The Sun Just Launched Three Huge Solar Flares in 24 Hours. (bostonglobe.com) 50
Three top-tier X-class solar flares launched off the sun between Wednesday and Thursday. The first two occurred seven hours apart, coming in at X1.9 and X1.6 magnitude respectively. The third, the most powerful of the current 11-year "solar cycle," ranked an impressive X6.3. From a report: Solar flares, or bursts of radiation, are ranked on a scale that goes from A, B and C to M and X, in increasing order of intensity. They usually originate from sunspots, or bruiselike discolorations on the surface of the sun. Sunspots are most common near the height of the 11-year solar cycle. The current cycle, number 25, is expected to reach its peak this year. The more sunspots, the more opportunities for solar flares.
Solar flares and accompanying coronal mass ejections, or CMEs, can influence "space weather" across the solar system, and even here on Earth. CMEs are slower shock waves of magnetic energy from the sun. Flares can reach Earth in minutes, but CMEs usually take at least a day. All three of the X-class solar flares disrupted shortwave radio communications on Earth. But the first two flares did not release a CME; the verdict is still out regarding whether the third flare did. High-frequency radio waves propagate by bouncing off electrons in Earth's ionosphere. That's a layer of Earth's atmosphere between 50 and 600 miles above the ground.
When a solar flare occurs, that radiation travels toward Earth at the speed of light. It can ionize additional particles in the lower ionosphere. Radio waves sent from devices below it then impact that extra-ionized layer and lose energy, and aren't able to be bent by ions at the top of the ionosphere. That means signals can't travel very far, and radio blackouts are possible. Three back-to-back radio blackouts occurred in response to the trio of flares, but primarily over the Pacific and Indian oceans. They were rated "R3" or greater on a 1 through 5 scale. According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Space Weather Prediction Center, that results in a "wide area blackout of [high frequency] radio communication, [and] loss of radio contact for about an hour on sunlit side of Earth." Low-frequency navigation signals, like those used on aircraft traveling overseas, can be degraded too.
Solar flares and accompanying coronal mass ejections, or CMEs, can influence "space weather" across the solar system, and even here on Earth. CMEs are slower shock waves of magnetic energy from the sun. Flares can reach Earth in minutes, but CMEs usually take at least a day. All three of the X-class solar flares disrupted shortwave radio communications on Earth. But the first two flares did not release a CME; the verdict is still out regarding whether the third flare did. High-frequency radio waves propagate by bouncing off electrons in Earth's ionosphere. That's a layer of Earth's atmosphere between 50 and 600 miles above the ground.
When a solar flare occurs, that radiation travels toward Earth at the speed of light. It can ionize additional particles in the lower ionosphere. Radio waves sent from devices below it then impact that extra-ionized layer and lose energy, and aren't able to be bent by ions at the top of the ionosphere. That means signals can't travel very far, and radio blackouts are possible. Three back-to-back radio blackouts occurred in response to the trio of flares, but primarily over the Pacific and Indian oceans. They were rated "R3" or greater on a 1 through 5 scale. According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Space Weather Prediction Center, that results in a "wide area blackout of [high frequency] radio communication, [and] loss of radio contact for about an hour on sunlit side of Earth." Low-frequency navigation signals, like those used on aircraft traveling overseas, can be degraded too.
Are they headed straight towards us (Score:3)
A direct hit would be very bad
Re: Are they headed straight towards us (Score:1)
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A direct hit would be very bad
Why? Is there a significant chance of death!?
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There are flares and then there are FLARES! Big one in mid-1800's was called The Carrington Event. It set fire to telegraph shacks, ruined a newly-laid transatlantic cable, and other wire-related mischief. If it occurred today, it would likely blow very large transformers for which there are no spares, are not even made in the USA, and would likely take years to get replaced if there was a widespread outage. Basically, industrialized countries like the US would be knocked back to relying on horses ag
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That's one way of having a smaller human population. Sign me up!
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Nonsense.
Telegraph lines and such were especially vulnerable because of well their length and lack of shielding. Sure there would be some damage transmission lines and equipment. That would probably the biggest issue.
We could mostly likely get temporary power up to run refineries etc in pretty short order and get basic food stuffs moving, gasoline distributed etc. Electronics would mostly be fine, many of them are adequately shielded in metal boxes with a ground, and when it comes to chips and stuff odds a
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DarkOx has refuted many of your points already. I'd like to add a few comments.
I don't think it would be nearly as apocalyptic as you make out. We have more vulnerable technology now than in the mid-1800s, but we also have over a century of researching the problem and developing models to predict and mediate the effects. For example, when we know a CME is coming, we can disconnnect power-distribution systems from each other to make them less vulnerable. And we can design satellites to withstand all but the
Re:Are they headed straight towards us (Score:5, Informative)
A direct hit would be very bad
Why? Is there a significant chance of death!?
Not likely from these flares. The worst these would do, even if they were aimed directly at earth, is disrupt some radio-based communications, possibly de-orbit some LEO satellites, and cause people on airplanes to get more irradiated than normal. Oh, and the auroras would be visible quite a lot further from the poles than normal. Maaaybe cause a few isolated issues with electrical transmission. While these are pretty significant Solar flares, they can also be MUCH more powerful than even the largest of this series so far. Solar flares both cause emission of radiation, and that radiation, if directed towards earth, takes only 8 minutes or so to get here. They will also eject charged particles, called a Coronal Mass Ejection (CME). The CME can be ejected at a great range of velocities, and can take from hours to days to begin impacting earth (if directed at Earth at all). Those charged particles can induce current that can cause a wide variety of issues. There is concern that a major CME could wreak havoc on electrical transmission - maybe even blowing out transformers, and maybe even much smaller electronic devices. We haven't been hit my a major CME in the modern era, but there is concern that a Carrington-level event could result in major disruption to much of our technology all over the world and could even result in so much damage that it may take years or decades to recover. We really don't know how destructive such an event would be. The engineers that develop / operate our transmission networks often seem pretty confident that disconnects and other protective measures would prevent catastrophic damage, though many others disagree. Things COULD be even worse than the above - there's some reasonable evidence that solar flares may have been responsible for evolutionary bottlenecks/mass-extinction on Earth before. Though the odds of something that severe happening during our lifetimes is probably pretty remote. The kinds of flares so powerful to have that much impact are orders of magnitude more energetic than even the Carrington Event level flare.
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To be fair, most electrical engineers don't understand proper earthing, so a CME probably scares them.
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Its the fall of society immediately afterwards that will kill you.
A super-flare will break nearly all the satellites, while on its way to breaking nearly all the electrical systems, in a way that will set fire to many of the grid-connected buildings.
Society recovering wont be an option, as there will be an immediate bootstrap problem. Our food requires all these machines that no longer work and cannot be replaced at any reasonable scale, and all the fires will also produc
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The super-flare wont kill you.
BOO!
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Directly, no. Indirectly, yes.
CMEs aren't generally harmful to life on earth - you'll just see prettier auroras at night.
However, they wreak havoc with technology - they are literally an EMP on satellites, so you can expect loss of communications.
On earth, CMEs cause damage to the power grid because the interaction with Earth's magnetic field induces all sorts of currents in the power grid due to the long lines. At best, these currents will cause power plants and
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Directly, no. Indirectly, yes.
Boo!
Re:Are they headed straight towards us (Score:5, Funny)
We need to send a rag-tag team of misfits up there with a nefarious corporate saboteur with corrupt interests to fix it against the odds.
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A direct hit would be very bad
But would lead to some awesome aurora!!!
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And a Lens Flare!
J. J. Abrams is already developing the film adaption.
Re: Are they headed straight towards us (Score:2)
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It takes about 8 minutes for sunlight to reach the earth. These things are not traveling faster than light. If they were going to hit us, we would have already suffered the consequences.
That's true of the initial EM radiation. However, the CMEs are comprised of ionized particles that travel much slower, on the order of hundreds of kilometres per second. They would take days to arrive at the earth. The CMEs can damage satellites via electrostatic charging, and create magnetospheric substorms that can disrupt communications and generate currents in power lines and pipelines. The initial EM radiation would warn us of the arrival of CMEs, so we could take measures to weather-out the arrival of
SolarHam.com (Score:1)
Cell phone outage... (Score:1)
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/n... [cbsnews.com]
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That's what I was wondering.
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To elaborate on the earlier AC comment:
No, [foxbusiness.com] retard.
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Quote: "Solar storms cause damage to communication systems."
https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/nmp/s... [nasa.gov].
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You wouldn't see such stupid comments if you stopped writing them.
Solar flares can cause communication problems, but these solar flares were not strong enough to disrupt cell phone service, and solar flares do not selectively knock out service for only some users of some cell phone networks.
Good time for atrocities (Score:1)
Tip: If you commit an atrocity (e.g. use nerve gas pods) against an enemy faction while communications are down due to solar activity, the other factions won't learn of it, so you'll avoid the imposition of sanctions.
I really like doing it to those pieces-of-shit Yang and/or Miriam, nerve-gas-armed needle jets attacking their base garrisons causing collateral damage to the civilian populations, all while maintaining lucrative civilized commerce with others.
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A celebratory round of nerve stapling to follow!
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The purge is on, right? Last I heard the purge was on, so duck and cover.
Cell phone outages (Score:2)
"launched" is a very misleading word here. (Score:2)
solar flares often do launch CMEs (coronal mass ejections), but all of these three did not. Aside from a partial shortwave radio blackout right after each one, the effect on earth is expected to be minimal. no special auroras even.
if stone is missing from end of string (Score:2)
"Solar flares, or bursts of radiation, are ranked on a scale that goes from A, B and C to M and X, in increasing order of intensity."
When you're talking about things like solar flares or hurricanes, "classes" are inherently obfuscatory. You could just say how big something is, with a number and some units.
Re: if stone is missing from end of string (Score:2)
each letter is 10x the letter before.
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Classes are reasonable for many things, particularly those that are rough estimates, since people don't understand scientific notation, significant digits or nonlinear scales.
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So you think the public is going to be better informed if they hear of three solar flares, respectively sending:
- 1.3 * 10^-4 W/m^2 of 0.1 - 0.8 nm spectral band x-ray radiation
- 1.6 * 10^-4 W/m^2 of 0.1 - 0.8 nm spectral band x-ray radiation
- 6.3 * 10^-4 W/m^2 of 0.1 - 0.8 nm spectral band x-ray radiation
our way?
And you don't think that would cause far more questions and confusion?
If you really want to know what each class of solar flare corresponds to, take 5 seconds to open a new browser tab and Google i [noaa.gov]
Investment opportunity! (Score:2)
A launch like this sounds like a great opportunity to get in on the ground floor!
Fact check (Score:1)
Solar flares don't travel at the speed of light. The protons and such that make up the bulk of solar flare radiation output travel at something like 1% of the speed of light.
Re: Fact check (Score:2)
the ionizing radiation which causes shortwave radio blackouts does. CMEs, no.
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Solar flares actually do, because they are largely x-ray radiation that hits our ionosphere within a handful of minutes after the flare happens.
If there is an accompanying Coronal Mass Ejection (CME) that does not travel at the speed of light, or anywhere near it. That is a very big ejection of charged particles that move at high speed, but not relativistic speeds approaching the speed of light. It's also a separate event that correlates with solar flares, but doesn't have a 1:1 relationship with solar fl
We need to counter attack at once! (Score:2)
This is intolerable! We cannot allow the Sun to fire flares at us repeatedly with no response.
We will launch at night to approach unseen, then strike at dawn! Who's with me?
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Please don't put scare quotes around solar cycle. (Score:2)
I don't know why this is so difficult to understand - it's not a great look when an editor here doesn't display at least some degree of scientific literacy.
I mean, just don't do it. Have someone else do it for you.