Elaine Meinel Supkis
This time, Sunspot 930 didn't spit out x-rays but had a bigger corneal event. This coincides with NASA desiring the astronauts making some space walks which would be fatal if an x-ray event were to happen. Since this happened twice already with this particular sunspot, sending astronauts out when this is pointed straight at us is lunacy.
Just this afternoon, it happened again, this deeply agitated sunspot that has already caused a 'tsunami' to surge across the surface of the sun and then shot out x-rays not once but twice, has unleashed another powerful event but this doesn't have the x-ray signature.
It's a biggie!
Imaged by projecting the sun through a 21/2"refractor onto a sheet of white paper and taking a picture with my digital camera. Enhanced with Picture-It and cleaned with Noiseware.
Now it's Paul's and Guillaume Bertrand's turn!
Children, when they see the sea retreating and observe all the sea creatures stranded on the sand, rush forwards to pick them up. Taking childish glee in explosions, many young people think this is all very funny or amazing in a brainless way. It is not.
Very few astronomers tell the truth. My grandfather had no gumption about sugar-coating astronomical realities: he told me, if the sun were to explode or implode, I have 8 minutes warning and then...poof. This meant I couldn't accept the bland statements from astronomers that our sun is 'middle aged.'
We now know it is over 4 billion years old. This fact should sober us. Thinking it is 'young' is a mental trick designed to comfort us rather than alarm us. Assembling geological facts of various sorts had forces us to realize the star we circle isn't 'constant' at all.
On 4 November 2003, the largest solar flare ever recorded exploded from the Sun's surface, sending an intense burst of radiation streaming towards the Earth. Before the storm peaked, x-rays overloaded the detectors on the Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellites (GOES), forcing scientists to estimate the flare's size.Taking a different route, researchers from the University of Otago used radio wave-based measurements of the x-rays' effects on the Earth's upper atmosphere to revise the flare's size from a merely huge X28 to a "whopping" X45, say researchers Neil Thomson, Craig Rodger, and Richard Dowden. X-class flares are major events that can trigger radio blackouts around the world and long-lasting radiation storms in the upper atmosphere that can damage or destroy satellites. The biggest previous solar flares on record were rated X20, on 2 April 2001 and 16 August 1989.
"This makes it more than twice as large as any previously recorded flare, and if the accompanying particle and magnetic storm had been aimed at the Earth, the damage to some satellites and electrical networks could have been considerable," says Thomson. Their calculations show that the flare's x-ray radiation bombarding the atmosphere was equivalent to that of 5,000 Suns, though none of it reached the Earth's surface, the researchers say.
We are supposed to be at the bottom of this peak. It is less than at the peak but it is still very active when contrasted to how it probably was back during the various Ice Ages. I would suggest, when North and South America joined and cut off the Atlantic/Pacific conveyor belt. What this did was amplified the variable star's input into the atmosphere and this meant any swings in generating energy by our local star would cause a cascade of atmospheric and weather-related events that would cause big pendulum swings in world temperatures.
Within just three days of this recent energetic event, it is warm here! My photo above is Berlin, upstate New York in the middle of December! And it feels like and looks like....April. Late April, at that! Morning fog and then a sunny day? Just two weeks ago, it was sort of like winter but as soon as the sun flared, it warmed up. All over the globe. This should be big news but because it conflicts with the global warming news, it is being ignored.
But understanding the sun doesn't mean becoming stupid about our contribution to Global Warming. Finessing the message is what science is all about and to do this, people must learn to absorb all sorts of data. The process means highlighting all these matters, not ignoring them.
&hearts Here is a story from last year about stars spitting out x-rays.
By David McAlary
VOA News
May 13, 2005WASHINGTON - Astronomers say violent solar x-ray outbursts that would scorch Earth today paradoxically could have protected the planet billions of years ago while it was forming. A survey of very young stars by an orbiting NASA observatory finds that many like the Sun produce massive flares that help planets survive destruction during their emergence.
Without a time machine as a tool, astronomers observe other stars like the Sun at various stages of their existence to guess what might have occurred in our solar system's early years or what its future might be like.
&hearts Here is a solar weather website run by NASA:
Geophysical Activity Forecast: The geomagnetic field is expected to reach major to severe storm levels. Activity from the CME observed early on 13 December is expected to impact the geomagnetic field by mid to late UTC on day 1 (14 December) of the forecast period. Major to severe storm conditions are expected to continue early into 15 December. Levels should decrease to unsettled to minor storming by 16 December. The greater than 100 MeV and 10 MeV proton events now in progress are expected to continue for the next 24 to 48 hours.
This story neglects to mention the other side of this tale: stars that are going to go nova also spit out x-rays in ever-greater amounts. The reason we have to ignore this is because we don't want to face any possible facts. And since I grew up figuring out that if stars blow up, our sun can too, I can't sweep all this under some rug or treat it as an unmentionable.
I suspect readers of this will call me names or claim I am sowing hysteria. But I have lectured on the topic of interstellar/intergenerational flight and I always opened my lectures by talking about the limitations of our own sun and why we ought to seek out other star systems for the simple reason is, we must if we don't want to be snuffed.
&hearts This inability to accept reality is a problem with NASA.
Discovery's crew awoke Thursday to a recording of Queen's "Under Pressure," a fitting message from Houston for the two spacewalking astronauts who will be under a tight schedule to get their complicated rewiring tasks done.Astronauts Robert Curbeam and Christer Fuglesang, who performed Discovery's first spacewalk on Tuesday to install a two-ton, $11-million addition, were set to again step out of the space station Thursday, this time to reconfigure the power system controlling one-half of the space station. They'll do that by rewiring connectors from a temporary solar panel to the permanent ones.
Half the station will be powered down during this process, but critical systems, like computers, will be switched to the other side temporarily.
Even though astronomers saw this nasty sunspot developing, NASA had to shoot off the space shuttle and even as the evil eye of the storm circled towards the earth and aimed straight for us, they still thought about the possibility of space walks? They should have been honest in this article and explained how this can't be done safely so long as a sunspot this dire and this large is facing the earth. The fact that this was left out of the article annoys the hell out of me. We shouldn't be treated like babies!
And rewiring the space station during a major x-ray event? HUH???? Um, they pressed the astronauts to do this because they lost time due to the solar storms and the window of further x-ray events is not gone, not at all. But due to the lack of support and the lack of operational shuttles, they have to do it or else.
&hearts Here is a website honestly talking, sort of, about how our sun is a variable star.
You already know that the Sun makes life possible. Its heat and light drive dynamic processes in the Earth system, from climate and ocean currents to photosynthesis. But were you aware that the Sun is a variable star? Or that solar winds stream off its surface and blast through space at more than a million miles per hour? Here's more about the star that's the source of it all.
Twenty years ago, this was verboten. It is still verboten to call the sun 'an OLD star.' But trust me, it is quite ancient. What saved us was not some hypothetical age but OUR DiSTANCE FROM THE BLACK HOLES in the center of the Milky Way. The closer one is, the more likely one will blow up younger is, I think, a law of nature. We are way outside the tidal influences of this large spiral galaxy!
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