:: NEWS COCKTAIL aka BlahBlahBlog ::
"Everything is being compressed into tiny tablets. You take a little pill of news every day - 23 minutes - and that's supposed to be enough." -Walter Cronkite, RE TV news. The Web has changed that for many, however, and here is an extra dose for your daily news cocktail. This prescription tends to include surveillance and now war-related links, along with the occasional pop culture junk and whatever else seizes my attention as I scan online news sites.:: 10.30.2003 ::
:: A Major CME ::
From Wired News:
Solar Ejection Hurtles to Earth
A Reuters report
LONDON -- A massive bubble of gas that could cause havoc with power grids and satellite systems hit the Earth's magnetic field Wednesday morning and is likely to have the biggest impact in Alaska and the Far East.
Scientists said the cloud of charged particles unleashed at high speeds by a hyperactive Sun and known as a coronal mass ejection, or CME, traveled at about 5 million mph.
"It arrived at six this morning (6 a.m. GMT) and was going much faster than people thought," Dr. Mike Hapgood, a space expert at the Appleton Laboratory in England, told Reuters.
The gaseous cloud that dumps energy into the magnetic field that surrounds the Earth, creating a geomagnetic storm, is unlikely to have much of an impact in Europe.
Hapgood and other scientists suspect the CME produced an amazing aurora, or light show, over Alaska and the Far East, as well as some radio communication problems.
Another Reuters report:
Solar 'hurricane' hits Earth's magnetic field
Power plants cut production to limit any impact
By Patricia Reaney and Eric Auchard
OCTOBER 29, 2003 - A shockwave from the Sun hit the Earth today, the final burst from a solar hurricane that has hampered some space satellite transmissions and led electric grid operators to curb power transmissions as a precaution. Scientists said the cloud of charged particles, known as a coronal mass ejection (CME), unleashed by a hyperactive Sun was traveling at more than 5 million mph, reaching the Earth in just 19 hours.
Power plants from Sweden to New Jersey cut production to limit how much electricity was flowing over transmission grids, preparing to absorb any sudden surge in energy that might result in coming days from lingering effects of the storm.
"We expect this storm to continue through the day and tomorrow," said Larry Combs, a space weather forecaster at the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration's (NOAA) Space Environment Center in Boulder, Colo.
The center, which acts as the official U.S. space weather agency, advises power utilities, airlines and communications network operators of potential threats from space. It first warned of the storm a week ago (see story).
The gaseous cloud dumped energy into the magnetic field that surrounds the Earth, creating a geomagnetic storm; it was the final wave in a three-stage solar storm that began peppering the Earth with X-rays yesterday. These X-rays, traveling at the speed of light, forced air traffic controllers to scramble to find alternative communications channels and affected satellite transmissions of images back to Earth, weather experts said.
In the second wave, a pulse of solar radiation hit the Earth. Image transmissions from the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) satellite, which first detected the solar blast, degenerated into salt-and-pepper images for a time yesterday, forcing its operators to put the spacecraft into rest mode, NOAA said.
CMEs come around every few years but the one that arrived today may rank as one of the strongest.
The X-ray and solar radiation storms rank as the second largest such events recorded in the latest 11-year cycle, according to NOAA data. Records of solar cycles date from 1755. This is the tail end of the 23rd cycle, Combs said.
The geomagnetic particle storm that hit earlier today measured G5, or extreme. How long the storm remains in Earth's atmosphere will determine whether it ranks as one of the biggest storms ever.
posted by me
:: 9:50:00 AM [+] ::
...
