Splashing up and falling back over half of the surface of the sun. That’s a mass ejection hundreds of times larger than the Earth. We’re talking billion tons of matter accelerated to 3.1 million MPH in a spectacular explosion.
It’s stormy up there! (click photo to enlarge)
The radiation is hitting us today, luckily a glancing blow. Northern Canada, in particular, should get a stunning aurora show around midnight tonight.
From NASA; they have a video clip too.
Yes…the video of that was great,…
so are we moments away from a EM pulse…?
I am unplugging my can opener as a precaution…
OK…teusday…missed that.But I read that some of the effects reach us today….
(? maybe the EMP is 7 minutes…?)
Such activity is frequently discussed here;
http://www.spaceweather.com/
That eye needs some Visine.
Glad the earth actually isn’t where you put it in that second photo.
That’s a fairly big explosion.
You said it is lucky it is a glancing blow, what does that mean? What would a proper, full frontal hit do?
It might break the toy shops online…. A solar tsunami in the Matrix…
Speculation abounds on the potential impact on the power grid and various communication networks. The most extreme suggest the destruction of non-hardened electronics, and a ten-year recovery period. That’s a bit harsh.
Here is the wikipedia description:
"the shock wave of the traveling mass of Solar Energetic Particles causes a geomagnetic storm that may disrupt the Earth’s magnetosphere, compressing it on the day side and extending the night-side magnetic tail. When the magnetosphere reconnects on the nightside, it releases power on the order of terawatt scale, which is directed back toward the Earth’s upper atmosphere.
This process can cause particularly strong auroras in large regions around Earth’s magnetic poles. Coronal mass ejections, along with solar flares of other origin, can disrupt radio transmissions and cause damage to satellites and electrical transmission line facilities, resulting in potentially massive and long-lasting power outages.
Humans in space or at high altitudes, for example, in airplanes, risk exposure to intense radiation. Short-term damage might include skin irritation. Long-term consequences might include an increased risk of developing skin cancer."
And to that last point, here is a normal day in a plane vs. being near the nuclear plant disaster in Japan (base exposure, not ingested particles). Data from my friend’s recent trip
Thanks for the detailed response. So, it ranges from really bad to an impressive light show?
Is this something that governments plan for? It seems like it could happen with out much warning.
[http://www.flickr.com/photos/brokentoyshop]
Large Auroral events can have an effect on large scale power grids where the large, but spread out, electric fields caused by the accelerated electrojet can induce large scale currents. On the scale of personal electronics or even large city power distribution networks the effects are slight.
Warning wise we have about four days between a coronal mass ejection (CME) and magnetospheric impact with a formidable array of observatories measuring and watching (SOHO, GOES, STEREO, GBO’s, etc…)
The accelerated ions that stream in at the poles create an impressive light show but do not have enough energy to reach the ground. Even very intense events only make it to 80km which is still, roughly, seven times the cruising altitude of that Tokyo-SFO flight (above).
But is there not an almost immediate pulse of cosmic rays..gamma rays,UV etc..?
On a gloomier note…I think inducing an EMF pulse with low orbit nuclear weapons has always been "Step 1" of the Doomsday plan.
So shielding against EMP is pretty well studied I am sure..
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electromagnetic_pulse#Post.E2.80.93…
And more specifically;
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starfish_Prime
[http://www.flickr.com/photos/daveh56]
Sure but its just a short burst. Literally the length of time it takes for the flare to occur.
A post today on solar flares
http://www.flickr.com/photos/gsfc/5856929799/in/contacts/
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