Solar Eruption To Reach Earth Soon 159
rastos1 writes "Spacecraft from NASA recently observed an eruption on the Sun sending billions of tons of particles toward Earth. The solar eruption, called a coronal mass ejection, occurred Tuesday at 1:24 a.m. EDT (0524 GMT) and sent charged particles streaking outward at 380 miles per second. That's just over 1.3 million mph (2.2 million km/h). The solar fallout from the sun storm is expected to reach Earth over the next few days. Interestingly, an unnamed icy comet from the outer solar system dove into the sun and disintegrated nearly a the same time (video)."
NBD, it seems (Score:5, Insightful)
So maybe if you have satellite TV you'll see a few spotty moments, but nothing to worry about.
Re:NBD, it seems (Score:5, Interesting)
Yeah, I can't understand why this is news. I've seen it on two sites now.
This wasn't even an M-class flare, and the CME is only expected to push planetary Kp to 4. As in this doesn't even register as a geomagnetic storm. See this page for an explanation of Kp [noaa.gov] and you can also see this page [noaa.gov] for the predicted impact.
Somehow some idiot picked up on this, and this news is making the rounds. I've seen a lot of people confused by the coverage - this is a bloody whisper in the solar flare world.
Re:NBD, it seems (Score:5, Interesting)
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Note that the CME is no worse than the two streams of solar wind that the Earth passes through regularly. The plasma density is extremely low: that is one comet's mass of CME spread out over 4*Pi*(1 AU)^2. In area, and a significant fraction of an ÃU in thickness.
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Oh quite certainly. However if it was big enough to ignite telegraph lines, such as the 1859 "Carrington Flare", there's an awful lot of of damage-mitigation we would be able to do, and I fully expect the word would be going out within hours of the observation.
This one though, who cares? It was mentioned on the "solar weather channel" and that's all it deserves. If the media commented on it every time the sun belches in our direction they wouldn't have time to discuss anything else.
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Yeah, I can't understand why this is news. I've seen it on two sites now.
If it's likely to cause aurora in locations that don't usually get aurora, it's definitely news.
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Yeah, I can't understand why this is news. I've seen it on two sites now.
If it's likely to cause aurora in locations that don't usually get aurora, it's definitely news.
No. No it's not. On both your points. No.
Re:NBD, it seems (Score:5, Informative)
NOAA tells me that the auroral oval [noaa.gov] extends as far south as my home state of Nebraska, which is rare. That's not national news, but it's certainly local news.
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If it's likely to cause aurora in locations that don't usually get aurora, it's definitely news.
That argument only holds if they post the news the day it happens, not after the event...
(which they always do)
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And if it disrupts the ionosphere, and we get radio stations that we don't normally receive, that's definitely news .. or pop music, talk radio or jazz...
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This wasn't even an M-class flare, ...
Maybe not, but it is approaching a class-M planet.
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Eh, no big deal. Those things are barely habitable to begin with.
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A comet hitting the sun is pretty awesome, I don't care how often it happens.
It's breathtaking to watch and beats 99.9% of "real news" any day.
I wish we had more mainstream news like this. It might cause people reflect more on all the petty crap that gets them down. "Wah, I lost my keys...wait, at least I didn't get smoked by a frickin' ice comet!"
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So true. Another way media reacts is a day later, when the headlines call people to see auroras tonight (which happened last night). Anyway, here's cool data 3D data and predictions about the solar wind by NOAA Space Weather Prediction Center: Solar Wind Prediction [noaa.gov]. When solar wind really hits the speed can be over 1000 km/s, which probably will not happen because the maximum at hand is weak anyway.
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Doesn't it become news when images of the event are set to some epic, apocalyptic sounding musical score as heard in the youtube link?
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Could we come off yhe coincidental ti@ing bit, already? How many times do we need to see this "coincidence", of a comet diving into the sun, followed by an instaneous CME, to at least calculate the probability of CMEs being caused by comets vs not caused by comets?
Then, armed with that info, to posit that the hydrogen gas, being ionized, or perhaps the rotational momentum, or perhaps another conservation law, requires this, and deduce the mechanism?
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How many times do we need to see this "coincidence", of a comet diving into the sun, followed by an instaneous CME, to at least calculate the probability of CMEs being caused by comets vs not caused by comets?
If you watch the video, you'll see that the CME happens well before the comet hits the sun.
Re:NBD, it seems (Score:4, Funny)
The CME was the Sun's defense mechanism when it saw the comet coming right at it. It ejected in self-defense.
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The sun's name is Ned?
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Ah, so you're saying the the sun is actually an alien vessel with a high power point defense system? Interesting...
In fairness it's not *impossible* that an incoming object could subtly disrupt the sun's magnetosphere and somehow catalyze a CME. The miniscule energy of even a full on size large comet "impact" (like anything's going to survive passing through the upper atmosphere) would seem to render it unlikely though, so I'll wait stick to doing my higher probabilty research first. Now if you'll excuse
Re:NBD, it seems (Score:5, Informative)
No, you're imagining the edge of the sun (!?!) as being the edge of visible gases. In terms of the sun as a single electromagnetic plasma unit, the sun is much larger than that; the comet was already in the sun.
As the water evaporates off the comet, and then ionizes, it is going to disrupt the magnetic fields of the plasma streaming out of the sun. That, in turn, is going to cause a response. The response will attempt to restore the magnetic energy to neutral. Conservation of momentum, then, is likely to cause exactly the response you see.
But don't take my word for it. Go back, and look at the graphs of the sun every single time we can record a cometfall. Now, find the number of CMEs of similar order of magnitude (nothing smaller than 1/10 the size) that occur each year. Then, taking the same "t seconds before impact" as your zero, calculate the probability of the CME being coincidence, vs. the probability of it being causally related.
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"Every single time we can record a cometfall," my ass. The sun-watching observatories see one of these every two or three days and there is NO correlation to CMEs. Most of them are in the same orbit and are called Kreuz sungrazers, the remains of a big comet that broke up maybe 2,000 years ago when it passed too close to the sun. The bigger Kreuz chunks that miss the sun and come on around have been some of the most spectacular comets ever seen on Earth, simply because they generate huge tails on their c
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Let me posit a possible mechanism, taking this a step farther. The solar wind we experience consists of charged plasma being driven outwards, away from the sun. Now, that plasma consists of electrons and protons.
Likewise, the comet atmosphere -- stretched out thin to the front and back -- strikes the solar wind at hypersonic speeds, and ionizes. It, too, has electrons and protons. The electrons, being of light mass, get driven back with the solar wind almost immediately. The protons don't.
Likewise, the
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Yes, but it provides a distraction for the public from the collapsing economy and rampant domestic NSA surveillance.
[Cheek = Insert Tongue]
WHAT?
NSA is watching me? Oh the Horror!
[/Cheek = Insert Tongue]
I think you have a point...
Re:NBD, it seems (Score:5, Insightful)
Chill dude. Stop get off the news channels for a bit. Go out get a job, volunteer.
Bitching on the internet, and trying to twist every new article into being relevant to your particular we are doomed senserio. Isn't going to help anyone, and it just makes you feel bad.
If the worlds going to end. Might as well go out and enjoy yourself.
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What does the NSA have to do with the end of the world? We now have government confirmation that they are operating a secret domestic surveillance program that would make the Gestapo jizz their pants, and that sort of power *will* eventually be abused horribly, if it hasn't already. And that the secret court providing oversight has deemed it unconstitutional and been ignored. Not end-of-the-world shit, but something that every US citizen should be outraged over, and trying everything they can think of to
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Warning: incompatible advice detected.
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Also, you may be able to see the aurora much closer to the equator than normal, which is kinda nifty.
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Would have been even niftier if they told us last Tuesday so we could travel North a bit...
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Or, more recently the residents of Quebec, Canada, in 1989 [wikipedia.org] where the power grid was disrupted due magnetic induction caused by the solar storm (the store interacts with Earth's magnetic field, the varying magnetic field then induces currents into the long transmission lines).
Given today's society is even MORE dependent on the power grid and even MORE dependent on satellit
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People in the UK started hearing radio stations from the other side of the North Sea. And the aurora that night were awesome - bands of green light would travel across the sky and in the point opposite the Sun was a reddish-green + shaped spot.
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Yes, a large CME is something to be worried about, and it's only a matter of time before another one hits us.
But just because massive wildfires are dangerous doesn't mean that a candle being lit is a news story. The current CME will make for a slightly larger and brighter Aurora than normally visible, that's it. Nothing newsworthy unless you live in one of the few areas effected.
Translation please! (Score:2, Redundant)
sent charged particles streaking outward at 380 miles per second. That's just over 1.3 million mph (2.2 million km/h).
Could you give that in manhattans^(1/2) per dog year, too?
Re:Translation please! (Score:5, Funny)
Could you give that in manhattans^(1/2) per dog year, too?
On a scale of one to tipsy, I'd say it's right between ocelot feathers and 7!.
manhattans^(1/2) per dog year (Score:3)
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Well for the most of us, Miles per second doesn't really relate to our frame of reference.
1 Mile per second is really fast for us. Heck a Mile per Minute is usually what we consider driving rather fast.
We don't think of speed in Miles per second, but Miles per Hours or Kilometers per hour.
So converting to Miles per Hour and Kilometers per hour when they talk about speed, is there to help the general public get a good sense of the speed in terms they normally deal with.
It also gives us a better understandin
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I disagree. 380 miles is a distance we can wrap our heads around - we've probably personally traveled that far many times. 1 second is a time we clearly understand as well. And so we can kinda visualize just how fast 380miles/s might be. Yikes!
1.3 million mph on the other hand is just a really big number, way beyond our ability to comprehend it. Most people start having trouble actually visualizing what a number means long before it even reaches the thousands - the difference between several thousand an
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Re:Translation please! (Score:4, Insightful)
Putting it in terms relative to the speed of light does help a lot. It won't make a huge difference to most casual readers, but anyone who knows that the Earth is roughly 8 lightminutes away from the sun (fairly common knowledge) can easily use the .11c to figure out exactly how fast it is in a meaningful way. Using mph/kph isn't meaningful to most readers because it's on such a different scale from anything else we'd normally measure in mph/kph.
Check your math (Score:4, Insightful)
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380 miles per second
.11c
Uh... no.
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380 miles per second
.11c
Uh... no.
.11c would be ~20491 miles per second, quite the difference indeed.
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Actually yes, that's much more useful, thanks.
Check out the video though ! (Score:5, Interesting)
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Even cooler is the fact that it was posted by a time traveller.
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The comet looks massive! It's hard to get a sense of it's scale given the sun's corona and the comet's corona, but that thing looks like a planetoid streaking in there. Is there any news on how big that was?
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Is there any news on how big that was?
If only there was a search engine to find out such answers. Alas, I guess we'll never know.
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But why do they need an awful soundtrack ? What is wrong with silence ?
Simultaneity problem with that comet (Score:3, Funny)
The sun is vast, and that outward pulse appears to happen almost simultaneous with the impact of the comet.
Which means I very much doubt it's related, as an effect would still have to have traveled at least some major fraction of the Sun's radius and back before the event would have been triggered.
Granted, I suppose the comet could have been traveling away from us, and since the signal of the blast is traveling *toward* us, it basically pulled a Picard Maneuver [memory-alpha.org] and partially overtook the comet light.
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But what if the sun-dwellers saw the comet coming?
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Hmm. Solar eruptions due to things dropping into the sun...
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Sure, simultaneity is far from the only or strongest reason that's silly. But it is the one written as "Oh, isn't it interesting that..." in the summary. I don't like *wink-nudge* suggestions like that in scientific summaries. Just say it's unrelated.
Re:Simultaneity problem with that comet (Score:5, Insightful)
Except, can we conclusively say it's unrelated??
Certainly the two events were correlated -- if the CME happened at pretty much the same time as the comet impact, it's definitely interesting to note that.
I mean, what are the odds that at mostly the same time you're seeing the one event, the other has just happened? In all likelihood the comet didn't have enough mass to have any affect on the sun, but it's definitely not obvious why the two events should happen so closely together.
If I crash my car into a lamp post, and at that same time the building next to me explodes ... it's hard not to think "WTF happened here?". You wouldn't expect my impact with the lamp post to have enough energy or connection to the exploding building but you'd certainly notice it.
So, either this is a really freak occurrence where two interesting but totally unrelated things happened at the same time (and I have no reason to believe it isn't) .. or something really fascinating was at work that nobody has a clue about.
Of course, it's a completely un-testable thing since we can't just crash comets into the sun on demand ... but I would definitely agree with wording at as "Interestingly", if for nothing else than the sheer coincidence of the timing when you're talking about things on an astronomical scale.
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Any idea of the relative kinetic energy of the comet and the mass ejection? Solar impacting objects are moving quite fast, and the corona is rather diffuse, still I would expect the CME to represent a lot more energy, with no clear mechanism for triggering by the comet impact.
There is enough time for electromagnetic signals to transmit the information across the sun. The comet presumably looks like a clump of fast moving plasma by the time it hits.
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The CME is stored energy contained by the sun's magnetic fields. It only takes a small disruption to the magnetic field to release it.
I would be looking at comparing the energy of the comet to the energy required to prevent CMEs, not the total energy released by the event.
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True, but it is probably easier to imagine mechanisms that don't need a lot of energy gain.
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The CME wasn't "even on the opposite side", it only looks that way because it's coming straight at the camera. Considering that the comet's apparent (2-D) distance was still over a solar-radius away from the sun when the CME occurred that would mean it was probably at least 60 degrees of solar longitude away from the CME. Not *impossible* that it was somehow related, but highly unlikely.
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Of course, it's a completely un-testable thing since we can't just crash comets into the sun on demand ... but I would definitely agree with wording at as "Interestingly", if for nothing else than the sheer coincidence of the timing when you're talking about things on an astronomical scale.
Of course it's testable. Here it is. Wait and observe until a few more large bodies hit the sun. Observe results. Done. Isn't this how most astronomy and astrophysics research is done?
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I don't normally reply to myself, but I watched the video, and other linked videos. Here's one [youtube.com] from October 2011. Looks like this one wasn't entirely inconsistent with past behaviour.
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If you watch the video, you can see that the CME happens before the comet hits, and actually vaporizes the comet on the way out.
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Indeed. I conclude from this that the sun was merely defending itself against an invasion.
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One word (Score:5, Funny)
*Burp*
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Hahaha the sun burped at us!
Wait...wait if the comet hit one side of the sun...and the CME came from th...the oth..
Oh god...
A giant solar is flare heading this way?? OK. (Score:1)
http://i.imgur.com/pSjeKtk.png [imgur.com]
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How big is this flare? Can it be measured in terms of Star Trek movies?
About 1.3 J.J. Abrams lens flares - so yeah it's huge!
I guess .... (Score:5, Funny)
In other news... (Score:1)
My wireless just died.
obvious (Score:4, Informative)
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The CME happened right before the ice comet hit the Sun. We could also speculate that aliens fired that ice coment into the Sun to diminish the strength of the CME, hence saving all our asses.
You had me going there (Score:2)
I was right with you there until you decided to lump everything else (possibly related) under "stuff"
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Giving plot to real life (Score:2)
That was no comet (Score:4, Funny)
Goo (Score:1)
Yawn. Wake me when a giant asteroid is about to hit us.
Ya know what? Not even then.
Oh, I've wasted my life. (Score:1)
At least the trolling will end...
One of my favorites (Score:5, Funny)
Solar observing from home (Score:5, Interesting)
Good (Score:1)
Steve Ballmer (Score:2)
Space Sex (Score:2)
Looks to me like the comet is a sperm cell impregnating the Sun...then the Sun has an orgasm.
Here It Comes... (Score:2)
It could be worse. At least it wasn't an eruption from Uranus.
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Run! Charles Manson is out of jail!
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Know misspelled words their so I-Spell will knot catch thee problem.. What Eu halve is eh grammar is shew.
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