Wednesday, May 02, 2012

What is a solar storm? - News - Weather

What is a Solar Storm?Solar Storm is a bigger solar flare. Then you would ask; "what is a Solar flare?If you noticed the surface of Sun for some time, you would notice sudden brightening at some spots over it. These are due to massive ejections of electrons, ions and atoms by the Sun. We call it a sun flare. Time to time, sun becomes more active and during that occasions the flares were observed more frequently. Some times the magnitude of these flares was enormous. Even after the sun had ejected a massive amount of radiation, electrons, ions and protons, these don't come to the earth in seconds. It takes one or two days to travel the distance between Sun and Earth. HistorySolar flares were first observed in 1849 by two well known scientists R.C.Carrington and Richard Hodgson. It was the period when the most active Sun flare ever known was in progress. Some people call it the "Storm of 1849". The magnitude of this sun flare was so enormous that it was easily visible to the naked eye. Telegraph system of USA got massive damages due to sudden fires induced by this. After that there was a massive one recorded in 2003 November 4th. At that time we had instruments to measure the impact of a sun storm. The 2003 event was the highest ranked storm in records. However, there were few others that should be listed here as they too were considered prominent. 2001 April 4th 1989 August 162003 October 10What are the effects?Solar flares cause radiation damages to vulnerable objects like space craft and astronauts. However, there are records causing direct impacts to Electric power grids, knocking out electricity for days. Furthermore the effects on communication systems too were reported. Often the Satellite systems and radio waves were disturbed and the signals were distorted. Recent event on 22 January 2012We experienced a massive sun storm on this day. The flare began at 10:38 PM ET on January 22, 2012, peaked at 10:59 PM and ended at 11:34 PM. - Reute rs/ NasaThat day the radiation _ in the form of protons _ came flying out of the sun at 93 million miles per hour. (150 million kph) "The whole volume of space between here and Jupiter is just filled with proton" a NASA spokesman said. Further he said "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."

Do you see any reason to get scared of Sun Storms? YES NO





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