This colorized NASA image, taken Monday, Jan. 23, 2012, from the Solar Dynamics Observatory, shows a flare shooting out of the top of the sun. It was taken in a special teal wavelength to best see the flare. Space weather officials say the strongest solar storm in more than six years is already bombarding Earth with radiation with more to come. The Space Weather Prediction Center in Colorado observed a flare Sunday night at 11 p.m. EST. Physicist Doug Biesecker said the biggest concern from the speedy eruption is the radiation, which arrived on Earth an hour later. It will likely continue through Wednesday. It's mostly an issue for astronauts' health and satellite disruptions. It can cause communication problems for airplanes that go over the poles. (AP Photo/NASA)
WASHINGTON (AP) — The sun is bombarding Earth with radiation from the biggest solar storm in more than six years with more to come from the fast-moving eruption.
The solar flare
occurred at about 11 p.m. EST Sunday and will hit Earth with three
different effects at three different times. The biggest issue is
radiation, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Space Weather Prediction Center in Colorado.
The
radiation is mostly a concern for satellite disruptions and astronauts
in space. It can cause communication problems for polar-traveling
airplanes, said space weather center physicist Doug Biesecker.
Radiation
from Sunday's flare arrived at Earth an hour later and will likely
continue through Wednesday. Levels are considered strong but other
storms have been more severe. There are two higher levels of radiation
on NOAA's storm scale — severe and extreme — Biesecker said. Still, this storm is the strongest for radiation since May 2005.
The radiation — in the form of protons — came flying out of the sun at 93 million miles per hour.
"The
whole volume of space between here and Jupiter is just filled with
protons and you just don't get rid of them like that," Biesecker said.
That's why the effects will stick around for a couple days.
NASA's
flight surgeons and solar experts examined the solar flare's expected
effects and decided that the six astronauts on the International Space
Station do not have to do anything to protect themselves from the
radiation, spokesman Rob Navias said.
A
solar eruption is followed by a one-two-three punch, said Antti
Pulkkinen, a physicist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland
and Catholic University.
First comes electromagnetic radiation, followed by radiation in the form of protons.
Then,
finally the coronal mass ejection — that's the plasma from the sun
itself — hits. Usually that travels at about 1 or 2 million miles per
hour, but this storm is particularly speedy and is shooting out at 4
million miles per hour, Biesecker said.
It's
the plasma that causes much of the noticeable problems on Earth, such
as electrical grid outages. In 1989, a solar storm caused a massive
blackout in Quebec. It can also pull the northern lights further south.
But
this coronal mass ejection seems likely to be only moderate, with a
chance for becoming strong, Biesecker said. The worst of the storm is
likely to go north of Earth.
And
unlike last October, when a freak solar storm caused auroras to be seen
as far south as Alabama, the northern lights aren't likely to dip too
far south this time, Biesecker said. Parts of New England, upstate New
York, northern Michigan, Montana and the Pacific Northwest could see an
aurora but not until Tuesday evening, he said.
For
the past several years the sun had been quiet, almost too quiet. Part
of that was the normal calm part of the sun's 11-year cycle of activity.
Last year, scientists started to speculate that the sun was going into
an unusually quiet cycle that seems to happen maybe once a century or
so.
Now that super-quiet cycle doesn't seem as likely, Biesecker said.
Scientists watching the sun with a new NASA satellite launched in 2010 — during the sun's quiet period — are excited.
"We haven't had anything like this for a number of years," Pulkkinen said. "It's kind of special."SOURCE BY YAHOO.COM