SOLAR WARNING 24/01/2012

'Solar Bullet' to hit Earth

'Solar bullet' to hit Earth

Duncan Alfreds

Cape Town - Charged particles from the sun will strike the Earth on Tuesday after a huge solar flare erupted on Monday.

The M9-class solar flare was observed by Nasa's Solar Dynamics Observatory and erupted from a sunspot on Monday at 03:59 GMT, SpaceWeather.com reported.

The coronal mass ejection or CME is travelling to Earth at 2 200km/s which means that it could potentially cause communications disruptions to networks on the planet that could include disabling satellites in its path.

In the polar regions people could observe spectacular auroras, that may even be visible at lower latitudes.

The CME may have a particular impact in South Africa because of the South Atlantic Anomaly where the Earth's magnetic field is weakest.

The CME is scheduled to hit at about 14:18 GMT on Tuesday and South Africans should take care to avoid being exposed directly to the sun.

http://www.news24.com/SciTech/News/Solar-bullet-to-hit-Earth-20120124
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Man, wish I was in a polar area about now :/
 
will I get super powers?

Back-up your work people and boil the water in case the power goes off.
 
Lucky escape for Earth after solar flare

Cape Town - The Earth will not bear the brunt of the coronal mass ejection that will hit the planet on Tuesday.

"Its source was an active area about 45° to 50° off the equator of the sun," Kobus Olckers, space weather officer at the Ises Regional Space Weather Warning Centre in Hermanus told News24.

He said that most of the CME would miss the planet, but that minor disruptions were still possible because of the scale of the event.

"Most of the mass - I would say 95% of the mass - is going away from the ecliptic plane, so that thing is going away from all the planets," Olckers said.

The plane of the ecliptic is the plane of the planets around the sun and the Earth would be more vulnerable if a CME were to erupt from the sun's equator.

Fortunate

Earth is fortunate that the CME occurred at a higher solar latitude because it will result in a minimal effect.

"I saw it yesterday [on Monday], we're going to catch the very edge of it. It's coming our way but if we had been 80 million kilometres further up, it would have been bad," Olckers said.

The distance from the Earth to the sun is about 150 million kilometres.

The sun goes through a solar cycle about every 11 years where an increased activity on the surface is observed.

Olckers said that if a CME had to hit the Earth squarely, it would result in devastating consequences.

"Full frontal [hit] that's bad news because it was really energetic."

Internet, satellite and telephone communications could have been disrupted, he added.

Scientists recognise three major categories of solar flares. X-class flares are big and are major events that can trigger planet-wide radio blackouts. M-class flares are medium-sized; they can cause brief radio blackouts that affect Earth's polar regions. C-class flares are small with few noticeable consequences here on Earth.
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http://www.news24.com/SciTech/News/Lucky-escape-for-Earth-after-solar-flare-20120124
 
koeksGHT said:
/puts on tin foil hat
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For solar flares you need to line the inside with fibreglass ( think-pink will do ), then add a layer of pre-gamma'd silicon.

You need to wear the headpiece for three days until the rays trapped in the silicon are fully absorbed.
 
This won't be the last time either, we are entering the solar maximum so we can expect plenty more of this in the coming months.
 
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