Strong solar storm's effects hit Earth
By SETH BORENSTEIN | Associated Press
WASHINGTON (AP) — The sun is bombarding Earth
with radiation from the biggest solar storm in more than six years with more to come from the fast-moving eruption.
The solar flare occurred at
about 11 p.m. EST Sunday and will hit Earth with three different effects at three different times. The biggest issue is radiation, according to the
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Space Weather Prediction Center in Colorado.
The radiation is mostly a concern for satellite
disruptions and astronauts in space. It can cause communication problems for polar-traveling airplanes, said space weather center physicist Doug
Biesecker.
Radiation from Sunday's flare arrived at Earth an hour later and will likely continue through Wednesday. Levels are considered
strong but other storms have been more severe. There are two higher levels of radiation on NOAA's storm scale — severe and extreme —
Biesecker said. Still, this storm is the strongest for radiation since May 2005.
The radiation — in the form of protons — came
flying out of the sun at 93 million miles per hour.
"The whole volume of space between here and Jupiter is just filled with protons and you
just don't get rid of them like that," Biesecker said. That's why the effects will stick around for a couple days.
NASA's flight surgeons
and solar experts examined the solar flare's expected effects and decided that the six astronauts on the International Space Station do not have to
do anything to protect themselves from the radiation, spokesman Rob Navias said.
A solar eruption is followed by a one-two-three punch, said
Antti Pulkkinen, a physicist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland and Catholic University.
First comes electromagnetic radiation,
followed by radiation in the form of protons.
Then, finally the coronal mass ejection — that's the plasma from the sun itself —
hits. Usually that travels at about 1 or 2 million miles per hour, but this storm is particularly speedy and is shooting out at 4 million miles per
hour, Biesecker said.
It's the plasma that causes much of the noticeable problems on Earth, such as electrical grid outages. In 1989, a solar
storm caused a massive blackout in Quebec. It can also pull the northern lights further south.
But this coronal mass ejection seems likely to
be only moderate, with a chance for becoming strong, Biesecker said. The worst of the storm is likely to go north of Earth.
And unlike last
October, when a freak solar storm caused auroras to be seen as far south as Alabama, the northern lights aren't likely to dip too far south this
time, Biesecker said. Parts of New England, upstate New York, northern Michigan, Montana and the Pacific Northwest could see an aurora but not until
Tuesday evening, he said.
For the past several years the sun had been quiet, almost too quiet. Part of that was the normal calm part of the
sun's 11-year cycle of activity. Last year, scientists started to speculate that the sun was going into an unusually quiet cycle that seems to happen
maybe once a century or so.
Now that super-quiet cycle doesn't seem as likely, Biesecker said.
Scientists watching the sun with a new
NASA satellite launched in 2010 — during the sun's quiet period — are excited.
"We haven't had anything like this for a number
of years," Pulkkinen said. "It's kind of special."
___
NOAA's Space Weather Prediction Center:
http://www.swpc.noaa.gov/
NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory: http://sdo.gsfc.nasa.gov/
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