Solar Maximum

by mind blown 25 Replies latest social current

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  mind blown

  http://news.yahoo.com/solar-storm-barreling-toward-earth-weekend-162629211.html

  LOS ANGELES (AP) — The space weather forecast for Earth looks a bit stormy this weekend, but scientists said not to worry.

  A solar storm was due to arrive Saturday morning and last through Sunday, slamming into Earth's magnetic field. Scientists said it will be a minor event and they have notified power grid operators, airlines and other potentially affected parties.

  "This isn't the mother of all anything," said forecaster Joe Kunches at the government's Space Weather Prediction Center in Boulder, Colo. "We don't see any ill effects to any systems."

  The storm began Thursday when the sun unleashed a massive flare that hurled a cloud of highly charged particles racing toward Earth at 3 million mph. It was the sixth time this year that such a powerful solar outburst has occurred; none of the previous storms caused major problems.

  In severe cases, solar storms can cause power blackouts, damage satellites and disrupt GPS signals and high-frequency radio communications. Airlines are sometimes forced to reroute flights to avoid the extra radiation around the north and south poles brought on by solar storms.

  In 1989, a strong solar storm knocked out the power grid in Quebec, causing 6 million people to lose electricity.

  Juha-Pekka Luntama, a space weather expert at the European Space Agency, said utility and navigation operators "will certainly see something but they will probably find ways to deal with any problems" from the incoming storm.

  The storm is part of the sun's normal 11-year cycle of solar activity, which is supposed to reach peak storminess next year.

  There's a bright side to stormy space weather: It tends to spawn colorful northern lights as the charged particles bombard Earth's outer magnetic field. Shimmering auroras may be visible at the United States-Canada border and northern Europe this weekend, Kunches said.
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  mind blown
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  mind blown
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  mind blown

  .....just incase you've been feeling a little agro (aggravated) or having head aches lately.....

  http://communities.washingtontimes.com/neighborhood/tango-mind-and-emotion/2012/mar/8/solar-flare-sun-touches-our-psyche/

  Solar flare: The sun touches our psyche

  | Photo: Nick Russill Thursday, March 8, 2012 -

  Jacqueline Marshall

  

  Ask me a question.

  • WASHINGTON, March 8, 2012 - Maybe it is time to wear tin foil on our heads. With high electromagnetic activity from the sun coming this way, our human electromagnetic fields may start glowing.

  Even if we do not begin incandescing, scientists have noticed correlations between solar flares and moods.

  Solar Effects

  From 1948 to 1997, the Institute of North Industrial Ecology Problems in Russia found that geomagnetic activity showed three seasonal peaks each of those years (March to May, in July, and in October). Every peak matched an increased incidence of anxiety, depression, bipolar disorder, and suicide in the city Kirovsk.

  One explanation for the correlation is that solar storms desynchronize our circadian rhythm (biological clock). The pineal gland in our brain is affected by the electromagnetic activity.

  This causes the gland to produce excess melatonin, and melatonin is the brain’s built in “downer” that helps us sleep.

  “The circadian regulatory system depends on repeated environmental cues to [synchronize] internal clocks,” says psychiatrist Kelly Posner, Columbia University. “Magnetic fields may be one of these environmental cues.”

  Solar Symptoms and Side Effects

  Psychological effects of CMEs (coronal mass ejections) are typically short lived and include headache, palpitations, mood swings, and feeling generally unwell. Chaotic or confused thinking, and erratic behaviors also increase. Since Tuesday’s solar flare was a double-whammy, it will be interesting to see whether reports of physical disturbances are more intense or more plentiful than during single solar plasma blasts.

  Solar eruptions throw 10 billion kilograms, or 22 billion pounds, of solar plasma into space. If that number is hard to grasp, just think of it as ginormous. One to three flares are a daily occurrence on the sun but the waves of charged particles do not always visit our planet. Those that do reach us are both beauty and a possible beast.

  Particles from CMEs get “caught” in the Earth’s web of magnetic field lines and collide with gas atoms in the atmosphere. The result is the colorful chimera we call an Aurora, or northern lights. While human ancestors likely enjoyed those tapestries of color, and may have had mood swings from solar flares, they did not have to worry about the storms messing with satellites and power grids, as we do.

  Magnetic Fields in 2012

  Since humans are physically, mentally, and emotionally altered by electromagnetic charges from the sun, it makes you wonder how the bombardment of particles from digital devices affects us on daily basis. All this leads one to think that it might be time to break out the tin foil, but since my cats are not acting any more demanding or nuttier than usual, we are most likely OK.

  However, don’t be surprised if next new “plea” in our legal system turns out to be: not guilty by reason of electromagnetic disruption.

  ____________________________________

  Need help with chronic depression or bipolar depression even on days without sun storms? There is much good information at Healthline.com

  Resource:

  Battros, Mitch. (12/2008) New Scientific Study Shows Solar Activity Affects Humans Physical and Mental State. Retrieved from: http://www.earthchangesmedia.com/publish/article-9162523562.php
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  Chariklo

  Bookmarking. Anything astronomical is fascinating!
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  kurtbethel

  The Venus transit of last month was really nice too.
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  mind blown

  NASA Telescope Captures Sharpest Images of Sun's Corona 07.20.12

  Hi-C has captured the highest resolution images ever taken of the corona of the sun in the extreme ultraviolet wavelength. (NASA)
  AIA can see structures on the sun's surface with clarity of approximately 675 miles. (NASA)
  Shown in green to enhance detail, these Hi-C images reveal detailed tangles of magnetic field. (NASA)
  Members of the NASA Hi-C team prepare to recover the telescope at White Sands Missile Range on July 11, 2012. (NASA)
  Hi-C was successfully launched on a Black Brant sounding rocket from the White Sands Missile Range. (NASA)
  
  View full captions/large images A telescope launched July 11 aboard a NASA sounding rocket has captured the highest-resolution images ever taken of the sun's million-degree atmosphere called the corona. The clarity of the images can help scientists better understand the behavior of the solar atmosphere and its impacts on Earth's space environment.
  
  "These revolutionary images of the sun demonstrate the key aspects of NASA's sounding rocket program, namely the training of the next generation of principal investigators, the development of new space technologies, and scientific advancements," said Barbara Giles, director for NASA's Heliophysics Division at NASA Headquarters in Washington.
  
  Launched from White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico, the 58-foot-tall sounding rocket carried NASA's High Resolution Coronal Imager (Hi-C) telescope. Weighing 464 pounds, the 10-foot-long payload took 165 images during its brief 620-second flight. The telescope focused on a large active region on the sun with some images revealing the dynamic structure of the solar atmosphere in fine detail. These images were taken in the extreme ultraviolet wavelength. This higher energy wavelength of light is optimal for viewing the hot solar corona.
  
  "We have an exceptional instrument and launched at the right time," said Jonathan Cirtain, senior heliophysicist at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala. "Because of the intense solar activity we're seeing right now, we were able to clearly focus on a sizeable, active sunspot and achieve our imaging goals."
  
  The telescope acquired data at a rate of roughly one image every 5 seconds. Its resolution is approximately five times more detailed than the Atmospheric Imaging Assembly (AIA) instrument flying aboard NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO). For comparison, AIA can see structures on the sun's surface with the clarity of approximately 675 miles and observes the sun in 10 wavelengths of light. Hi-C can resolve features down to roughly 135 miles, but observed the sun in just one wavelength of light.
  
  The high-resolution images were made possible because of a set of innovations on Hi-C's optics array. Hi-C's mirrors are approximately 9 1/2 inches across, roughly the same size as the SDO instrument's. The telescope includes some of the finest mirrors ever made for space-based instrumentation. The increase in resolution of the images captured by Hi-C is similar to making the transition in television viewing from a cathode ray tube TV to high definition TV.
  
  Initially developed at Marshall, the final mirror configuration was completed with inputs from partners at the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory (SAO) in Cambridge, Mass., and a new manufacturing technique developed in coordination with L-3Com/Tinsley Laboratories of Richmond, Calif.
  
  The high-quality optics were aligned to determine the spacing between the optics and the tilt of the mirror with extreme accuracy. Scientists and engineers from Marshall, SAO, and the University of Alabama in Huntsville worked to complete alignment of the mirrors, maintaining optic spacing to within a few ten-thousandths of an inch.
  
  NASA's suborbital sounding rockets provide low-cost means to conduct space science and studies of Earth's upper atmosphere. In addition, they have proven to be a valuable test bed for new technologies for future satellites or probes to other planets.
  
  Launched in February 2010, SDO is an advanced spacecraft studying the sun and its dynamic behavior. The spacecraft provides images with clarity 10 times better than high definition television and provides more comprehensive science data faster than any solar observing spacecraft in history.
  
  Partners associated with the development of the Hi-C telescope also include Lockheed Martin's Solar Astrophysical Laboratory in Palo Alto, Calif.; the University of Central Lancashire in Lancashire, England; and the Lebedev Physical Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences in Moscow.
  
  Watch a video of Hi-C's observations of the sun on Nasa site:

  http://www.nasa.gov/topics/solarsystem/features/hic.html
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  HintOfLime

  Sunspots now you say? Oh dear.

  Ok, so to be clear - we are on for the end of the world orgy right?

  

  - Lime
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  mind blown

  I said strip down, not strip tease you fool! I told you things were going to get mighty hot around here.......

  
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  mind blown

  NASA to hold news conference on upcoming Radiation Belt Storm Probes launch

  NASA will hold a news conference at 18:00 UTC, Thursday, Aug. 9 to discuss the upcoming launch of the Radiation Belt Storm Probes (RBSP), a mission to study Earth’s radiation belts. The event will be broadcast live on NASA Television and streamed on the agency’s website.

  The two-year RBSP mission will help scientists develop an understanding of Earth’s Van Allen radiation belts and related regions that pose hazards to human and robotic explorers.

  RBSP will explore space weather — changes in Earth’s space environment caused by the sun — that can disable satellites, create power grid failures and disrupt GPS service.The mission also will allow researchers to understand fundamental radiation and particle acceleration processes throughout the universe.

  RBSP is scheduled to launch no earlier than 4:08 a.m. Thursday, Aug. 23 from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida. The twin probes will lift off on a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket.

  

  n artist's rendition of what the two Radiation Belt Storm Probe spacecraft will look like in space. (Credit: NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center)

  MISSION STATEMENT

  The Radiation Belt Storm Probes (RBSP) is being designed to help us understand the Sun’s influence on Earth and Near-Earth space by studying the Earth’s radiation belts on various scales of space and time.

  The instruments on NASA’s Living With a Star Program’s (LWS) Radiation Belt Storm Probes (RBSP) mission will provide the measurements needed to characterize and quantify the plasma processes that produce very energetic ions and relativistic electrons. The RBSP mission is part of the broader LWS program whose missions were conceived to explore fundamental processes that operate throughout the solar system and in particular those that generate hazardous space weather effects in the vicinity of Earth and phenomena that could impact solar system exploration. RBSP instruments will measure the properties of charged particles that comprise the Earth’s radiation belts, the plasma waves that interact with them, the large-scale electric fields that transport them, and the particle-guiding magnetic field.

  The two RBSP spacecraft will have nearly identical eccentric orbits. The orbits cover the entire radiation belt region and the two spacecraft lap each other several times over the course of the mission. The RBSP in situ measurements discriminate between spatial and temporal effects, and compare the effects of various proposed mechanisms for charged particle acceleration and loss.

  News conference panelists are:
  – Madhulika Guhathakurta, Living With a Star program scientist, NASA Headquarters, Washington
  – Mona Kessel, RBSP program scientist, NASA Headquarters
  – Barry Mauk, RBSP project scientist, Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (APL), Laurel, Md.
  – Rick Fitzgerald, RBSP project manager, APL, Laurel, Md.

  Graphics presented during the news conference will be online shortly before the start of the event at: http://www.nasa.gov/sunearth

  For NASA TV streaming video, downlink and scheduling information, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/ntv

  For more information about the RBSP mission, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/rbsp

  Source: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center