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Sunspot Grows to 20 Times Size of Earth 117

Posted by michael from the tan-don't-burn dept.
TheHedgehog writes "A sunspot group aimed squarely at Earth has grown to 20 times the size of our planet and has the potential to unleash a major solar storm. 'The implications of this spot have scientists on the edge of their seats,' NASA said in a statement Friday. 'If the active region generates coronal mass ejections (CMEs), massive explosions with a potential force of a billion megaton bombs, it will be a fairly direct hit to Earth and its satellites and power grids.'"
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Sunspot Grows to 20 Times Size of Earth More

Sunspot Grows to 20 Times Size of Earth

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  • Sun hits puberty. (Score:5, Funny)

    by Bluesman ( 104513 ) on Tuesday July 27, 2004 @11:49AM (#9813011) Homepage
    Although it could potentially knock out some satellites, I think we should be sympathetic toward the sun as it goes through this difficult period.

  • Ringworld (Score:3, Funny)

    by elmegil ( 12001 ) on Tuesday July 27, 2004 @11:53AM (#9813055) Homepage Journal
    So where are the solar control panels located?

  • How long until The End of the World? (Score:4, Funny)

    by dpilot ( 134227 ) on Tuesday July 27, 2004 @11:53AM (#9813056) Homepage Journal
    Good thing it hasn't developed into a flare yet, otherwise this post wouldn't quite make it to the se
  • Is this bigger than the series of flares last year, which caused some (mostly unnoticed) trouble with satellites?

  • I knew... (Score:1, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I should never go outside again. Now I have proof.

  • National Geographic sun issue (Score:5, Informative)

    by whoda ( 569082 ) on Tuesday July 27, 2004 @11:54AM (#9813076) Homepage
    The July 2004 issue of National Geographic had a large article about the sun and how we've come to understand how it works.

    It was a fascinating read in the print magazine. I'm not 100% sure that the online article is 100% of the printed article.

    Did you know that the radiation that eventually becomes visible light takes 100,000 years to escape from the center of the sun to the corona, due to how dense matter is packed in the middle?
    From there it's only 8 minutes to earth.

    The corona of the sun itself is hundreds of times hotter than the surface of the sun.

    National Geographic sun article [nationalgeographic.com]

  • Panic over, come out of your tinfoil shelters (Score:5, Informative)

    by steve.m ( 80410 ) on Tuesday July 27, 2004 @11:56AM (#9813088) Journal
    It was a big, scary sunspot on July 23rd. SpaceWeather.com [spaceweather.com] are currently reporting: Sunspot 652 is decaying, but it still has a "beta-gamma-delta" magnetic field that harbors energy for X-class solar flares. And it's not pointing at Earth anymore, it's on the right limb of the Sun.

  • Over-excited reports (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Teancom ( 13486 ) <david@noSpAM.gnuconsulting.com> on Tuesday July 27, 2004 @11:59AM (#9813132) Homepage
    It seems like everytime something along these lines happens, we get news reports detailing all the various ways that our lives will be disrupted and/or the world can come to an end. And in the meantime, I have *yet* to actually have *anything* noticeable happen as a result of a sunspot/solar flare. No loss of cell service. No random computer crashes. Nothing even close to actual power loss. Much like how constant terror alerts reduce the feeling of eminent danger, I'm now to the point that I'd say "meh" to anything short of a Texas-sized asteroid hurtling directly towards earth.

    • Re:Over-excited reports (Score:5, Informative)

      by wayne606 ( 211893 ) on Tuesday July 27, 2004 @12:11PM (#9813270)
      Quite a few things have happened due to solar flares. Satellites knocked out, transmission lines shut down, etc. Check out "Storms from the Sun: The Emerging Science of Space Weather" by Michael Carlowicz and Ramon Lopez - I read this a while back and it listed a number of these consequences.
      • I agree with the grandparent. I don't notice anything either. What am I supposed to notice? If I subscribed to DirectTV, would I lose my signal? Would my GPS stop working?
        • I don't recall the details but I think some time ago a satellite went out due to solar weather and this disabled a lot of pagers. Also I think during solar storms astronauts are not allowed to do EVA at the space station.

          There's a passage in the book "Red Mars" that describes the effects of a solar storm on astronauts who are way beyond the Earth's protective magnetosphere. Basically they have to hide in a shielded area of the space ship until the storm passes. This book is pretty good with scientific a

  • Go for it ! (Score:4, Interesting)

    by SILIZIUMM ( 241333 ) on Tuesday July 27, 2004 @12:04PM (#9813202) Homepage
    I mean, I can't wait for auroras to show up ! Me and my camera are waiting !

  • This was Friday.... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by BeatdownGeek ( 687929 ) on Tuesday July 27, 2004 @12:07PM (#9813235) Homepage
    Are we sure this isn't stale news?

    Judging by the latest SOHO images [nasa.gov], it looks like the sun spots [nasa.gov] are already past us... But IANAA (I am not an astronomer).

  • It's the Americans (Score:4, Funny)

    by GCP ( 122438 ) on Tuesday July 27, 2004 @12:08PM (#9813250)
    With all of this intense solar storm activity we've been seeing lately, how can anyone with a properly raised consciousness doubt that human beings are upsetting the delicate solar environment? In fact, I hear Michael Moore has another documentary coming up which will PROVE that Americans in general, and Republicans especially, can be entertainingly blamed for most of it.

    • With all of this intense solar storm activity we've been seeing lately, how can anyone with a properly raised consciousness doubt that human beings are upsetting the delicate solar environment?

      I don't doubt it, but it's not the Republican's fault. It's a side-effect of the steep rise in pathetic attempts at humorous political discourse. So it's only mostly the Republican's fault!

      Nothing personal, Ann Coulter and Rush Limbaugh -- if the solar system can only have one flaming ball of hot gases, I thi

  • solar zit (Score:5, Interesting)

    by joeslugg ( 8092 ) on Tuesday July 27, 2004 @12:40PM (#9813526)
    I actually saw the thing during my morning commute - must have been on Friday. There was just the right amount of fog and clouds so that you could "look" at the sun. I saw a black dot - reminded me of the pictures of the transit of Venus a while back. It occurred to me that if it was a sunspot, and I could see the thing that clearly, it must be gigantic.

    And when it swooped down to attack, I could see that I was right...

  • I Saw This One Last Week... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by PateraSilk ( 668445 ) <tedol.isostandardstudio@com> on Tuesday July 27, 2004 @12:49PM (#9813623) Homepage
    I was driving to work and the sun was coming up through some haze and I could clearly see this big ass sunspot in the lower left-hand quadrant. I kept meaning to find an article about it, maybe some pix, too, but better late than never, I guess.
  • So which SPF of sunscreen should we use?

    And will it mean one ethnic group will survive the onslaught, and another won't?

  • I'm asking all the science geeks out there (I'm a geek, just not a astronomy geek) to help me answer, what if this massive sunspot zit thing burst? What is the worst case scenario of all that solar wind?
  • Floppy disks are a fairly convenient way to look at the sun. In my experience it usually looks like a dim red LED. (Assuming that you remember to slide the metal guard first!)

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