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Not an aurora? New research concludes that thin ribbons of purple and white light appearing in the night sky are an entirely new celestial phenomenon

October 30, 2018 - auroras.

"So right now, we know very little about it," said UC lead researcher and study author Bea Gallardo-Lacourt. "And that's the cool thing, because this has been known by photographers for decades. But for the scientists, it's completely unknown." (Related: NASA says the solar flare that caused a radio blackout last September was the biggest flare in a decade.)Mysterious ribbons of light get named after a comedian

The atmosphere of the Earth is divided ...

Solar “superflare” could hit Earth within the next 100 years, researchers suggest

April 04, 2021 - auroras, downed communication lines

Powerful solar storms hit Earth multiple times before, bringing down communication lines and causing widespread auroras – the polar lights – that reach near the equator. A recent study in the preprint server arXiv shows that an intense solar storm in 1582 illuminated the skies over Portugal for three consecutive nights.

Researchers compiled old eyewitness accounts by observers in Lisbon. According to one of the texts, ...

Giant coronal hole on the sun creates second hole, unleashing solar winds toward Earth

April 11, 2023 - auroras on March 24, which illuminated the night sky with electric purples and greens. Some of the dazzling auroras were seen as far south as Arizona. These auroras were reportedly caused by solar winds interacting with Earth's charged atmosphere.

Numerous coronal mass ejections, which are large eruptions of plasma being thrown into space, occurred around the same time as the first coronal hole was facing Earth. This produced a large geomagnetic ...

Bright aurora on Jupiter caused by alternating currents on the giant planet, report researchers

April 12, 2020 -

An international team of researchers has succeeded in measuring the electric current system that's responsible for Jupiter's aurora. The team used data sent to Earth by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's (NASA) Juno spacecraft.

The data showed a surprising cause for the planet's auroras -- a nearby moon. Unlike the Earth's auroras, which are caused by electrically charged particles from the Sun, the system of currents that drives Jupiter's ...

Solar storms, magnetic pole shift loom as hundreds of dolphins and whales wind up dead worldwide

March 15, 2021 - auroras, colorful celestial displays of light that are commonly seen in the North and South Poles.

A coronal mass ejection can also knock out the power grid, disrupt navigation systems and satellites, and bathe high-flying airplanes with high levels of radiation. Additionally, animals that rely on the magnetic field for navigation may be affected.

In the past few days, auroras have been reported in the Northern Sky, potentially indicating that solar ...

Air Force prepares for potential EMP attack

March 14, 2021 - auroras that were visible all the way to the tropics.

EMPs can also be deliberately generated using nuclear weapons. If a nuclear weapon were to be detonated high in the atmosphere, according to Pry, the gamma radiation it would emit could strip negatively charged particles from air molecules and accelerate them to near the speed of light.

If these particles interacted with Earth's magnetic field, they would generate an intense, fluctuating electric current ...

They might be rare, but “superflares” could threaten Earth within the next 100 years or so, caution scientists

January 27, 2020 - auroras, it also wreaked havoc on telegraph networks across North America and Europe, with cosmically overcharged telegraph lines reported to have started fires and even shocking telegraph operators.

A superflare could do even more damage, according to Notsu.

“If a superflare occurred 1,000 years ago, it was probably no big problem. People may have seen a large aurora,” Notsu said. “Now, it’s a much bigger problem because of our electronics.”

While ...

Earth just dodged a potentially apocalyptic-level solar storm – are we safe?

March 29, 2023 - auroras illuminated the nighttime skies, glowing so brightly that birds began to chirp and laborers started their daily chores, believing the sun had begun rising. Some thought the end of the world was at hand."

It turns out that the end of all things was not quite yet at that point, even though it seemed like the case at the time. With the recent miss of the coronal mass ejection (CME) on March 12, did the planet dodge another apocalyptic-seeming event for good, ...

Problematic but not apocalyptic: Weakening magnetic field prompts scientists to ponder what life on Earth would be like without it

September 29, 2020 - auroras, will also be visible from the lower latitudes. These colorful displays occur as a result of the interaction between charged solar particles and the magnetosphere, a region of space dominated by Earth's magnetic field, rather than the magnetic field of interplanetary space. This interaction can also deplete the ozone layer, increasing people's exposure to cancer-causing ultraviolet radiation. (Related: Global magnetic anomaly hit the Earth out of nowhere during ...

Solar telescope offers unprecedented glimpse into the Sun

September 08, 2020 - auroras. But stronger bursts can further cause magnetic storms that disrupt communication satellites and electric grids. People on Earth can potentially experience electricity shortages and power outages.

In 1989, for example, excess solar energy triggered a power surge that damaged transformers used in the Hydro-Quebec power system. Six million people in the northeastern U.S. and Canada had no electricity for more than nine hours. At the time, the Sun was at ...

Discovery: The sun’s magnetic waves react to sound

July 04, 2019 - auroras and other atmospheric phenomena. They can also disrupt electronic systems on Earth.

"Our evidence shows that the Sun's internal acoustic oscillations play a significant role in exciting the magnetic Alfvenic waves," Morton stated. "This can give the waves different properties and suggests that they are more susceptible to an instability, which could lead to hotter and faster solar winds."

Sources include:

ScienceDaily.com

Nature.com

This ...

Scientists discover that Earth’s magnetic field functions like a drum; impulses ripple along its surface

June 19, 2019 - auroras in the polar region. THEMIS readings showed that the magnetosphere vibrated like a drum.Human ears cannot hear the magnetosphere's drum beats

"We found the first direct and unambiguous observational evidence that the magnetopause vibrates in a standing wave pattern, like a drum, when hit by a strong impulse," Archer explained. "Given the 45 years since the initial theory, it had been suggested that they simply might not occur, but we've shown they are possible....

Space probe records Saturn “singing” to its weirdest moon

September 20, 2018 - auroras their brilliant, constantly-changing color.

Plasma is an ionized form of matter that resembles gas. In addition to serving as an excellent electrical conductor, it is also able to conduct waves such as sound and vibration.

The plasma column that Cassini came across was carrying vibrations from Saturn to Enceladus. However, these natural waves cannot be detected by human hearing, even if a manned spaceship with a human crew dared to pass through ...

NASA says the solar flare that caused a radio blackout last September was the biggest flare in a decade

April 25, 2018 - auroras. Unfortunately, it is also possible that it could lead to even more damage, particularly to Earth's satellites, communications, and power systems. The charged plasma cloud from the sun would only take a handful of days to arrive on Earth, and according to Steemburgh, CMEs that are caused by huge flares can arrive even quicker.

And while scientists and other experts in the field already have the basic knowledge to tell when these things are going to happen, ...

“Space weather” can cause cascading collapse across critical human civilization infrastructure, blocking rail transport, aviation, and food delivery

April 06, 2017 - auroras. However, beyond the beauty lies a potentially dangerous technological and societal problem.

Cascading effects

A main concern is that communication technology is highly sensitive to space weather. It is recognized that extreme solar flares can disrupt communication infrastructure -- even those made from the latest materials. Given how heavily we rely on these channels, there could be havoc or even societal collapse should one of these fail. Critical infrastructure, ...

Satellite images of striped hills in Russia mystify NASA

July 10, 2022 -

On Feb. 23, the agency posted satellite images of a rock formation near the Markha River in Arctic Siberia. Taken using the Operation Land Imager on the satellite Landsat 8 over many years, the images showed a wrinkled landscape laced with gnarled patterns of alternating dark and light stripes.

The stripes are visible during all four seasons, but they are most noticeable in the winter when the snow further sharpens the contrasting pattern.

But NASA isn't sure how the ...

NASA releases stunning audio of eerie sounds taken from flyby of Jupiter’s moon, Ganymede

January 07, 2022 - auroras, which are ribbons of glowing electrified gas, at the moon’s north and south poles. It is larger than Pluto and the planet Mercury.

The agency said that it shifted the emissions data that was collected from the moon to an audio range in order to make a recording. As a vacuum, space does not carry sound waves the way the air on Earth does, so the sounds do not actually represent what a human would hear if they visited Jupiter.

The futuristic-sounding ...

Sunspot unleashes a dozen solar flares in a day, causing radio blackouts worldwide

May 27, 2021 - auroras as well as a geomagnetic storm.

Violent solar storms are expected with the new solar cycle

The sun had just entered a new 11-year solar cycle in December 2019. Last Saturday's event was just a preview of what's to come since the Solar Cycle 25 (SC25) wouldn't peak until around 2025, according to an international group of scientists called the Solar Cycle 25 Prediction Panel.

Co-chaired by NOAA and NASA, the panel forecast that SC25 would be fairly weak, ...

The sun unleashes strongest solar flare in three years

December 02, 2020 - auroras that were seen as far south as the Caribbean. It also triggered fires, electric line discharges and the electrocution of telegraph operators, among other disturbances.

Meanwhile, the 1989 solar flare knocked out portions of Canada's electrical grid, causing a widespread blackout in the affected regions that lasted for nine hours or so. The flare also damaged the electrical power transmission systems of the Hydro Quebec generating station and melted power transformers ...

Magnetic field reversal and the solar minimum may lead to extinction-level event, study suggests

June 20, 2022 - auroras.

The team suspects that these environmental changes potentially accelerated the growth of ice sheets and contributed to the extinction of Australian megafauna and the gradual decline of the Neanderthals. They also linked these changes to the increased use of caves as shelter and the emergence of red ocher handprints for cave art and sunscreen.

"It probably would have seemed like the end of days," Turney said.

That those seemingly random cosmic ...