Large Solar Flare To Glance Off Earth 154
JoeRobe writes "According to spaceweather.com, a major X5 solar flare is on its way to deliver a glancing blow to the Earth's magnetic field. This is the second x-class flare to be released by the same sunspot in the past few days, the first being an X1. In both cases, the sunspot (spot 1429) was not directly facing Earth, but it is still active, and poses a threat for a large, Earth-directed flare in the next few days."
X-Class you say? (Score:4, Funny)
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Re:X-Class you say? (Score:5, Funny)
I've met a few ex-men, I prefer actual women.
Ligns up with iPad3 Launch (Score:1)
Obviously this is Samsung's initial attempt to destroy the iPad3
it's official (Score:4, Funny)
-I'm just sayin'
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Probably terrorists. We should pass some laws to arrest them without evidence or even a trial.
Probably just anonymous using the sun to take down the satellite network.
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someone on the sun is shooting at us!
-I'm just sayin'
How soon until US is at war with the sun?
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I doubt we'd go to war with the sun. We'd probably just send in some Navy SEALs at night...
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someone on the sun is shooting at us!
-I'm just sayin'
All yours buddy,
I'm too busy dealing with the guy with a hand cannon on the dell.
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Time to dedicate $1T of borrowed money to block the sun!
In the local shop I get sun blockers for much less.
Good news (Score:4, Interesting)
All the cost and possible misery to one side, a big cosmic event like this could do a lot of good. It might just reinvigorate general public's interest in the cosmos. Just seems a bit too quiet these days.
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of the freakin planet.
I finished that for you.
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Maybe if it just took out satellites carrying television signals?
THAT would wake people up.
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If it's the side of the planet hosting the brain-drain apps and content like Facebook and much of reality teevee, people will be more concerned about that then a nuclear armed Iran.
People don't care about higher level problems like asteroids or the environment. Take away the bread and circuses.....
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Hahaha, that's funny. This wouldn't get nearly as much media coverage as American Idol, and even that is being drowned out by the elections.
I read that as "... is being drowned out by the electrons."
Just a flesh wound, for now. (Score:1)
Will it make my 28k Dialup connection run slower? (Score:4, Funny)
(concerned)
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why are you still here?
leave. no one likes you.
Really? Did you take a poll Anonymous Coward? Please share the results. (Oh and why are you posting AC instead of using your real ID?)
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Scenario (Score:5, Funny)
1- Apple applies for a patent regarding magnetic interference.
2- USPTO grants patent to apple
3- Solar flare
4- Apple suing the sun in Germany!
5- Court prohibits the sun from sending magnetic flares to Germany
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6- Profit!
Poses a Threat? (Score:5, Funny)
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Yes, yes it is paranoid to think that.
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Right. The sun isn't that sloppy. If it was concerned enough about the midges on dirtspeck 3, we'd have been melted with loving concern long ago.
And how do you *know* the sun isn't sentient? Just askin'
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the same way I know a rock isn't sentient. It exhibits no evidence of sentience.
Re:Poses a Threat? (Score:5, Funny)
Really? If it's communications are conducted in almost unrecognizable languages, and it's conversations mainly esoterica beyond human concerns, and those discussions happened only over very long periods, they might not only be sentient, but also tenured.
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The Mayans are still around, dumb ass.
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Thanks for the personal attack, but I was referring to the centralized Mayan civilization. NOT, Mayan *individual* people.
Educate yourself before you blindly attack. What would your children say?
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I'm pretty sure we would have noticed such an event in the sedimentary rock [wikipedia.org].
Flare vs Asteroid (Score:2, Funny)
Could a solar flare affect an asteroid's orbit, like 2012 da14 which they swear will miss us.
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Yes, very, very slightly, as could any of the numerous flares and other changes in solar emissions that will occur between now and 2040. That is one of the reasons why the asteroid's future path is uncertain.
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Yes..but not much. More important is the debris that gets spewed out with a solar flare.
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because light can't make anything move at all...
radiometers [wikipedia.org] and solar sails [wikipedia.org] are just figments of our imaginations...
maybe i am just being pedantic...but for the gp yes...the solar flare could affect the asteroid's orbit...however it will probably only be on the order of millimeters over the next thousand years.
as well as the flashlight would affect the cannonballs trajectory...however likely not enough to be measurable before it hit something.
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maybe i am just being pedantic...
No, you (and every other reply that took the GP to mean 'light cannot move things at all whatsoever') are being dumb. Because "short answer accurate enough for this reality" implies that there is a longer answer with greater accuracy (or if talking about the degree of effect, precision), but which is not materially significant to the matter at hand.
At least one person was able to bring up that more precise answer without also misunderstanding the original post. Good for them.
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But of course the long answer is "Yes, but not enough to matter."
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Granted I doubt a solar flare would affect an asteroid, but it's not outside the realm of possibility.
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Of course. You just have to apply it before the cannon is fired, to give directions via Morse code on where to aim the cannon.
where'd I put my tinfoil hat? (Score:5, Informative)
1. Don't be too concerned. This is more an issue for astronauts (minor inconvenience) and satellites (possible software outages), unless you live at high latitudes, in which case auroras are cool!
2. X5 is strong but not catastrophic -- this might affect shortwave reception but it's not going to take down the power grid.
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Actually, you're right AND wrong.
On the X scale, X1 is least and X5 is worst. However, an X5 corresponds to something like a 30mT change in 3 hours of Earth's magnetic field.
The problem is, X5 is where it stops. Storms of intensity of 300mT/sec have been recorded, and they too would be marked as an X5 (I believe that was the 187x "big one"). The Quebec one was of lower magnitude, but sti
Re:where'd I put my tinfoil hat? (Score:4, Informative)
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Actually, no, it isn't like hurricane or tornado scales. There are 5 letters [wikipedia.org] that indicate the order of magnitude of the flare's x-ray (100-800 pm) flux (in W/m^2): A (<10^-7), B (10^-7 to 10^-6), C (10^-6 to 10^-5), M (10^-5 to 10^-4) and X (>10^-4). The number after the letter is a multiplier [spaceweather.com], so an M6 has an x-ray flux of 6x10^-5 W/m^2.
The scale is open ended [wikipedia.org], with the largest measured flare (2003-11-04) estimated at X45 (4.5x10^-3 W/m^2). We only have an estimate because the flare saturated the GO [wikipedia.org]
124 posts so far... (Score:2)
And I have to scroll down 3/4 the way to find actual, intellectual, on-topic discussion.
Thank you, nani popoki, for getting the ball rolling.
No blogspam? (Score:2, Funny)
A scientific story with no editorializing in TFS and links to the source so I don't have to click through blogspam?
What site am I on?
Pretty lights? (Score:2)
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In the basement? I sure hope not.
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At the lower left of the spaceweather.com site, there's a little chart that tells you the chances of high-latitude and mid-latitude geomagnetic storms over the next 1 and 2 days.
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Note the "High" and "Mid" qualifiers on latitude. Aurora is simply not something you see in the equatorial/tropical region.
So, if that's where MSesow happens to live, then he's shit out of luck.
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That's true, which is why I said "mid-latitude and high-latitude" in my original post. I'm aware of the possibility that MSesow lives in an equatorial region, but in case he/she lives in a mid- or high-latitude region, these charts may be useful.
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Wasn't directed at you. Was more for MSesow and for anyone else who came along, but it made sense to position it as a reply (to me at least). You know, a "note" like a footnote :P
I know you knew what you were talking about.
The moon never pulls shit like this (Score:5, Funny)
The moon never pulls shit like this.
from The Onion
the Sun is sentient (Score:3)
Flare's Up! (Score:1)
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Glance off? Looks like a direct hit! (Score:2, Informative)
check it out here.
http://iswa.gsfc.nasa.gov/downloads/20120307_014400_anim.tim-den.gif
too late -- the flare already hit. (Score:5, Informative)
The flare travels at the speed of light ... so we've already been hit by it. The CME [wikipedia.org] is what's going to come tomorrow morning (or tonight, depending on your time zone)
And the "spot number" as this article called it is actually NOAA Active Region #11429. I'm sick of this modulo 10000 value -- AR1429 was decades ago. (the list I'm looking at starts at AR6777, which was in August 1991)
I'll leave it for some other time to rant about the difference between 'sunspot number' (a subjective number to describe the amount of spot coverage on the sun in the visible spectrum which goes back centuries) vs. 'active region number' (a NOAA index of spots seen in x-ray)
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You're totally right, my bad. I should have said the CME from the flare will deliver a glancing blow to the planet. I didn't know that bit about the AR1429 vs. AR11429, very interesting. Is that something that NOAA has started doing, or is it just spaceweather.com? (I didn't call it "spot number", I just called it "spot 1429". Should have said "AR11429".)
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They've been doing it since AR#9999, which was in June 2002.
And it's NOAA's doing -- they have a number of different formats they use for distributing information, but they're all fixed-width ASCII files, and very few of them actually use the 5-digit forms. To the best of my knowledge, all of the 'space weather' related products use the 4-digit values, but it's most obvious on the SPE catalog, as that's over a longer period:
http://www.swpc.noaa.gov/ftpdir/latest/SRS.txt [noaa.gov]
http://www.swpc.noaa.gov/ftpdir/lates [noaa.gov]
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Great, now we have to deal with Astronomy Nazis...
Flare? (Score:1)
Carrington Event ? (Score:1)
Re:Carrington Event ? (Score:4, Informative)
Because in the case of grid failure they will run on diesel generators.
Which are off and relatively safe until the grid blows, which is after the CME is passed, then they start (even if a delay of manual starting is required, no worries). And in this case there is not a wall of seawater to drown the gennes.
-nB
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The circuits likely to be impacted would relate to the auto starting functionality. There is enough thermal mass in the cooling ponds to support no circulation for long enough to get a human down there to start them.
-nB
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In order for it to be an issue, you will need a tidal wave to damage/remove the back up generators.
So, to answer your question, nothing. On the plus side, they will allows to start restoring electricity very quickly.
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The Northeast grid has gone down [wikipedia.org] before, and there were no meltdowns. As other folks have pointed out, those things have backup generators. I assume that in the blackout of 2003, those generators kicked on.
Link NOAA model of aurora activity and visibility (Score:4, Informative)
NOAA forecast model of aurora activity and visibility
http://helios.swpc.noaa.gov/ovation/ [noaa.gov]
If the little red line is south of your location, you might see something (assuming northern hemisphere). So far no love for the lower 48.
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I really enjoyed the northern lights here in Canada last night, watched them from the comfort of my backyard hot-tub. I've certainly seen them before, but I don't think I've ever seen them from inside the city before, usually the light polution overpowers them, these were quite vivid!
Then There's AP's coverage (Score:3)
Sky, meet Chicken Little.
How big woud it have to be? (Score:2)
Re:It's??? (Score:5, Funny)
Is that as in "Holy Shit, that solar flare, it's headed right for us!" Because if I'm gonna fry, I don't think I want to spend my last few minutes on Earth surrounded by grammar Nazis.
Re:It's??? (Score:5, Funny)
Grammar Nazis tend to be thin-skinned, so you'll live long enough to see them fry first. Happy thoughts!
Re:It's??? (Score:4, Funny)
Don't worry, the apostrophe is silent.
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Don't worry, Etymology-Man [xkcd.org] will rescue us. Probably by pointing out that we are not really getting "fried", more like getting "microwaved".
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What if my pet peeve is prescriptive grammarians?
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Not according to Chaucer.
He tells me the correct word is "hit" which he uses throughout his works, and I'm not about to question the word of Chaucer (one of the greatest english writers of all time).
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yeah yeah yeah, I noticed it after I submitted. Should've checked before hitting submit, yada yada yada...
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AAAH!! Don't say that word!
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Re:It's??? (Score:4, Funny)
FTFY
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Well you just used "==" the wrong way.
Not really. "==" means "that's how it is". "=" means "I declare it that way because I'm the God of grammar".
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"It's" == "it is" or "it has". No exceptions.
The possessive form of "it" is "its".
Maybe it's because English is my 3rd language but this is one of my pet peeves.
Yeah?
Well you just used "==" the wrong way.
No, he's just using C++ and an user-defined operator==.
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No, you can't create a user defined operator== with both arguments being primitive types.
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It's... [wikipedia.org]
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Really? Please ban that IP. I don't put up with that garbage on XBL and surely won't here.
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You got the tense right: This was a tech site.
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He said in an article about solar flares.
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Where the event dividing the past from the present is the arrival of cuntwipes who don't know what a dynamic IP address is?
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About the same time people started thinking all IPs are dynamic.
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Stop being stupid...please ? It's correct as it is.
the "major X5 solar flare" IS...etc
It's been corrected; meaning the main story. The first sentence originally read, "According to spaceweather.com, a major X5 solar flare is on it's way to deliver a glancing blow to the Earth's magnetic field." That is incorrect. Dropping the apostrophe has now made it correct.
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