The concept of space weather is the most challenging for the scientist community to understand. Scientists have always tended to predict this unusual concept by the behavior of the solar wind electric field. It is not strange to assume that the sun is a mighty chef that stirs sunspots, boils electrified gasses, then serves up the main course - violent solar weather in the form of a coronal mass ejection (CME) with a side of solar flare.
Space weather forecasters revised their predictions for storminess after a major flare erupted on the Sun overnight threatening damage to communication systems and power grids while offering up the wonder of Northern Lights. A couple of days ago scientists and researchers had a formula that describes the merging rate of the magnetic field lines and accurately predicts 10 different types of near-Earth space weather activity, such as the aurora and magnetic disturbances. With the help of the formula the researchers were able to accurately predict that the merging occurs way out in space, at a spot between the Earth and Sun, roughly 40,000 miles above our planet’s surface. But it seems like, the theories of how flares and CMEs develop and erupt and the mechanisms by which the energy is expelled and the particle flux is propelled outward into interplanetary space are still the areas of active investigation in solar physics.
As technology advances, populations grow, and urban industrialized areas sprawl, Earth becomes more dependent upon systems that are prone to damage from solar storms, including electrical grids and the swarm of satellites in orbit above Earth’s protective atmosphere. Today’s electrical grids are more vulnerable to solar-storm disruption than their more localized predecessors because of the large geographical areas they cover and their interconnected nature.
The new threat that it poses is to the astronauts aboard the International Space Station. The Solar Flare earlier today is forcing the ISS and Shuttle astronauts to take cover and may result in communication disruptions. However, the astronauts were ordered to a protective area of the space station as a precaution.
Via: Slashdot
