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Space Science

X7-class Solar Event Detected 46

Posted by michael from the kaboom dept.
SlySpy007 writes "Spaceweather.com is reporting on an enormous solar event which took place earlier this evening. This event, emanating from the gigantic sunspot 720, registered as an X7-class event, and increased the 24-hour probability of a minor geomagnetic storm to 60% in mid-latitudes (70% in high latitudes). The GOES-12 satellite happened to catch this event with its SXI instrument (Solar X-ray Imager), and there's a pretty gnarly animation of the event from 720 over at the SXI site. I know this is gonna cause havoc for plenty of missions in orbit now; wonder if we'll see any disturbance here on terra firma." Another reader points to ground-based monitoring stations detecting a surge in cosmic rays at the time of the flare.
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X7-class Solar Event Detected More

X7-class Solar Event Detected

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  • Sorry, I was trying to etch my girlfriend's name (and yes, she is real) on the sun with my new laser pointer, and i must have upped the wattage too much. my bad.
  • My probe didn't destroy the sun! Now I'll never alter the cosmic ribbon's course to get myself back into the nexus!

    God, I hate that movie.
    • Sorry about that. I went back in time and brought one of my predecessors with me since I couldn't beat you up on my own.

  • Oh no! (Score:3, Funny)

    by Yeechang Lee ( 3429 ) on Thursday January 20, 2005 @01:09PM (#11420983)
    Another reader points to ground-based monitoring stations detecting a surge in cosmic rays at the time of the flare.


    Oh no! Reed Richards, his wife Susan, brother-in-law Johnny, and test pilot Ben Grimm just took off in Dr. Richards' rocketship! They didn't know about the solar storm. I hope they'll be all right!
  • Now astrologers, psychics and other quacks are going to force their supersticious, geocentric, pseudoscientific, flat earth, stupid mambo jumbo upon us, because those solar events must surely have an influence on people. At least there will be something interesting to read on Randi.org, I guess.

    • Re:Great (Score:2)

      by jd ( 1658 )
      If the solar flare can turn people into rational, sane, compassionate human beings, I'd be willing to believe in a paranormal explanation.


      Better yet, if the flare can convince Bush and Cheney to resign by the end of the week, I'll believe in whatever you tell me to.


      So, if you're a conspiracy theorist, religious nut, psychic, etc, and want an eager follower, just make sure one of the above happens.

    • Re:Great (Score:2, Interesting)

      by tzanger ( 1575 )
      I don't know about you but I have been tracking the weird-ass dreams that I remember for the last year or so and whenever I have a "rash" of memorable dreams I check the various sun tracking sites and almost without fail I will find that there was some kind of burst of solar activity going on around that time. It could just be coincidence but it's kind of spooky that I can track these two events more or less in lock-step.
      • Considering the sheer amount of solar activity the past year or so, I don't find that suprising at all. Heck, there were a couple weeks that a day didn't go by without something happening up there.

      • I don't know about you but I have been tracking the weird-ass dreams that I remember for the last year or so and whenever I have a "rash" of memorable dreams I check the various sun tracking sites and almost without fail I will find that there was some kind of burst of solar activity going on around that time.

        And of course you have also noticed that every time you don't have memorable dreams and check the various sun tracking sites, almost without fail you never find that there was some kind of burs

        • Well I already said that it's almost every time that I have weird-ass dreams that there's solar activity going on, not every time. Once in a while I'll check the sites and yes... no memorable dreams generally means little/low solar activity.

          As they say, correlation does not mean causation, I'm just giving a datapoint. No need to act all superior.

          • Well I already said that it's almost every time that I have weird-ass dreams that there's solar activity going on, not every time. Once in a while I'll check the sites and yes... no memorable dreams generally means little/low solar activity. As they say, correlation does not mean causation, I'm just giving a datapoint. No need to act all superior.

            No offense intended. Correlation indeed does not mean causation, but it should be more than enough to get the prize--if what you say is true, that is. Her

      • It could just be coincidence...

        End Of Story.

        The rest is you, yourself, and your interpretation. Are you counting solar activity [what level?] without dreams, or vice versa, in your "coinkydink" correlations?

        Don't forget the influence of the moon, biorhythims, and presidential politics!

      • I check the various sun tracking sites and almost without fail I will find that there was some kind of burst of solar activity going on around that time.

        Around here, we call that "daylight".

  • Comment removed (Score:4, Funny)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Thursday January 20, 2005 @01:13PM (#11421052)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • Risk assessment? (Score:3, Funny)

    by Black Parrot ( 19622 ) on Thursday January 20, 2005 @01:19PM (#11421134)


    Which is the greater risk - leaving our tinfoil hats on and having them focus the effects of this in our brains, or taking them off and subjecting ourselves to mind control from the black helicopter people?

    • But your RESONANT ANTI BARONITE IDENTITY ENTANGLEMNT SYSTEM (RABIES, derisively called a tin foil hat by GOVERNMENT COLLABORATORS) will not and CAN NOT focus the rays of EVIL SUN BLASTS into your brain!!! These are GOVERNMENT LIES and PROPOGANDA!!! Your RABIES is made of TIN which is REFLECTIVE!!! Relfective tin REFLECTS and thus PROTECTS YOUR BRAIN from EVIL SUN BLASTS just as well as it protects you from EVIL LIZARD PEOPLE and EVIL GOVERNMENT CONSPIRACIES!!! NEVER remove your RABIES under any conditions!!
    • Well, I figured I'd turn my tin-foil hat inside-out and that way it would focus the effects of the cosmic rays AND control the the minds of the black helicopter people.

  • Coincidence? (Score:5, Funny)

    by 3waygeek ( 58990 ) on Thursday January 20, 2005 @01:27PM (#11421256)
    Note the time this story was submitted -- the exact time that Dubya's second term starts. Obviously ${Diety} is pissed off about Bush's re-election.
    • It also coincided with SCO winning a ruling. Said deity has every reason to be seriously narked about all of this. I'm amazed that we've not been suffering earthquakes and floods! Oh, we have. Right.

    • Pissed off? (Score:5, Funny)

      by jellisky ( 211018 ) on Thursday January 20, 2005 @02:20PM (#11421908) Journal
      Solar flares are $[Diety]'s fireworks. $[Diety] is obviously celebrating it all.

      (It's all about the spin. Karl Rove would be proud of me... and that makes me feel so incredibly dirty right now. Must clean off stain of Bush/Rove appreciation... IT BURNS!!!!)

      -Jellisky
      • > (It's all about the spin. Karl Rove would be proud
        > of me... and that makes me feel so incredibly
        > dirty right now. Must clean off stain of
        > Bush/Rove appreciation... IT BURNS!!!!)

        My eyes! Ze goggles, zey do nothing!
  • Maybe this event still has somehow something to do with Intelsat losing it's satellite.
  • My atmoshperic physics may be wrong, but doesn't this kind of event increase the likelihood of seeing northern lights or aurora borealis? (The season's wrong for aurora australis, I think...) I live in Illinois, and I missed the last time where aurora appeared over the "lower 48."
    • The good news is, according to space.com [space.com], people in the northern latitudes (including the northernmost US states) should have seen some northern lights.

      The bad news is that the aurora borealis caused by this flare was expected to happen Tuesday night or perhaps during the predawn hours Wednesday in North America.

      The good news is that the sunspot that produced this flare could produce more major flares before it heads around to the back side of the sun in a few days. So you might still get to see the n

  • LASCO mpeg (Score:3, Interesting)

    by deglr6328 ( 150198 ) on Thursday January 20, 2005 @02:20PM (#11421910)
    The LASCO instument aboard SOHO saw a "halo event [nasa.gov]" but it looks a little off axis (to my untrained eye) so we may not get the full force of the CME.

    • Re:LASCO mpeg (Score:2, Insightful)

      by M1FCJ ( 586251 )
      It is not pointed straight at us so everything could be worse if it happened a week ago.

      Damn, this is supposed to be the solar minimum, what the hell is going on here?

  • What are the chances of seeing Aurora Borealis further south, tonight? Any way we could see it here in upstate NY? I know it happened when there were those huge solar flares a while ago...

  • better animation (SOHO) (Score:3, Informative)

    by M1FCJ ( 586251 ) on Thursday January 20, 2005 @02:33PM (#11422068) Homepage
    Try this link [navy.mil] instead. It is a javascript+JPEGs in high-res movie, works better than the link submitted in the story.
    • That's much nicer. What's with the much greater "background" object population from 2005/1/20 08:00-20:00? It's almost like they "opened the aperature" for more light during that range.

  • Solar Flare Effects on Moon base (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Scott7477 ( 785439 ) on Thursday January 20, 2005 @06:37PM (#11425358) Homepage Journal
    This got me wondering what would happpen if the flare hit the Moon directly while astronauts/moon base residents were there. The following story explains that any moon base would have to be built several meters beneath the surface to protect residents from cosmic rays and solar flares.http://www.oregonl5.org/lbrt/l5aaa88b.html [oregonl5.org] Looks like the Police should have been singing about "Walking In the Moon"....

  • Would someone care to tell Michael... (Score:3, Informative)

    by Digital Avatar ( 752673 ) on Thursday January 20, 2005 @07:41PM (#11426043) Journal

    ...that X7 is a rather moderate eruption? For reference, we routinely see eruptions throughout the solar cycle at least that big, and many which are many times greater. Google around and you'll find an eruption which occurred in November of 2003 which was dubbed the 'biggest solar flare ever recorded'. That was an X28.

    More details here: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/3251481.stm [bbc.co.uk].

    • Intersting- in spaceweather.com, their explanation of solar flares the X scale is 1-9. I was thinking it would be logarithmic like the modified richter earthquake scale. However, googling does show larger solar flares. the X scale is just >10-4 in watts/meter square

      so how big IS X28? Is it .0028? as a X9 would be .0009

      • Same question. But I think the scale is not
        logarithmic since the ratio base^28 / base^7
        is more that one billion if base = e. A solar
        explosion one billion times more powerful
        would have turned the sun into a nova star.

  • Saw The Sunspot (Score:3, Interesting)

    by bruthasj ( 175228 ) <bruthasj@yahoo.cDEBIANom minus distro> on Thursday January 20, 2005 @10:15PM (#11427467) Homepage Journal
    A few days ago it was slightly cloudy with a thin layer of clouds passing over the sun. Through the tinted windows of my vehicle and this slight thin layer, the sun was filtered just enough that i could look right at it. I could see Sunspot 720 without any magnification. It was so big, I swore Venus or Mercury was in Transit across the sun, but knew it couldn't be because that only happens every 100+ years and it already happened a couple years back.

    I browsed the internet and found out that at that time there was a Sunspot, the size of 7 earths. It was 720.
  • I thought cosmic rays were particles ejected from quasars(jets from blackholes)were to energetic to come from the sun ? I think they mean proton flux?

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