Strongest Solar Storm Since 2003, Flights Rerouted

The strongest solar storm since 2003 started last Monday – a wave of charged particles from an intense solar flare eruption is now raising alerts about airline flights and satellite operations. The solar flares did not make a direct hit on the Earth, but several flights were rerouted last week and scientists are not sure if there will be more to come.

“The chance for re-intensification is still possible because this active spot on the sun that created the initial havoc could go off again.”

Harlan Spence

The storm began when a powerful solar flare erupted on the sun Monday, blasting a stream of charged particles toward our planet. This electromagnetic burst — called a coronal mass ejection, or CME — started hitting Earth somewhere around 10 a.m. ET Tuesday, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Space Weather Prediction Center.

Experts at the center says that solar radiation levels were at their highest point since the Halloween storms of 2003.

Earlier estimates ranked the storm as the strongest since 2005 in terms of solar radiation, but Terry Onsager, a physicist at the Space Weather Prediction Center, said that when the wave of charged particles arrived, “that took it from below the 2005 event to above the 2005 event,” msnbc.com reports.

Bill Murtagh, the center’s program coordinator, said that the outburst was forcing airlines to change routes for some of their scheduled flights. “Most of the major airlines flying polar [routes], or even some non-polar, high-altitude routes, have taken action to mitigate the effect of this storm,” he says.

Airline Alert

Delta Air Lines reported that it altered routes for “a handful” of flights, and that the changes added about 15 minutes to travel times.

Delta spokesman Anthony Black told Reuters that solar activity “can impact your ability to communicate … so basically, the polar routes are being flown further south than normal.”

United Airlines says one flight was diverted on Monday, while American Airlines says it has seen no operational impact from the storm so far but was monitoring the situation.

As powerful as it is, the storm should have no effect on daily life for most people, msnbc.com writes.

No Direct Hit

When a coronal mass ejection hits Earth, it can trigger potentially harmful geomagnetic storms as the charged particles shower down the planet’s magnetic field lines.

This can amp up normal displays of Earth’s auroras (also known as the northern and southern lights), but a strong CME aimed directly at Earth can also cause disruptions to satellites in orbit, as well as power grids and communications infrastructures on the ground.

Monday’s solar flare set off an extremely fast-moving CME, but the ejected cloud of plasma and charged particles was not directly aimed at Earth and hit the planet at an angle instead.

This glancing blow would likely lessen any impacts on Earth,

“Earth’s magnetic field served as a shield, and pretty much shielded the radiation so that it doesn’t penetrate that deep,” Yihua Zheng, a lead researcher at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center says.

“It’s like a car collision: head-on or off to the side. A CME is like that too. For this one, if it was a direct hit, Earth would receive a much stronger impact. This one was on an angle — toward higher latitudes and a little off the ecliptic — otherwise it would be a much stronger impact.”

Several NASA satellites, including the Solar Dynamics Observatory, the Solar Heliospheric Observatory and the STEREO spacecraft, observed the massive sun storm.

Data from these spacecraft were combined to help scientists create models to calculate when and where the CME was going to hit Earth.

“A CME is kind of like a space hurricane,” Zheng says. “You have to predict how it will form and evolve. From the models, we can see which spacecraft will be in its path, and what will be impacted.”

At the Space Weather Center, scientists reported that the CME began interacting with Earth’s magnetic field at 9:31 a.m. ET. “We predicted it would arrive at 9:18 a.m., and in reality, it arrived at 9:31 a.m., so ours has a 13-minute error,” Zheng adds. “Usually for this kind of model, the average error is seven hours, so this is the best case.”

Subside or Intensify?

At NOAA’s Space Weather Prediction Center they say the level of solar radiation should gradually subside — unless the sun unleashes another big coronal mass ejection. “The expectation is that it will weaken and that it will decay over the next couple of days,” NOAA representatives told msnbc.com.

The University of New Hampshire’s astrophysicist Harlan Spence says ”the chance for re-intensification is still possible because this active spot on the sun that created the initial havoc could go off again.”

The solar flare associated with this week’s storm was estimated to be an M9-class eruption, which placed it teetering on the edge of being an X-class flare, the most powerful type of solar storm. M-class sun storms are powerful but midrange, while C-class flares are weaker.

The flare erupted from sunspot 1402, a region near the meridian of the sun that has been active for a while now, according to NASA.

The powerful solar storm could be signaling that the sun is waking up after an extended period of relative dormancy.

The sun’s activity waxes and wanes on an 11-year cycle.

The star is currently in the midst of Solar Cycle 24, and activity is expected to continue ramping up toward the solar maximum in 2013.

Related by econoTwist’s:

 

• Solar Activity Heats Up, Sunspots Return
• Expert: Sun Storm To Hit With Force Of 100 million H-Bombs
• Siberian Shaman: 2012 Solar Storms Will Trigger Collapse Of The West
• NASA Prepares For Impact – Nasty Space Weather Ahead
• The Sun Is Speaking!
• NASA Discover New Form Of Space Weather; Has Power Of Earthquake
• When Will God Destroy Our Money?
• The Earth: A Danger Zone

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NASA To Launch New Investigations Of The Sun

NASA has begun development of a mission to visit and study the sun closer than ever before. The unprecedented project, named Solar Probe Plus, is slated to launch no later than 2018. A small car-sized spacecraft will plunge directly into the sun’s atmosphere approximately four million miles from our star’s surface.

“For the very first time, we’ll be able to touch, taste and smell our sun.”

Lika Guhathakurta

As the spacecraft approaches the sun, its revolutionary carbon-composite heat shield must withstand temperatures exceeding 2550 degrees Fahrenheit and blasts of intense radiation. The spacecraft will have an up close and personal view of the sun enabling scientists to better understand, characterize and forecast the radiation environment for future space explorers.

It will explore a region no other spacecraft ever has encountered. NASA has selected five science investigations that will unlock the sun’s biggest mysteries, according to sciencedaily.com.

“The experiments selected for Solar Probe Plus are specifically designed to solve two key questions of solar physics — why is the sun’s outer atmosphere so much hotter than the sun’s visible surface and what propels the solar wind that affects Earth and our solar system? “ says Dick Fisher, director of NASA’s Heliophysics Division in Washington.

“We’ve been struggling with these questions for decades and this mission should finally provide those answers.”

NASA invited researchers in 2009 to submit science proposals. Thirteen were reviewed by a panel of NASA and outside scientists.

The total dollar amount for the five selected investigations is approximately $180 million for preliminary analysis, design, development and tests.

The selected proposals are:

• Solar Wind Electrons Alphas and Protons Investigation: principal investigator, Justin C. Kasper, Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory in Cambridge, Mass. This investigation will specifically count the most abundant particles in the solar wind — electrons, protons and helium ions — and measure their properties. The investigation also is designed to catch some of the particles for direct analysis.
• Wide-field Imager: principal investigator, Russell Howard, Naval Research Laboratory in Washington. This telescope will make 3-D images of the sun’s corona, or atmosphere. The experiment will also provide 3-D images of solar wind and shocks as they approach and pass the spacecraft. This investigation complements instruments on the spacecraft providing direct measurements by imaging the plasma the other instruments sample.
• Fields Experiment: principal investigator, Stuart Bale, University of California Space Sciences Laboratory in Berkeley, Calif. This investigation will make direct measurements of electric and magnetic fields, radio emissions, and shock waves that course through the sun’s atmospheric plasma. The experiment also serves as a giant dust detector, registering voltage signatures when specks of space dust hit the spacecraft’s antenna.
• Integrated Science Investigation of the Sun: principal investigator, David McComas of the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio. This investigation consists of two instruments that will monitor electrons, protons and ions that are accelerated to high energies in the sun’s atmosphere.
• Heliospheric Origins with Solar Probe Plus: principal investigator, Marco Velli of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. Velli is the mission’s observatory scientist, responsible for serving as a senior scientist on the science working group. He will provide an independent assessment of scientific performance and act as a community advocate for the mission.

“This project allows humanity’s ingenuity to go where no spacecraft has ever gone before,” says Lika Guhathakurta, Solar Probe Plus program scientist at NASA Headquarters, in Washington.

“For the very first time, we’ll be able to touch, taste and smell our sun.”

The Solar Probe Plus mission is part of NASA’s Living with a Star Program.

The program is designed to understand aspects of the sun and Earth’s space environment that affect life and society, and is managed by NASA’S Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., with oversight from NASA’s Science Mission Directorate‘s Heliophysics Division.

The Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Md., is responsible for formulating, implementing and operating the Solar Probe Mission.

For more information about the Solar Probe Plus mission, visit: http://solarprobe.gsfc.nasa.gov/

Related by the Econotwist:

Why The Nervousness In Telecoms?

Expert: Sun Storm To Hit With Force Of 100 million H-Bombs

The Sun Is Speaking!

NASA Discover New Form Of Space Weather; Has Power Of Earthquake

NASA: Solar Tsunami To Hit Earth, Tuesday

Siberian Shaman: 2012 Solar Storms Will Trigger Collapse Of The West

NASA Prepares For Impact – Nasty Space Weather Ahead

When Will God Destroy Our Money?

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NASA Discover New Form Of Space Weather With Power Of Earthquake

This ought to be classified as extraordinary: NASA have recently discovered a – until now – unknown form of space weather that can packs the punch of an earthquake, and plays a key role in sparking bright Northern Lights. They call it  “the spacequake.”

“The total energy in a spacequake can rival that of a magnitude 5 or 6 earthquake.”

Evgeny Panov

It rumbles without sound, auroras rain down and the Earth’s magnetic fields starts to shake. This is how NASA Sciense News describes the new form of space weather, recently discovered by the research centers fleet of five THEMIS spacecrafts.  The “spacequake” is a temblor in Earth’s magnetic field. It is felt most strongly in Earth orbit, but the effects can reach all the way down to the surface of Earth itself.

“Magnetic reverberations have been detected at ground stations all around the globe, much like seismic detectors measure a large earthquake,” THEMIS principal investigator, Vassilis Angelopoulos of UCLA, says on the NASA Science News website.

It’s an apt analogy because “the total energy in a spacequake can rival that of a magnitude 5 or 6 earthquake,” according to Evgeny Panov of the Space Research Institute in Austria.

Panov is first author of a paper reporting the results in the April 2010 issue of Geophysical Research Letters (GRL).

In 2007, THEMIS discovered the precursors of spacequakes.

A Magnetic Tail Event

The action begins in Earth’s magnetic tail, which is stretched out like a windsock by the million mph solar wind.

Sometimes the tail can become so stretched and tension-filled, it snaps back like an over-torqued rubber band.

Solar wind plasma trapped in the tail then hurtles toward Earth.

On more than one occasion, the five THEMIS spacecraft were in the line of fire when these “plasma jets” swept by.

Clearly, the jets were going to hit Earth. But what would happen then? The fleet moved closer to the planet to find out:

“Now we know,” says THEMIS project scientist David Sibeck of the Goddard Space Flight Center.

“Plasma jets trigger spacequakes.”

Gas Balls Bouncing

According to THEMIS, the jets crash into the geomagnetic field some 30,000 km above Earth’s equator.

The impact sets off a rebounding process, in which the incoming plasma actually bounces up and down on the reverberating magnetic field. Researchers call it “repetitive flow rebuffing.” It’s akin to a tennis ball bouncing up and down on a carpeted floor.

The first bounce is a big one, followed by bounces of decreasing amplitude as energy is dissipated in the carpet.

“We’ve long suspected that something like this was happening,” says Sibeck. “By observing the process in situ, however, THEMIS has discovered something new and surprising,” he adds.

The surprise is plasma vortices, huge whirls of magnetized gas as wide as Earth itself, spinning on the verge of the quaking magnetic field.

During a spacequake, Earth's magnetic field shakes in a way that is analogous to the shaking of the ground during an earthquake. Image credit: Evgeny Panov, Space Research Institute of Austria.

A Noticeable Effect

“When plasma jets hit the inner magnetosphere, vortices with opposite sense of rotation appear and reappear on either side of the plasma jet,” Rumi Nakamura of the Space Research Institute in Austria, a co-author of the study, explains.

“We believe the vortices can generate substantial electrical currents in the near-Earth environment.”

Acting together, vortices and spacequakes could have a noticeable effect on Earth.

The tails of vortices may funnel particles into Earth’s atmosphere, sparking auroras and making waves of ionization that disturb radio communications and GPS.

By tugging on surface magnetic fields, spacequakes generate currents in the very ground we walk on.

Ground current surges can have profound consequences, in extreme cases bringing down power grids over a wide area.

After THEMIS discovered the jets and quakes, Joachim Birn of the Los Alamos National Lab in New Mexico conducted a computer simulation of the rebounding process.

Lo and behold, vortices appeared in good accord with THEMIS measurements.

Moreover, the simulations suggest that the rebounding process can be seen from Earth’s surface in the form of ripples and whirls in auroral displays. Ground stations report just such a phenomenon.

“It’s a complicated process, but it all fits together,” says Sibeck.

A THEMIS map of plasma flows during a spacequake. The axes are labeled in Earth radii, so each swirl is about the size of Earth.

A Colonial Mass Put Option?

Personally I can’t help wonder what kind of effect this space-weather-thing will have on the weather derivatives market?

Will we soon be able to buy a colonial mass put option? With a strike magnitude of 5? Expiration date; December 31th 2012?

I’m willing to bet that somewhere, some quant is working on a formula right now…

Something In The Air Tonight

Right now a thunderstorm with heavy lightning is passing over Oslo, Norway, while the Earth’s magnetic field is still reverberating from the CME impact of August 3rd, which sparked auroras as far south as Wisconsin and Iowa in the United States.

Analysts believe a second CME is not far behind it, due to arrive on today, August 5th, according to spaceweather.com.

A second impact could re-energize the fading geomagnetic storm and spark a new round of Northern Lights.

At the height of the August 3rd display “the whole sky over northern Quebec filled with green and purple,” says photographer Michel Tournay.

“I couldn’t decide where to point my camera!”

Fortunately, he had a wide-angle lens… Have a look at this:

At Ringsaker, outside Oslo in Norway, the auroras were so bright “we could see them through clouds, moonlight and midnight sunlight,” Ragnar Johnskås says.

“It was a lovely show,” he adds.

Indeed it was.

Related by the Econotwist:

NASA: Solar Tsunami To Hit Earth, Tuesday

Siberian Shaman: 2012 Solar Storms Will Trigger Collapse Of The West

The Earth: A Danger Zone

NASA Prepares For Impact – Nasty Space Weather Ahead

When Will God Destroy Our Money?

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