Violent Solar Outburst Hits Earth, Moon, And Mars in Scientific First

Science Alert  August 7, 2023 On 28 October 2021, solar eruptions caused intense and long-lasting solar energetic particle (SEP) flux enhancements observed by spacecraft located over a wide longitudinal range in the heliosphere. SEPs arriving at Earth caused the 73rd ground level enhancement (GLE) event recorded by ground-based neutron monitors. This is also the first GLE event seen on the surface of three planetary bodies, Earth, Moon, and Mars, by particle and radiation detectors as shown in this study. An international team of researchers (China, Germany, Bulgaria, USA – Southwest Research Institute, Boulder, CO, industry, University of New Hampshire) derived […]

New method predicts ‘stealth’ solar storms before they wreak geomagnetic havoc on Earth

Phys.org July 20, 2021 Unlike coronal mass ejections which typically show up clearly on the Sun as dimming or brightening, the ‘stealth CMEs’ often originate at higher altitudes in the Sun’s corona, in regions with weaker magnetic fields and they are usually only visible on coronagraphs designed to reveal the corona. An international team of researchers (USA – UC Berkeley, industry, University of Maryland, NASA, Belgium, Romania, UK, India, Russia) has shown that many stealth CMEs can be detected in time if current analysis methods for remote sensing are adapted. They compared remote sensing images of the Sun with the […]

Our Sun Has Entered a New Cycle, And It Could Be One of The Strongest Ever Recorded

Science Alert  December 8, 2020 According to an international team of researchers (USA – NCAR, University of Maryland, UK) over the course of about 20 years or so, flickers of extreme ultraviolet light called coronal bright points seem to move from the poles towards the equator, meeting in the middle and cancelling out, referred to as terminator. At this point the new cycle begins. From the 270-year long observational record of terminator events, they see that the longer the time between terminators, the weaker the next cycle and conversely, the shorter the time between terminators, the stronger the next solar […]

Here Are the U.S. Regions Most Vulnerable to Solar Storms

IEEE Spectrum  April 24, 2020 A once‐per‐century geoelectric hazard map is created for the U.S. high‐voltage power grid. A statistical extrapolation from 31 years of magnetic field measurements is made by identifying 84 geomagnetic storms. With these data, we estimate once‐per‐century geoelectric fields at the magnetotelluric survey sites and calculate the theoretical voltages within transmission lines in the U.S. power grid. Once‐per‐century geoelectric field strengths span more than 3 orders of magnitude from a minimum of 0.02 V/km at a site in Idaho to a maximum of 27.2 V/km at a site in Maine. A team of researchers in at […]

NASA rockets study why tech goes haywire near poles

Phys.org  November 26, 2019 Most of Earth is shielded from the solar wind but right near the poles the magnetic field becomes a funnel, known as cusp, where the solar wind can get all the way down to the atmosphere disrupting satellites and radio and GPS signals. Beginning Nov. 25, 2019, three new NASA-supported missions will launch into the northern polar cusp, aiming to improve the technology affected by it. The three missions are all part of the Grand Challenge Initiative. Cusp is a series of nine sounding rocket missions exploring the polar cusp capturing the strange phenomena inside the […]

Researchers find that the sun’s magnetic field is ten times stronger than previously believed

Phys.org  March 29, 2019 An international team of researchers (UK, Spain, Switzerland, Austria, Slovakia, Sweden, Georgia, Germany) analyzed the solar flare which erupted near the surface of the sun on 10 September 2017. The analysis showed that the coronal magnetic field strengths was as high as 350 Gauss at heights up to 25 Mm above the solar limb. These measurements are substantially higher than several previous estimates and may have considerable implications for our current understanding of the extended solar atmosphere…read more. Open Access TECHNICAL ARTICLE 

Extreme space weather can wreak havoc on Earth—these tools help warn of the dangers ahead

Phys.org  January 23, 2019 Researchers in the UK have developed a system to improve the reliability of systems that predict space weather events by measuring the solar wind from distances further away from Earth than previously possible. In a project called HELCATS, they used a satellite set up to monitor the Sun and Earth from a side view, known as STEREO, to gather data on CMEs (coronal mass ejections) and how they vary in speed, density, and direction throughout a solar cycle. The idea was to exploit the STEREO Heliospheric Imaging data, with observations of over 1000 CMEs from 2007 […]