 lightyears away and it takes the flare etc. 45,001 years to get here because of interference we'll see it in 45,001 not 45,000 years.
        • I think you need to re-evaluate what you think space is made of, and how the speed of light is relevant.

          We can't see "ripples" Because they woudl have to move faster than the speed of light to get to us before the event itself did... the maximum speed any effect on the universe from that event moves outwards is the speed of light. Period. Gravitational.. the imaginary "ripples" you think you would see, everything.. NO effects can be detected any faster than that.

          In fact, from our perspective, it didn't h
        • Yes, I understand the physics behind it, but I imagine that there would have been some precursors to its arrival. 45,000 light years is still a long time, and there should have been ripples beforehand.

          What are you babbling about son? If you understand the physics of it then why are you asking such stupid questions?

          There are no ripples because (as far as we know) nothing can travel faster than the speed of light. There is no way ripples or anything else can get here before light does.

          Let me put it anot

        • Re:45,000 light years away? (Score:4, Insightful)

          by Waffle Iron ( 339739 ) on Sunday September 14, 2003 @10:17AM (#6956929)
          It had a lot of shit to go through in 45,000 years.

          Not really. The interstellar medium has about 0.1 atoms per cm^3. This is about 1e20 times less then our atmosphere. 45000 light years is 4.2e22 cm, so it only had to go through the equivalent of 4.2 meters of our atmosphere.

          So it's only the same amount of shit as it would encounter on a trip across your living room.

          • Re:45,000 light years away? (Score:1, Funny)

            by Anonymous Coward
            So it's only the same amount of shit as it would encounter on a trip across your living room.


            Holy crap!!! I can't believe it went through all that? Maybe your calculations were off?

            (I really need to tidy up around here.)

    • Yeah, exactly. I run Netsaint, and I know of network problems before the users do. You'd think NASA could do something like this.

  • Country?? (Score:5, Funny)

    by FrostedWheat ( 172733 ) on Sunday September 14, 2003 @09:07AM (#6956596)
    The station faded--a blackout--and was moments later replaced by country music

    The universe has a sick sence of humour! High-energy solar flares are one thing, but country music? That's just cruel!

    • Re:Country?? (Score:1, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Stars radiate country music whenever they collapse into a Man in Black Hole.
    • I still think it was an alien race testing their disrupt-o ray on us. They are now confident they can wipe out the bulk of our communications system and drive the populous insane by broadcasting elevator music over whatever is left!

      =Smidge=
    • Maybe this whole thing was some sort of cosmic tribute to Johnny Cash

  • Lame joke excuse! (Score:3, Funny)

    by Gavin Rogers ( 301715 ) <grogers@vk6hgr.echidna.id.au> on Sunday September 14, 2003 @09:08AM (#6956598) Homepage
    So... something new happens that could knock us all offli@%#&$* NO CARRIER
  • it was the bugs, they found a way to send the flare here

  • When you are driving home... (Score:5, Funny)

    by OneOver137 ( 674481 ) on Sunday September 14, 2003 @09:11AM (#6956608) Journal
    "in the middle of the night and, unexpectedly, a country tune blares out of your radio, you might wonder ... did a magnetar do that?" Or do you just have poor taste in music?
  • about 45,000 years ago that it happened ?
  • You can't trust stars from outside of your own neighborhood.

    • Re:Just goes to show you. (Score:5, Interesting)

      by mskfisher ( 22425 ) * on Sunday September 14, 2003 @11:06AM (#6957208) Homepage Journal
      You've got that [nasa.gov] right [nasa.gov].
      If you're impressed by how these "magnetars" can affect us, check out gamma-ray bursters [lbl.gov].

      From http://www-2.cs.cmu.edu/afs/cs.cmu.edu/user/mnr/st /std086 [cmu.edu]:
      The integrated flux of the strongest burst, GB790305, was 10^-4 ergs/cm^2 (the time structure of this pulse was consistent with a

      rotating or precessing neutron star; the period is about 8 seconds).
      A lethal dose to unshielded astronauts would be about 4 x 10^6 ergs/cm^2, so anyone 200,000 closer to the burster than we were had
      better have good shielding.

      ...

      If the burster was at 5 billion light years (say), the lethal radius for unshielded astronauts would be around 25,000 light years. I hope one doesn't go off in our galaxy soon.
      We might get beat up real good by one of those bad boys - the Earth could get cooked if one happened right outside our neighborhood.
      Ah well, what's life without a little excitement? :)
      • There is some speculation that large gamma bursts are so strong because the energy is focused via a magnetic "lens" in a narrow direction. If that is the case than its aim is as big an issue as its distance.

        One could go off relatively near and not produce harmful radiation for us if it is not "aimed" at us. But if one at the opposite end of our own galaxy aimed cooincidently right as us, we could be cooked gooses.
      • That's the subject of Manifold Space [amazon.com] by Stephen Baxter. Baxter's answer to the Fermi paradox (if intelligent life exists in the galaxy why haven't we been contacted?) is that every once in a while one of these gamma ray bursters goes off and reformats a big chunk of the galaxy, wiping out all intelligent (and not so intelligent) life within its kill radius. Kind of sobering to think that one of these things could have exploded a few thousand years back and the wavefront could be heading towards us righ

  • Cajun Blackened Astronaut (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Detritus ( 11846 ) on Sunday September 14, 2003 @09:28AM (#6956683) Homepage
    What sort of radiation dose would an astronaut receive if he was located outside the Van Allen Belt?

    Solar flares were a serious concern to the Apollo astronauts, who were at risk while traveling to the Moon.

    • its not that much of a problem.
      Microwave radiation doesnt penetrade metal at all, so the hull of the vehicle would block it. For the more persitent stuff, usually the crew will get in a position where the water tank of the vehicle is between them and the radio source.
    • They would have been killed. This is one of the biggest problems for sending people to Mars. If there were such an event durring the mission (which there almost certainly would be durring the two year mission) they would have to be in a well shielded room or would die.

      How well shielded? a few meters of water would sufice, but this is getting expensive to send into space. BTW, water would be used because it is the best shield of high energy neutrons which can break up say, lead, into many protons and neutro

      • How well shielded? a few meters of water would sufice, but this is getting expensive to send into space [Mars mission].

        They are probably going to need that anyhow, unless they find a way to keep recycling pee and sweat a few hundred times.
      • How well shielded? a few meters of water would sufice, but this is getting expensive to send into space.

        That's a common misconception. In The Case for Mars, Dr Robert Zubrin uses NASA's own data to demonstrate that during a trip to Mars, astronauts would receive about as much radiation as someone who'd lived their life in Colorado. Yes, there is a slightly increased risk of cancer but a) you increase your own risk every time you fly and b) they're flying to Mars - and that's pretty damn risky in and of it

    • Re:Cajun Blackened Astronaut (Score:5, Informative)

      by Viadd ( 173388 ) on Sunday September 14, 2003 @12:48PM (#6957786)
      What sort of radiation dose would an astronaut receive if he was located outside the Van Allen Belt?
      I worked it out once. This particular SGR burst would have given an astronaut the equivalent of a dental X-ray. Pretty potent for half-way across the Galaxy, but not a health hazard. And the Van Allen Belts wouldn't have provided any shielding because the X-rays/gamma-rays are uncharged photons, which aren't affected by Earth's magnetosphere.

      Solar flares are most deadly because of the proton flux, which would be blocked, but which travels much slower than lightspeed. If you see X-rays from a solar flare, it tells you that you have an hour or so to get into a shielded environment before the big storm hits.

  • This was 5 years ago (Score:4, Informative)

    by Skapare ( 16644 ) on Sunday September 14, 2003 @09:30AM (#6956696) Homepage

    When I saw this story on Slashdot, I was trying to think back to having experienced any radio effects back on 27 August, but I couldn't recall any. Then I read the article and saw that it was really a 1998 event only being written about just now, 5 years later. From an academic study perspective, that's fine. The article is about these effects in general and the study being made of them. The 27 August 1998 event was merely an example of one that played a significant role. And as they report, there have been 10 of these since, and the potential for much larger ones.

  • Benchmarks (Score:1, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    How 'bout some benchmarks on SGR 1900+ versus AMD 1900+.

    Looks like the AMD will get smoked.

  • Hams were first to notice (Score:4, Insightful)

    by M1FCJ ( 586251 ) on Sunday September 14, 2003 @09:46AM (#6956762) Homepage
    Isn't it interesting that radio amateurs were one of the first groups noticed there was something strange going on?

    • Re:Hams were first to notice (Score:1, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Sunspot activity has an effect on the signals they can send and receive. During an 11 year sunspot cycle peak, I was able to send and receive signals from Europe in the afternoon. These flares affect the ionosphere, and allow the signals to bounce along the underside, and reach distant parts of the globe. So, the hams know something is going on when the signals start coming in from distant areas that they normally do not get.
    • ...that the military has "dark" satellites and radio/tv could also gather something was going on. Also, NASA has tons of scientific experiments that run all over the planet to detect stuff like this. And, how about the weather watchers? Surely they detected abnormalities in their equipment?

      HAM...CB radio on steroids. Get another hobby.

      -1

  • Solar Flare? (Score:2, Funny)

    by Xetrov ( 267777 )
    How can it be a SOLar flare if it isn't from Sol?

    Grr, slashdot is too Sol-centric...
  • Welcome our new SGR overlords.
    I'd like to remind them that as a trusted lawyer I can I can round up Darl McBride and other SCO employees to slave in their salt mines.
  • Sister Anella would have taken ten point off for a screwup like this...

  • What if .. (Score:3, Interesting)

    by agonz28 ( 707181 ) on Sunday September 14, 2003 @12:55PM (#6957815)
    Just wondering ... What if this event had to happen much closer to earth?
    say 500 Light years ..
    The magnetic storm woud be thousands of times more powerful
    How would that affect life here on earth...
    • What if this event had to happen much closer to earth? say 500 Light years ... The magnetic storm woud be thousands of times more powerful How would that affect life here on earth...

      Fortunately, the chances of a dangerous star coming that close to Earth are generally slim, but not zero. Asteroids probably are a far greater risk to us anyhow.

      Nobody said space is risk-free. An undetected black-hole could appear in the Solar neighborhood and swallow us all.
      • Given the finite probability of its occurance...
        ..and we are unlucky enough to discover a magnetar close enough to us..
        what would be the worst case senario?

        Asteroids can be "pushed" out of the way .. what are our options in case of a magnetic outage?
        • > we are unlucky enough to discover a magnetar close enough to us..
          > what would be the worst case senario?

          Umm... worst case? It magically appears on your front doorstep, instantly eradicating all life on the planet, not to mention the planet itself. Now, if you want to talk about realistic scenarios, you'll have to speak with an astrophysicist.

  • An outsourced Solar Flare!!! (Score:1, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Even the solar system is outsourcing.
  • I just happened to be on HF when we were hit with the effects of this flair. I was waiting to check into a net on 7.268.5KHz when the band just suddenly went away, like god turned the propagation switch off. I couldn't receive any signals, WWV on 2.5, 5, 10, 15 and 20 MHz were gone and didn't come back for 30 some odd minutes. It was the coolest/scaryest thing I had witnessed in a long time..
  • Just when I thought my rabbit ears were safe due to their aluminum foil reinforcements.
  • This means we could send out Greenpeace to shovel all that dirty ion/x-ray radiation back into that dirty neutron star. :-)

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