The Sun’s impact on weather here on Earth is clear: It makes it hot or cold, it powers air currents, it causes water to evaporate making rain, et cetera. But with our increasing reliance on satellites and electronics, you can’t forget its more insidious effects—and some satellites got a taste of those yesterday.
Every once in a while our Sun gives off a tremendous belch of high energy particles. Called a coronal mass ejection (CME), these episodes can vary in intensity, but they can produce bursts of electrical charge when they interact with our upper atmosphere in a geomagnetic storm. In a strange twist, new research shows that geomagnetic storms can produce the opposite effect, stripping the upper atmosphere of electrons for hundreds of miles. Which, if you like electronic gadgets, may be a problem.
A Jupiter-like planet located 1,000 light-years from Earth is exhibiting some rather strange meteorological behavior. The clouds on this planet appear to be made from corundum—the same mineral that produces rubies and sapphires.
New Horizons returned some amazingly detailed shots and data of Pluto over the course of its mission—but just what did it have to fly through to get there? So, so much.
The U.S. government is getting more serious about dealing with the dangers posed by powerful sun storms.
On Thursday (Oct. 29), the White House released two documents that together lay out the nation’s official plan for mitigating the negative impacts of solar flaresand other types of “space weather,” which have the potential to wreak havoc on power grids and other key infrastructure here on Earth.
We all know that major storms can wreak havoc, flooding cities and decimating infrastructure. But there’s an even bigger worry than wind and rain: space weather. If a massive solar storm hit us, our technology would be wiped out. The entire planet could go dark.