The Sun, our enemy!CME Cocoon (March 9, 2007)

The Sun, our enemy!

Coronal Mass Ejections

Prominences

Sunspots

Sunspot cycle

Sunspot history and misteries:the Maunder minimum, a little ice age

Solar cycle prediction

STEREO a mission to understand CME

(solar terrestrial relations observatories)

Sun attacks!

Earth´s surveillance police

Speed:653 Km/s - density 3.98 p/cm3

July 14, 2000 - The Bastille day

July 14, 2000 -- This morning NOAA satellites and the orbiting Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) recorded one of the most powerful solar flares of the current solar cycle. Space weather forecasters had been predicting for days that an intense flare might erupt from the large sunspot group 9077, and today one did."Energetic protons from the flare arrived at Earth about 15 minutes after the eruption," says Gary Heckman, a space weather forecaster at the NOAA Space Environment Center. "This triggered a category S3 radiation storm."

http://www.spaceweather.com

http://www.sec.noaa.gov/SWN/

http://www.spaceweathercenter.org/

http://sohowww.nascom.nasa.gov/spaceweather/

Our natural shield:the Magnetosphere

Our natural shield:the Magnetosphere

War signs on the shield:Van Allen belts

Waterloo!

Waterloo!The HydroQuebec Blackout of March 1989

On March 13, 1989, at 2:44 am, a transformer failure on one of the main power transmission lines in the HydroQuebec system precipitated a catastrophic collapse of the entire power grid. The string of events that produced the collapse took only 90 seconds from start to finish. There was no time for any meaningful intervention. The transformer failure was a direct consequence of ground induced currents from a space weather disturbance high in the atmosphere. 6 million people lost electrical power for 9 or more hours. The space weather disturbance that produced this devastation was a great magnetic storm. Great magnetic storms are awesome disturbances in the near-Earth space environment that occur relatively rarely. The last five occurred in February 1986, March 1989, March 1991, November 1991 and May 1992. The frequency of large and great storms increases markedly as we enter the maximum in the solar activity cycle.

After the bombing

Atmosphere erosion

Electric ”storms” on earth

Climate change

Dec. 8, 1998: Residents of the far north who saw a massive display of the aurora borealis in late September were also staring through an invisible fountain of gas being accelerated into space by a powerful bubble of solar wind, which pumped about 200 gigawatts of electrical power into the Earth.

At the same time, a special space weather research satellite was taking measurements showing that solar events can directly affect our outer atmosphere.

Solar particles injuriesSpace Weather

on Mars

Future human explorers of Mars can leave their umbrellas back on Earth, but perhaps they shouldn't forget their Geiger counters!

Alien planets have alien weather.Take Mars, for example. A morning weather report on the Red Planet might sound like this:

"Good morning, Martians! It looks like another solar storm heading our way. An X-class solar flare exploded this morning and proton counts have soared 1000-fold. More of the deadly particles are en route, so don't leave shelter today without your radiation suit!"

"Coming up next, the sunspot report, right after this word from our sponsor: Levi's Relaxed Fit LeadPants."

South Atlantic Anomaly

South Atlantic Anomaly

The Phantom TorsoAn unusual space traveler named Fred is orbiting Earth aboard the International Space Station. His job? To keep astronauts safe from space radiation.

Fred has no arms. He has no legs. His job is keeping astronauts safe. Fred is the Phantom Torso, an approximately 95-pound, 3 foot high mockup of a human upper body. Beneath Fred's artificial skin are real bones. Fred's organs -- the heart, brain, thyroid, colon and so on -- are made of a special plastic that matches as closely as possible the density of human tissue.

Fred, who's spending the next four months on board the International Space Station (ISS), will measure the amount of radiation to which astronauts are exposed. High-energy particles that pass through the human body can disrupt the way cells function. Although no astronaut has ever been diagnosed with space radiation sickness, excessive exposure could lead to health problems.

Flashes from nowhereTo get to the moon we must venture beyond the electromagnetic shield of the Earth into dangerous waters, waters we have only just begun to chart. Therein lies our challenge. Beyond this shield we are subject to the full impact of cosmic radiation, lethal to life as we know it.The Earth's magnetic field, a product of its liquid core, spreads from pole to pole like a giant belt, extending from 400 to 40,000 miles above the planet's surface. Trapped within this magnetic belt are charged particles, both electrons and ions, the nuclei of atoms stripped of their electrons.

Raining down on this electromagnetic shield are ions of both solar and galactic origin. Some 85% of these ions are protons, the nuclei of hydrogen atoms. About 13% are nuclei of helium, known as alpha particles, our next most common atom. The remaining 2% is composed of the nuclei of heavier atoms including oxygen, nitrogen and iron, all traveling at tremendous speeds and known as the "heavies". Those of galactic origin have been brought to near light speed by powerful events such as supernovae and have energy levels some 10,000 times those of solar origin.Life as we know it developed within this protected zone known as Earth. Now, on the way to the moon and to Mars, we are beginning to venture out beyond our shield. Protection from these extraordinarily energetic particles will be an immense challenge for they pass through the walls of a spacecraft as if the walls did not exist. Their impact on the human body is quite predictable.

Flashes from nowhereIn 1971 when Apollo 14 was some 100,000 miles out on its journey to the moon, the crew became aware of curious light flashes, especially noted in the darker recesses of their spacecraft and during scheduled sleep periods. By then, the Earth had receded in size to that of a large marble held at arm's length and they were well outside our planet's protective shield. Because they felt fine and did not wish to upset "ground", the crew elected to make their report several days later on their return leg of the mission.

On the basis of this observation, "ground" was quick to realize the likelihood that cosmic radiation was responsible for this light flash phenomenon and quickly conceived the Biostack experimental packages carried on Apollo 16 and 17. These bioscience studies, in which emulsion plates sandwiched such specimens as bacteria, crustaceans and insects in various stages of development, helped greatly to reveal the flux and energy levels of these energetic particles zooming through the spacecraft walls with ease and demonstrated clearly the biologic consequences when hits occurred in susceptible tissues, especially during embryogenesis.

In 1973 "Bill" Pogue, commander of Skylab 3, was the first astronaut to experience the now infamous South Atlantic Anomaly (SAA) and attempt to measure its unusual radiation levels. Roughly over the Easter Brazilian coastline, our 400-mile high electromagnetic belt circling the Earth is pulled downwards by a mysterious force to within 100 miles of the Earth's surface. As a result, all spacecraft launched into a relatively high orbit such as our three Skylab missions must pass through this zone of intense radiation several times each day.

Flashes from nowhereIn attempting to quantify this anomaly by "keying into his mike" with each light flash for the benefit of ground, Pogue at times could not key fast enough to record all hits. From what we know today, each flash represented a cosmic ray hit to the visual cortex of the brain, just as a neurosurgeon can induce such retinal flashes by direct stimulation with a needle electrode.

Jerry Linenger, in summarizing his 6-month adventure with fellow cosmonauts onboard MIR in 1996, reported that at times during passage through the SAA, sleep was impossible. On some occasions he even tried moving his sleeping platform so as to reposition his head behind lead storage batteries and other places offering thicker spacecraft walls but little benefit was obtained and when finally the SAA was passed the flashes were temporarily over.

Today on the International Space Station the situation is no different when passing through the dreaded SAA. I say dreaded because now we know that these flashes of light are recording hits by cosmic radiation directly on the brain and, as yet, we know very little about their possible long-term consequences to astronaut health.

We do know that spacecraft walls as currently constructed present no significant barrier to galactic cosmic radiation. If an occasional aluminum atom within the spacecraft wall is hit by one of these cosmic darts, the result is a shower of secondary radiation within the cabin from "daughter" breakdown products of aluminum and associated gamma radiation.

The challenge: Space ExplorationRadiation Concerns

- current astronaut limit 50 rem/year

- ISS concern is trapped protons from South Atlantic Anomaly

- Moon and Mars concerns: galactic cosmic radiation and solar particle events

- 2 major effects of chronic long-term exposure are neoplasia and lenticular cataracts

Future directions in research- determine carcinogenic effects of GCR exposure and high-energy heavy charged particle exposure

-improved characterization of GCR environment and solar cycle variations

- further investigations in shielding options chemopreventive strategies.

- besides shielding as 1st line of defense, chemoprevention strategies also effective.

Galactic cosmic rays: gamma rays

Galactic cosmic raysCosmic rays blamed for global warming

By Richard Gray, Science Correspondent, Sunday Telegraph

Man-made climate change may be happening at a far slower rate than has been claimed, according to controversial new research.Scientists say that cosmic rays from outer space play a far greater role in changing the Earth's climate than global warming experts previously thought.

In a book, to be published this week, they claim that fluctuations in the number of cosmic rays hitting the atmosphere directly alter the amount of cloud covering the planet.

High levels of cloud cover blankets the Earth and reflects radiated heat from the Sun back out into space, causing the planet to cool. Henrik Svensmark, a weather scientist at the Danish National Space Centre who led the team behind the research, believes that the planet is experiencing a natural period of low cloud cover due to fewer cosmic rays entering the atmosphere. This, he says, is responsible for much of the global warming we are experiencing.

The poet`s impression: Themis

THEMIS is a mission to investigate what causes auroras in the Earth's atmosphere to dramatically change from slowly shimmering waves of light to wildly shifting streaks of color. Discovering what causes auroras to change will provide scientists with important details on how the planet's magnetosphere works and the important Sun-Earth connection.

Soho artists