The agency also uses NASA spacecraft and believes that the satellites and the electrical systems on Earth must be protected from solar storms, which damage assets important to everyday life in the 21st century.
Richard Fisher, head of the solar heliophysics division at NASA, explains what this is all about: "The sun is waking up from a deep sleep, in the coming years we are expected to see higher levels of solar activity. At the same time, our technological society has developed an unprecedented sensitivity to solar storms. This is the reason for the discussion."
The National Academy of Sciences defined the problem two years ago in a report under the title "Severe 'Weather' Events in Space - Social and Economic Consequences". He noted how people in the 21st century rely on high-tech systems for the basic needs of daily life. Smart power grids, navigation systems that rely on GPS satellites, in flights, financial services and more, even emergency radio communication can go down due to intense solar activity. A once-in-a-century solar storm, the academy warns, could cause economic damage twenty times greater than Hurricane Katrina.
Most of the damage can be mitigated, if there is an early warning of the arrival of a solar storm. Actions such as moving satellites to a "safe mode" and disconnecting transformers can protect these assets from costly electrical damage. However, such preventive activities require accurate forecasting, a task assigned to NOAA - the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Agency, whose space budget is separate from NASA's.
Space storm forecasting is a field still in its infancy, but we are making rapid progress," says Thomas Bogdan, director of NOAA's Space Weather Prediction Center in Boulder, Colorado. Bogdan sees the collaboration between NASA and NOAA as key to the success of the forecast. "NASA's fleet of research spacecraft studying the Sun provide us with up-to-the-minute information about what is happening on the Sun. These satellites are an important complement to NOAA's POES satellites, which focus more on the Earth's environment."
Among dozens of NASA spacecraft, he mentions three of special significance: Stereo, SDO and ACE. Stereo (Solar Terrestrial Relations) are a pair of spacecraft placed on either side of the Sun with a combined view of 90% of the face of the star. In the past, active sunspots could hide on the side of the sun as seen from Earth, then suddenly pop up over the horizon and shoot fireworks of fire. Stereo spaceships make these attacks impossible.
SDO (the Solar Dynamics Observatory) is the latest addition to NASA's fleet. The spacecraft was launched in February, and is capable of photographing active areas in the sun with unprecedented spectral resolution, from the aspect of heat mapping and spatial separation. Researchers can now study flares in great detail, raising hopes that we can learn how solar flares work and how to predict them. SDO also monitors the strong ultraviolet emissions, which control the vulnerability of the Earth's atmosphere to changing solar activity.
Bogdan's favorite spacecraft is actually the oldest of them - Advanced Composition Explorer (ACE) which was launched in 1997. "Where would we be without her?" he wonders. ACE is a spacecraft that monitors the solar wind. It is in the current between the sun and the earth and follows the eruptions of the solar wind, and radiation storms that take another thirty minutes to reach the earth.
ACE is our best early warning system," says Bogdan. "The early warning allows us to notify the service and the satellite operators that a storm is about to hit." According to him, the NASA spacecraft were not originally intended to be used as operational forecasting systems "but it turns out that their data has practical economic and civil uses", says Fisher. "This is a good example of the ability of the field of space science to support modern society."
"I believe we are on the brink of a new era, where space 'weather' events can have an impact on our daily lives, like the weather on the ground on Earth." Fischer concludes. "We take this very, very seriously."
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17 תגובות
I think that eating a lot of vegetables is healthy and schnitzel is a good source of fats and if we eat a lot of schnitzel and vegetables we will all be big and healthy and create a shield from the sun's storms.
Today I read an interesting article related to the article published here
I recommend reading to anyone who is interested, and wants to expand knowledge in general about what, and why they brought up the issue of protection in the first place:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/06/21/AR2010062104114.html?g=0
To the respondent 14
Yes.
There is a connection to 2012 because the whole world will be destroyed, so of course it is because of sun storms.
In any case, you have nothing to worry about, you will die together with everyone.
Hope I helped, bye.
Peace,
I read online that solar storms cause: heart attacks and emotional changes.
I have a few questions.
1. Are the storms that are expected to come stronger than storms that have been in the past? (and will they be stronger by a large margin).
2. A connection to 2012 somehow :P?
Thanks.
There is a lot of logic in your words Michael (10), although, I'm not sure you saw the above response.
It is about something like three pages of the Bible. I have never seen a comment here, not even yours, that takes up such volume.
Another point is that it will indeed not stop the professional scavengers, but nothing will stop them. The casual scavengers who don't know the traps will actually be able to be filtered out effectively.
And a third point is that as far as I know my father has a filter that blocks you if you have responded to many comments in a row in a short time (or am I wrong here too?), which should prevent split responses.
post Scriptum. I'm not suggesting to implement the feature, and I don't even have a solid opinion if it will be beneficial or harmful, I'm just raising questions about it.
Good night.
Agree with response 10
I reinforce Michael's words
Avi:
As someone who sometimes allows himself to write long comments I ask that you do not act to add this limit. It will just make it difficult to give detailed answers in a place that requires detail.
After all, it will not block the spammers - they will simply split their garbage into more comments. It's easy for them because they don't need to maintain a logical sequence when those who try to say something serious will actually be hurt (not to mention that when garbage is spread over many comments - it's also harder to identify it as garbage and there are more comments that need to be located and censored).
Unfortunately, such a feature does not exist, but I would be happy to offer it to developers.
Avi,
Please accept my sincere apologies, I thought you also had a filter that stops comments longer than the Declaration of Independence from being published.
Hello Adi, unfortunately there was no prohibited keyword there and therefore it was published without waiting for my approval. I had to delete it in retrospect despite the comments on it.
Doron, you made a mistake on the website. This is a science site and not pseudo science. I deleted your scholarly article because it is copied in its entirety from another website, and according to the regulations, you should not upload copyrighted materials to the comments.
Avi,
There is no way that comment 2 was published without your approval (such a long post requires approval).
All I can do is pout and ask when my eyebrows are raised, my eyes are wide open and my mouth is open in a way reminiscent of the letter S: "WHYHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!"
Doron, please tell us, is this a quote from The Zohar?
Ahhhhhh…..
Now suddenly so many things become clear
Thank you Doron, this is so deep and smart….
??? What is this spam?
Was it translated by a machine?