NASA Heads to the Sun to Probe Solar Flares
source: http://cli.gs/XDAXR
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Houston, TX (CNN) - It warms our bodies, lights our skies, even powers our homes. But the Sun has another, darker side: violent storms and solar flares, and they can cause chaos here on Earth.
A solar storm can take place, releasing a huge burst of particles--in fact, billions of tons of material. If that blast was travelling toward the Earth, it could really cause problems for our satellite communications if it hit us.
We can't stop those storms from happening, but NASA wants to understand them better by launching the Solar Dynamics Observatory. Scientists hope the images it captures will help them sound the alarm, so experts know what to expect:
"At the moment we really only have perhaps a hour or two of warning so we would really like to say that the Sun is gearing up for another one of these events and to know whether or not this solar storm is heading directly towards the Earth," says Dr. Marek Kukula, the Public Astronomer at the Royal Observatory Greenwich, England. "The more notice we have the more precautions people can take."
In 1859, a flare up shut down the world's telegraph network. More recently-- in 1989-- a solar storm caused a power grid in Quebec to overload and shut down, leaving millions of people without power for more than nine hours.
Those fears are still alive for the next Summer Olympics, when solar activity is predicted to hit its peak. Possibly triggering storms powerful enough to knock out television and Internet coverage.
So now, NASA is in a race against time to get its observatory up and running before upheaval up there causes upheaval down here. http://cli.gs/XDAXR
http://www.wltx.com/news/story.aspx?storyid=83832
Dr. Michio Kaku http://bit.ly/d5a1Jc
A solar storm can take place, releasing a huge burst of particles--in fact, billions of tons of material. If that blast was travelling toward the Earth, it could really cause problems for our satellite communications if it hit us.
We can't stop those storms from happening, but NASA wants to understand them better by launching the Solar Dynamics Observatory. Scientists hope the images it captures will help them sound the alarm, so experts know what to expect:
"At the moment we really only have perhaps a hour or two of warning so we would really like to say that the Sun is gearing up for another one of these events and to know whether or not this solar storm is heading directly towards the Earth," says Dr. Marek Kukula, the Public Astronomer at the Royal Observatory Greenwich, England. "The more notice we have the more precautions people can take."
In 1859, a flare up shut down the world's telegraph network. More recently-- in 1989-- a solar storm caused a power grid in Quebec to overload and shut down, leaving millions of people without power for more than nine hours.
Those fears are still alive for the next Summer Olympics, when solar activity is predicted to hit its peak. Possibly triggering storms powerful enough to knock out television and Internet coverage.
So now, NASA is in a race against time to get its observatory up and running before upheaval up there causes upheaval down here. http://cli.gs/XDAXR
http://www.wltx.com/news/story.aspx?storyid=83832
Dr. Michio Kaku http://bit.ly/d5a1Jc
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Sat-nav devices face big errors as solar activity rises: BBC NewsSolar flares - vast exhalations of magnetic energ... http://bit.ly/bRZNF1
- 2 years ago
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ras_menelik
