Space Weather on EARTH Magazine

Benchmarks: August 27, 1958: Operation Argus creates first anthropogenic space weather

Tue, 03 Jul 2018 10:54:21 -0400

The launch of one of the X-17A rockets fired from the USS Norton Sound during Operation Argus. Credit: U.S. Department of Energy.

Sixty years ago this month, a fleet of nine U.S. Navy ships with 4,500 people aboard maneuvered into the Atlantic. Eight of these ships continued to the South Atlantic, about 1,800 kilometers southwest of Cape Town, South Africa, while the ninth headed to the North Atlantic, near the Azores. The clandestine military operation — code-named Operation Argus — was not an invasion, but a scientific mission, carried out at a staggering pace and inspired by an unpublished research paper by an elevator engineer with an interest in accelerator physics.

Benchmarks: May 23, 1967: Space weather forecasters avert war

Thu, 20 Apr 2017 10:13:55 -0400

The sun, on May 23, 1967, shown in a narrow visible wavelength of light called Hydrogen-alpha. The bright region (center, top) is where the May 1967 storm originated. Credit: National Solar Observatory historical archive.

By Sara Pratt

Down to Earth With: Solar physicist Thomas Berger

Mon, 09 May 2016 13:55:52 -0400

A NASA schematic showing the technologies and infrastructure that can be affected by space weather. Credit: NASA.

Growing up in California during the Space Race, Thomas Berger was fascinated with aeronautics and aviation, so when he arrived at the University of California at Berkeley, physics seemed like the natural choice. After graduating with a degree in engineering physics, Berger took a job with Lockheed Aircraft in Burbank. But he soon decided it was not for him and returned to graduate school at Stanford, where he discovered a new passion: solar physics.

Comment: Weathering a perfect storm from space

Fri, 05 Feb 2016 10:10:24 -0500

Artist's conception of a solar storm affecting Earth's magnetic field. Credit: NASA.

Extreme space-weather events — intense solar and geomagnetic storms — have occurred in the past: most recently in 1859, 1921 and 1989. So scientists expect that, sooner or later, another extremely intense spaceweather event will strike Earth again. Such storms have the potential to cause widespread interference with and damage to technological systems. A National Academy of Sciences study projects that an extreme space-weather event could end up costing the American economy more than $1 trillion. The question now is whether or not we will take the actions needed to avoid such expensive consequences. Let’s assume that we do. Below is an imagined scenario of how, sometime in the future, an extreme space-weather event might play out.

Comment: Who should be worried about space weather

Fri, 10 Jul 2015 11:13:41 -0400

Forecasters in front of lots of screens inside the Space Weather Forecast Office of NOAA's Space Weather Prediction Center (SWPC) in Boulder, Colorado. Credit: public domain.

If you live in hurricane-prone regions, you’re probably familiar with the Saffir-Simpson hurricane scale; if you’re in Tornado Alley, you probably know the Fujita scale. If a meteorologist tells you a Category-5 hurricane or an F-5 tornado is headed your way, you probably know to evacuate or take cover. But what happens if a solar storm is headed toward Earth? We’ve all likely heard from the media about the potential impacts of severe space weather events: no cellphone service, no GPS, no satellite TV, no way for airplanes to communicate, no electricity as the power grid goes down. But to whom do you turn for reliable information, and how do you know if you should worry? Scientists have now created a scaling system for solar storms like those used for hurricanes and tornadoes with the hope that such a system will help government agencies and the public prepare for and respond to space weather events.

Amateur radio users help scientists study space weather

Mon, 08 Jun 2015 12:54:10 -0400

Space weather results from variations in solar activity, and causes phenomena like aurorae. Credit: Joe Acaba, NASA.

F5VIH. KM3T. PY1NB. These strings of letters and numbers aren’t license plate numbers but call signs. They belong to a handful of Ham radio operators, just three of the more than 2 million amateur enthusiasts whose chatter fills the global airwaves day and night. Now, research suggests these communications may represent a vast trove of data that could help scientists study and monitor space weather.

The long road to understanding our star

Mon, 03 Dec 2012 13:52:30 -0500

The earliest written records of sunspots date back to 165 B.C. in China, but human understanding of the sun didn’t begin making leaps forward until the early 1600s, shortly after the invention of the telescope. That’s when Galileo Galilei, Thomas Harriot and others began drawing sunspots in detail and tracking how they moved and changed.

Spot-free sun: Is that normal?

Thu, 05 Jan 2012 06:41:58 -0500

These images, four years apart, show the rise and fall of solar activity during the sun's 11-year cycle. SOHO (ESA & NASA)

For the past few years, astronomers and scientists have been looking up at a sun that is, more often than not, rather blank. Almost too blank. That is, the sun has been relatively free of the dark patches, called “sunspots,” that appear within 30 degrees of the sun’s equator and travel across the surface. Although low sunspot counts are normal in a typical sunspot cycle, this period has gone on longer than usual, scientists noted at an international solar conference on “Solar Variability, Earth’s Climate and the Space Environment” held in early June at Montana State University in Bozeman. However, they said, while slightly longer than the past three or four solar cycles, the current minimum is not too out of the ordinary.