[Az-Geocaching] Solar Flare

[Trisha]

Thanks JIm! I was hoping if the conversation turned towards the
heavens that you would pop up! :-)
I was kidding about the sunscreen....but the freight train analogy
still gives me pause....
Trisha


On Tue, 28 Oct 2003 15:55:49 -0700 (MST), Jim Scotti wrote:

> 
> On Tue, 28 Oct 2003, Trisha wrote:
> 
> > In case anybody is interested, we do have a very large solar flare
> > heading straight for us. It's the third largest solar flare on
> record,
> > and erupted on Tuesday, and is expected to "arrive" at Earth
mid-day
> > Wednesday (tomorrow).
> >
> > These severe flares have the ability to disrupt satellite radio
> > communications and Earth based electrical systems. (Sounds like the
> GPS
> > may be off that day if you try to geocache....)
> 
> I'm not sure if GPS signals will be disrupted - these sorts of
affects
> are
> highly dependent on wavelength of the transmission.  But certainly
> there is a
> chance of all sorts of different types of radio transmissions being
> affected.
>  
> > And I quote: "It's headed straight for us like a freight train."
says
> > John Kohl, a Harvard-Smithsonian Center of Astrophysics scientist.
> 
> It's always fun to hear the experts talk about their subject and see
> how the
> press interprets their words - usually trying to find the most
> spectacular
> sentence for the best sound bite.  I'm no expert on the Sun, but I
did
> spend
> some time when in high school drawing sunspots after school every day
> that I
> could.  I'd drag my telescope out into the back yard and sketch the
> location
> of sunspots and if they were big or unusual, I'd draw a closeup
view. 
> Even
> though I was in Seattle at the time, there was almost always a break
> in the
> clouds that lasted long enough for me to get my sketch in and it was
> fun to
> watch the spots march around the sun as the sun rotates.  I'd simply
> project
> the sun's image onto a sheet of paper that I had pre-drawn circles
> onto and
> then with my pencil, trace the locations of the spots.  It was great
> fun and
> I probably did that for most of my senior year of high school.
> 
> > Now I am just your average joe-blow citizen when it comes to really
> > technical scientific things, but to have that guy, who should
really
> know
> > LOTS about it, say it THAT WAY....I don't know....makes me nervous!
> > Anybody else catch that?
> 
> For us "Landlubbers" on planet Earth, we shouldn't worry about any
> direct
> affects of this flare.  The Earth's magnetic field and atmosphere
does
> an
> excellent job of protecting us.  I think even the two crewmen on the
> Space
> Station are even safe since they orbit so close to the Earth that the
> magnetic fields divert most of the charged particles from the sun and
> the
> metal spacecraft walls do the rest.
> 
> > check out www.spaceweather.com and put on the OPAQUE sunscreen!!
> 
> That's an excellent website and it even mentions stuff I work on in
> the "Near
> Earth Asteroid" section.  And, BTW, sunscreen won't protect you from
> the
> flare products, but as I said above, you should already have plenty
of
> protection thanks to mother Earth....  The actual luminosity of the
> sun (how
> much light it puts out) is not affected significantly by flares.
> 
> > Trisha "Lightning"
> > Prescott
> 
> Jim.
> 
> Jim Scotti
> Lunar & Planetary Laboratory
> University of Arizona
> Tucson, AZ 85721 USA                
> http://www.lpl.arizona.edu/~jscotti/    
> 
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