- 3145 - SOLAR WIND - hitting the Earth? A Solar Wind traveling 1,118,468 mph due to hit Earth Sunday, May 2, 2021. This solar wind is sourced from the middle, darker parts of the Sun discovered by the GOES-16 weather satellite and is heading to Earth this weekend.
- ----------------------- 3145 - SOLAR WIND - hitting the Earth?
- Just days earlier the Earth was hit by a coronal mass ejection (CME), and it appears another blast of solar wind is due to impact Earth on this Sunday; it is traveling 1,118,468 mph towards the planet.
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- A minor G1-class Geomagnetic Storm is arriving late Saturday into much of Sunday as the solar wind interacts with the Earth’s magnetic field. While the National Weather Service’s Space Weather Prediction Center has not issued any advisory for this solar wind yet, a watch or warning could be posted for this event.
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- In the scheme of geomagnetic storms, a G1-class is considered the weakest. While there could be some weak power grid fluctuations especially at northern latitudes, this type of event impacts satellites that orbit Earth in space.
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- A G1 event could also trigger a display of the Northern Lights or aurora as far south as Michigan and Maine.
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- Scientists are busy studying these clues coming from the Sun which may indicate surging solar activity; 2021 is expected to feature more events than 2020, with peak sunspot activity now projected to occur in 2025. According to the National Weather Service, a recent sunspot group on the Sun exploded the largest solar flare in three years.
Since January, activity on the sun has steadily increased, showing that we are moving into a new solar cycle.
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- In September, 2020, the Solar Cycle Prediction Panel (SCPP) declared that the solar minimum between outgoing Solar Cycle 24 and incoming Solar Cycle 25 had occurred on December 19, 2019.
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- The Solar Cycle 24 was average in length, at 11 years, and had the 4th-smallest intensity since regular record keeping began with Solar Cycle 1 in 1755. It was also the weakest cycle in 100 years. Solar maximum occurred in April 2014 with sunspots peaking at 114 for the solar cycle, well below average, which is 179.
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- The Solar Cycle 25 that we have now will break the trend of weakening solar activity seen over the past four cycles. Scientists predict the decline in solar cycle amplitude, seen from cycles 21 through 24, has come to an end. Violent eruptions from the Sun can occur at any time in this new cycle, Solar Cycle 25.
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- Solar cycle prediction gives a rough idea of the frequency of space weather storms of all types, from radio blackouts to geomagnetic storms and solar radiation storms. It is used by many industries to gauge the potential impact of space weather in the coming years.
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- “Aurora“, also known in the Northern Hemisphere as "Northern Lights", is typically associated with clear, cold winter nights at northern latitudes. Solar flares are capable of producing strong x-rays that degrade or block high-frequency radio waves used for radio communication.
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- A “coronal mass ejection” (CME) is a significant release of plasma from the solar corona, often following solar flares in solar wind. These huge explosions of plasma originate from highly twisted magnetic field structures on the Sun. When these explosions occur from active sunspot regions on the Sun, it is not uncommon to see them associated with large solar flares.
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- Some fast CMEs can reach the Earth in little as 14 hours, while others may take several days. The first sign of a CME hitting the Earth environment is the plasma density jump due to the shock wave’s passage.
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- Forecasters use what is known as a coronagraph, which blocks the extremely bright disk of the Sun, so they are able to determine the CME’s size, speed, direction and density.
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- Beyond illuminating night skies with colorful aurora, especially at high latitudes, and interfering with radio communication, they can also prevent electronics and electrical systems from working at all. Such a solar blast could prove to be deadly when the electronics in a plane, a train, an automobile, or boat fail, could be life-threatening if electronics and electricity in a hospital fails, and could catastrophically disruptive to life if electrical generation plants and electrical wires that carry electricity through a grid fail.
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- On September 1-2 in 1859, a very powerful geomagnetic storm struck Earth during Solar Cycle 10. A CME hit the Earth and induced the largest geomagnetic storm on record. The storm was so intense it created extremely bright, vivid aurora throughout the planet: people in California thought the sun rose early, people in the northeastern U.S. could read a newspaper at night from the aurora’s bright light, and people as far south as Hawaii and south-central Mexico could see the aurora in the sky.
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- The event severely damaged the limited electrical and communication lines that existed at that time; telegraph systems around the world failed, with some telegraph operators reporting they received electric shocks. If the Carrington event happened in modern times, damages in the U.S. could exceed $2.6 trillion, roughly 15% of the nation’s annual GDP.
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- The solar wind streams plasma and particles from the sun out into space. Though the wind is constant, its properties aren't.
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- The corona, the sun's outer layer, reaches temperatures of up to 2 million degrees Fahrenheit. At this level, the sun's gravity can't hold on to the rapidly moving particles, and they stream away from the star.
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- The sun's activity shifts over the course of its 11-year cycle, with sun spot numbers, radiation levels, and ejected material changing over time. These alterations affect the properties of the solar wind, including its magnetic field, velocity, temperature and density. The wind also differs based on where on the sun it comes from and how quickly that portion is rotating.
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- The velocity of the solar wind is higher over coronal holes, reaching speeds of up to 500 miles per second (1.800,000 miles per hour).
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- The temperature and density over coronal holes are low, and the magnetic field is weak, so the field lines are open to space. These holes occur at the poles and low latitudes, reaching their largest when activity on the sun is at its minimum. Temperatures in the fast wind can reach up to 1 million degrees F .
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- The sun and its atmosphere are made up of plasma, a mix of positively and negatively charged particles at extremely high temperatures. But as the material leaves the sun, carried by solar wind, it becomes more gas-like.
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- As you go farther from the sun, the magnetic field strength drops faster than the pressure of the material does. Eventually, the material starts to act more like a gas, and less like a magnetically structured plasma.
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- As the wind travels off the sun, it carries charged particles and magnetic clouds. Emitted in all directions, some of the solar wind is constantly buffeting our planet, with interesting effects.
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- If the material carried by the solar wind reached a planet's surface, its radiation would do severe damage to any life that might exist. Earth's magnetic field serves as a shield, redirecting the material around the planet so that it streams beyond it. The force of the wind stretches out the magnetic field so that it is smooshed inward on the sun-side and stretched out on the night side.
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- Solar ejections are the most powerful drivers of the sun-Earth connection. Despite their importance, scientists don't fully understand the origin and evolution of CMEs, nor their structure or extent in interplanetary space.
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- When the solar wind carries CMEs and other powerful bursts of radiation into a planet's magnetic field, it can cause the magnetic field on the back side to press together, a process known as magnetic reconnection. Charged particles then stream back toward the planet's magnetic poles, causing beautiful displays known as the aurora borealis in the upper atmosphere.
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- Though some bodies are shielded by a magnetic field, others lack their protection. Earth's moon has nothing to protect it, so takes the full brunt. Mercury, the closest planet, has a magnetic field that shields it from the regular standard wind, but it takes the full force of more powerful outbursts.
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- When the high- and low-speed streams interact with one another, they create dense regions known as co-rotating interaction regions (CIRs) that trigger geomagnetic storms when they interact with Earth's atmosphere.
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- The solar wind and the charged particles it carries can affect Earth's satellites and Global Positioning Systems (GPS). Powerful bursts can damage satellites, or can push GPS signals to be off by tens of meters.
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- The solar wind ruffles all of the planets in the solar system. NASA's New Horizons mission continued to detect it as it traveled between Uranus and Pluto.
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- Speed and density average together as the solar wind moves out, but the wind is still being heated by compression as it travels, so you can see evidence of the sun's rotation pattern in the temperature even in the outer solar system.
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- We've known about the solar wind since the 1950s, but despite its extensive effects on Earth and on astronauts, scientists still don't know how the it evolves. Several missions over the last few decades have sought to explain this mystery.
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- Launched on Oct. 6, 1990, NASA's Ulysses mission studied the sun at various latitudes. It measured the various properties of the solar wind over the course of more than a dozen years.
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- The “Advanced Composition Explorer” (ACE) satellite orbits at one of the special points between Earth and the sun known as the Lagrange point. In this area, gravity from the sun and the planet pull equally, keeping the satellite in a stable orbit. Launched in 1997, ACE measures the solar wind and provides real-time measurements of the constant flow of particles.
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- NASA's twin spacecraft, STEREO-A and STEREO-B study the sun's edge to see how the solar wind is born. Launched in October 2006, STEREO has provided a unique and revolutionary view of the sun-Earth system.
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- A new mission hopes to shine light on the sun and its solar wind. NASA's “Parker Solar Probe“, launched in the summer of 2018, aims to "touch the sun." After several years of closely orbiting the star, the probe will dip into the corona for the first time, using a combination of imaging and measurements to revolutionize understanding of the corona and increase understanding of the origin and evolution of the solar wind.
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- Parker Solar Probe is going to answer questions about solar physics that we've puzzled over for more than six decades. It's a spacecraft loaded with technological breakthroughs that will solve many of the largest mysteries about our star, including finding out why the sun's corona is so much hotter than its surface.
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-------------------------------- Other Reviews available:
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- 2981 - SUN - sunsets are beautiful, why?? With the larger distance of atmosphere to cover, the blue light mostly bounces back out into space. But the red, orange and yellow light have longer wavelengths. This means they can scatter for longer and travel through more of the atmosphere to reach us.
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- 2652 - PARKER SOLAR PROBE - new discoveries about our sun? - A mission to “touch” the Sun. NASA launched the probe in August 2018, and it has already made a few laps around the Sun. It has brought new insights into the Sun's outer atmosphere, as well as uncovered surprising facts about the solar wind and the Sun's magnetic fields.
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- 2618 - SUN - learning closer than ever? The Solar Orbiter spacecraft, a collaboration between the European Space Agency and NASA, launched February 9, 2020. On January 29, NASA's Parker Solar Probe made its closest swing pass the sun to date, a record it will continue to break until 2025. We have been studying the sun for a thousand years. Learning is closer that ever!
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- 2613 - SUNSPOTS - The Sun is supposed to follow 11-year cycles of minimum and maximum activity that should trace set patterns pretty much like clockwork, give or take weaker and stronger sunspot patterns, flares, and periods of coronal mass ejections. That is what I learned in High School. So, what’s going on?
- 2599 - SUN - End of Humanity? The Sun is 4.6 billion years old. What happens to the Sun when it runs out of hydrogen for fusion energy? It will live another 5 billion years then its hydrogen will have mostly burned off and the core of the Sun will be solid helium. It will continue burning but it will be twice as hot. Humanity will need to have found another home.
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- 2598 - SUN - from our latest satellites? A new spacecraft is journeying to the Sun to snap the first pictures of the Sun's north and south poles. Now, we'll be able to look down on the Sun from above. The Sun plays a central role in shaping space around us. Its massive magnetic field stretches far beyond Pluto, paving a superhighway for charged solar particles known as the solar wind.
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- 2592 - SUN - This review discusses how the stars and the Sun formed the elements in the Periodic Table. You will learn how elements are identified in the stars. Discoveries are made in the stars that are later reproduced in the laboratories on Earth. Discoveries of the abundance of elements in the Sun tell astronomers about the evolution of the Universe.
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- 2489 - SUN - facts you won’t believe? - The Sun is HOT but not so HOT. In fact, your body heat is hotter than the Sun. What? You’re kidding? Right? What you will learn from this review is that the Sun is not so hot but it is so big.
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- 2544 - SUN - and stars at our galactic center? The Milky Way's early life was the fastest growth period for nuclear disk at the center of our galaxy. During our galaxy's first 5 billion years, over 80% of the galaxy's stars were born, but then it dipped into a "quiescent" state, where star formation dropped away. A huge increase in activity occurred just 1 billion years ago, when approximately 5% of the center's stellar mass suddenly burst to life.
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- 2542 - SUN - our closest star.? It is an average star compared with the population of stars in our Universe. We can learn a lot about stars by studying our Sun, which is only 93,000,000 miles away. Sun light takes just 8.3 minutes to reach us from the surface of the Sun.
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- 2540 - SUN POWER - How much reaches your backyard? The fusion energy that heats my yard comes from 0.000000000115 pounds of hydrogen mass converted to energy every second. One hydrogen atom, a proton, has a mass of 1.67*10^-27 kilograms. My yard uses 31,000,000,000,000,000 hydrogen atoms every second in order to grow grass and a vegetable garden.
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- 2525 - SUN - new discoveries with the solar probe. The Parker Solar Probe launched in August 2018 and made its first solar flyby in November. Over its seven-year mission, the probe will buzz by the sun 24 times, swinging lower on each pass until it finally comes within four million miles of the sun’s surface.
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- 2488 - SUN - facts you won’t believe? - The Sun is HOT but not so HOT. In fact, your body heat is hotter than the Sun. What? You’re kidding? Right? What you will learn from this review is that the Sun is not so hot but it is so big.
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- 2169 - The Universe is 13.8 billion years old. Our sun is 5 billion years old. Our sun must be a second or third generation star. It is composed of the residue of 2 or 3 earlier supernovae explosions from earlier stars that died spreading their elements all over the cosmos. The more we learn about our sun the more we will know about the other stars in the Universe.
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- 2168 - SUN - Parker Solar Probe. The mission's objectives include tracing the flow of energy that heats and accelerates the sun's corona and solar wind, determining the structure and dynamics of the plasma and magnetic fields at the sources of the solar wind and explore mechanisms that accelerate and transport energetic particles.
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- May 2, 2021 SOLAR WIND - hitting the Earth? 3145
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--------------------- --- Sunday, May 2, 2021 ---------------------------
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