Video: Solar Storm To Lash Earth Until Wednesday

By ⋅ January 24, 2012 ⋅ Post a comment
Solar Flare (Photo: NASA/SDO and the AIA Consortium/Edited by J. Major)

M9 class solar flare, Jan 23, 2012 (Photo: NASA/SDO and the AIA Consortium/Edited by J. Major)

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Our Geo Quiz starts 93 million miles away: on the surface of the Sun.

That’s where a solar eruption happened over the weekend.

It’s described as an immense blast of plasma and radiation streaming out from the sun.

That plasma has been traveling through space at about four million miles an hour, and it reportedly reached our planet on Tuesday.

Scientists are on the lookout for any effects of this storm here on Earth.

The question is, what kind of storm are we talking about?

The answer is a geomagnetic storm.

It’s a phenomenon caused by a solar wind shock wave that interacts with the Earth’s magnetic field.

The result can be Northern Lights displays and possible disruption of satellite communications around the world. Anchor Lisa Mullins gets details from Doug Biesecker at the NOAA’s (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) Space Weather Prediction Center in Colorado.



Solar Dynamics Observatory captured the flare, shown here in teal as that is the color typically used to show light in the 131 Angstrom wavelength, a wavelength in which it is easy to view solar flares. The flare began at 10:38 PM ET on Jan. 22, peaked at 10:59 PM and ended at 11:34 PM.


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Discussion

2 comments for “Video: Solar Storm To Lash Earth Until Wednesday”

  • http://www.facebook.com/EmmanuelVon Emmanuel Von

    Wow once our planets magnetic field is gone we will wipe out if one of those sun solar storms hits us.

  • http://profiles.yahoo.com/u/J5R44RUEYN3YRRUNMWIP3X2TSE kate s

    Historically these ‘blobs’ from the sun are local.  Currently they are ‘small caliber.’ Think of our current compression as allowing the sun to blast us with a load of rock salt instead of serious ammo.  The reason NASA says storms and not EOT is that the sunspot record reads like a 3D photo album.  And we havent added any new pics since Shoemaker Levy impacted Jupiter.