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A Massive Sunspot Brewing Solar Flares Threatening Earth

October 24, 2014 By Brian Galloway Leave a Comment

A monstrous sunspot, which can be easily seen by a properly shielded naked eye, is threatening the Earth. Sunspots are the solar system’s active regions that look like dark spots. These are caused by powerful magnetic activity and can cause flares and coronal mass ejections, or CMEs. These flares intimidate power and communication systems when directed to the Earth.

The sunspot dubbed as AR 12192 appeared on 17^th Oct on the sun’s eastern side. Over the past few days, it has grown bigger and is now almost 80,000 miles across, which equals to the size of planet Jupiter, the kind that has not been seen for a long time. The AR 12192 is so far the largest of the current 11-year solar cycle that started six years ago in January 2008.

NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) is currently monitoring the massive sunspot revealed that it has already spewed X-class flares; one on 19^th Oct and the other on 22^nd Oct, causing high frequency radio blackouts. X-class flares are categorized as the most powerful of solar flares and they are linked with solar radiation storms mostly if they come with CMEs.

Thus far, sunspot AR 12192 has not directed CMEs to the Earth’s direction, but it has already produced numerous flares including two X-class flares, eight M-class flares, which are of medium strength, and 27 less powerful C-class flares. The sunspot brewed X1.6 flare, which created a very intense eruption in the lower corona of the sun, NASA’s SDO captured this Wednesday.

NASA said, “the sun’s active region named as AR 12192 has produced significant solar flares. At the moment, active regions are more common as we are in what’s called solar maximum, which is the peak of the sun’s activity, occurring approximately every 11 years.”

National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) forecasters predicted more solar flares with 95% probability that the sun will spawn M-class flares and 55% odds of X-flares within the next 24 hours.

NOAA’s Space Weather Prediction Center stated, “None of the CMEs linked to these events are expected to be geo-effective so far, though, forecasters will keep an eye out for both CME activity and solar radiation storm possibility as the region approaches center disk.”

Formerly, the largest sunspot was spotted in 1947, which was nearly 3 times as big as the AR 12192.

Scientists Captured Images of Orca Whales With The Help Of Advance Drone

October 18, 2014 By Jason Leathers Leave a Comment

Recently, the NOAA’s Fisheries and the Vancouver Aquarium researchers have captured the stunning pictures of Orca whales who were swimming and playing. Moreover, the researchers have also witnessed the death of two orca whales in the region.

National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) is the government agency, which studies the conditions of the atmosphere and oceans told, “researchers has used a drone to study orca whales in the region”. In the entire history, this was the first time when researchers flew a drone (custom-built hexacopter) in order to study orcas. A high-resolution camera was fitted inside the drone in order to capture images of the species of whale. The drone flew into the region of Johnstone Strait off British Columbia.

Furthermore, the researchers had kept the hexacopter at a distance of 100 feet from the orcas, so that it would not agitate the orcas, still the camera photographed detailed images of the killer orca whales. The researchers believed that these images would eventually help them in better understanding the behavior and health of the whales.

The researchers further stated that, the pictures photographed by the hexacopter, would not just provide the glance of orca’s life, but these will also help us in order to know whether the killer whales are doing well or whether they are getting sufficient food.

The orca whales depend on Chinook Salmon, endangered species, for their food, researchers stated. They told, deficiency of Chinook Salmon could affect the population of the orca whales.

NOAA researchers stated that, while observing, we found that an orca whale was in a poor condition and went under the water and never resurfaced. The researchers believed that the orca whale was dead.

“Another orca’s death is still a mystery for researchers. It has not been determined yet if it was sick or injured,” Lance Barrett-Lennard, lead researcher of Vancouver Aquarium’s Marine Mammal Research Program, stated.

Earth Hit By Twin Solar Storms, Effects Expected This Weekend

September 12, 2014 By Jason Leathers 1 Comment

It has been predicted by the scientists that in the upcoming days the two huge explosions on the surface of the sun will cause a moderate to burly geomagnetic storm on Earth, perhaps upsetting radio and satellite communications.

During late Friday and early Saturday, the odd storm is not expected to cause chaos with personal electronics but may cause colorful nighttime auroras, or displays of the Northern Lights.

According to the views of Thomas Berger, director of the Space Weather Prediction Centre at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, “We don’t expect any unmanageable impacts to national infrastructure from these solar events at this time but we are watching these events closely”. He further told that, “More pleasantly, we do expect these storm levels to cause significant auroras displays across much of the northern US on Friday night”.

The scientists claims that the storm begin with a slight solar blaze on Monday, followed by a major X-class blaze, the strongest classification on Wednesday at around 1745 GMT (1000 AEST).

Both flare-ups arrive from the same sunspot next to the centre of the solar disk, and both created momentous coronal mass ejections, or CMEs, of magnetized plasma shifted toward Earth.

Berger said if we see it on a one to five scale, the resulting geomagnetic storm should be “moderate to strong,” ranking a G2 or G3. He further reported that, “It is fairly rare for two CMEs of this magnitude to come in close succession like this”.

“Because of this we cannot rule out higher storm levels perhaps as high as G4 or severe geomagnetic storming, particularly in the Polar Regions.”

In order to get control over the expected situation, The National Weather Service has alarmed power grid operators and the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

The scientists had compared the strength of the storm pales to major geomagnetic storms of years past, like the 1859 Carrington event that eventually drained out power across a swath of Canada. This storm seem to be weaker than a near-miss geomagnetic storm in July 2012 that NASA scientists said could have knocked Earth’s technology back at least 150 years. That storm didn’t cause huge smash up as the fast-moving energized particles were not heading straight towards Earth.

William Murtagh, program coordinator at the Space Weather Prediction Centre said, “The events that just occurred over the last 24 hours were Earth-directed, they are just not that big”.

“If we had a very big storm and this is not it that produced big problems with the power grid that would be our biggest concern.”

Experts told the reporters that, there is no radiation caused by these flares presently enough to raise the concern for astronauts at the International Space Station. Although given the nature of CMEs with their internal magnetic fields, scientists are not yet sure accurately what will happen when they bounce off the Earth’s protective shield.

Murtagh explained, “The sun just shot out a magnet that is going to interact with another magnet, the Earth’s magnetic field and how they pair together is going to be critical in determining how intense the geomagnetic storm is going to be”.

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