MessageToEagle.com - The subject of monstrous solar flares and the the CMEs (coronal mass ejections) returns
over and over again in news worldwide.
An enormous sunspot unleashed a powerful solar flare late Wednesday (May 16), triggering a radiation
storm intense enough to interfere with some satellites orbiting Earth, according to space weather experts.
However, in terms of power grids and satellites, it’s not the flares that the experts have to worry about, but the CMEs.
There is a risk that one day, they can wipe out all of our electronic civilization.
Solar storms can disrupt communication, and navigational equipment, damage satellites, and even cause blackouts
by damaging power plants and electrical grid components.
They can also bring additional radiation around the north and south poles; and this, in turn forces airlines
to reroute their flights.
The Sun's abnormal behavior is a cause for concern even we all know that activity near the Sun's surface rises and
falls through an 11-year cycle that is due to peak in 2013 or 2014.
Some solar flares result in CMEs (coronal mass ejections), a huge bubble of charged particles rushing towards
Earth at tremendous speeds up to millions of kilometres per hour.
Did you know that an average solar flare or CME releases, only in two hours (!), enough energy to power the
United States for 10,000 years.
Dramatic flare: hot gas erupts 62,000 miles high during a July 2000 solar storm. (Photo: NASA)
It's comforting that our planet's magnetic field protects it from the constant attacks of high-energy particles
from the Sun and elsewhere as well.
However, the solar storms that mark the arrival of CMEs can cause significant problems by affecting the Earth's
surface and causing current spikes in power grids or disrupting navigation devices.
The problem is that even up to the last minute, it is unclear how big these effects on Earth can be!
The reason is that it depends on the magnetic alignment of the material within the coronal mass ejection, which,
in turn - is very difficult to predict.
For now, we can still sufficiently protect us but sometimes bad things happen.
In 1989 a solar storm affected the Salem Pressurized Water Reactor, PWR in New Jersey.
The 1,160 MWe Salem-1 nuclear power plant is located on an artificial island at the
mouth of the Delaware River along with two other nuclear units.
The solar storm induced a large current into the PJM 500-kV transmission system, which damaged the Salem Unit 1
step-up transformer, resulting in a large melted mass of copper and copper shot.
The transformer's winding insulation confined the damage; the plant operators discovered the damage after the storm.
The transformer had to be replaced at a cost of millions of dollars. Unfortunately, storms 10 times worse than the
1989 event can occur.
The most damaging emissions from solar storms travel slowly enough to be detected by sun-watching satellites,
well before the particles strike the Earth's atmosphere, giving approximately 20 hours of warning time to take
the indispensable precautions.
For example, power companies can protect valuable transformers by taking them offline before the storm strikes.
That would produce local blackouts, but they would not last for long.
So, we can contemplate the benign effects like beautiful auroras but at the same time we should fear the
consequences of the sun's solar flares interfering with our high-tech.
Senior space agency scientists believe the Earth will be hit with unprecedented levels of magnetic energy
from solar flares in 2012 and around 2013, so think about it!
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MessageToEagle.com - The subject of monstrous solar flares and the the CMEs (coronal mass ejections) returns
over and over again in news worldwide.
Are you curious about the Sun? You now have an excellent chance to learn everything you ever wanted, and even more about our Sun and all its mysteries.
Five new videos called "Mysteries of the Sun" have been just released by NASA.
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One day in the fall of 2011, Neil Sheeley, a solar scientist at the Naval Research Laboratory in Washington, D.C., did what he always does –
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But on this day he saw something he'd never noticed before: a pattern of cells with bright centers and dark boundaries occurring in the sun's atmosphere, the corona...
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Only a handful of such young supernova remnants are known.
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