Long-term power cuts, destruction of electronic devices and increased cancer risk for aeroplane passengers are all potential effects of the Earth being hit by a powerful solar eruption.
Space Exploration
Jun 23, 2017
6
490
Our ever-changing sun continuously shoots solar material into space. The grandest such events are massive clouds that erupt from the sun, called coronal mass ejections, or CMEs. These solar storms often come first with some ...
Space Exploration
May 8, 2017
0
521
New research on solar storms finds that they not only can cause regions of excessive electrical charge in the upper atmosphere above Earth's poles, they also can do the exact opposite: cause regions that are nearly depleted ...
Space Exploration
Apr 11, 2017
6
419
Proxima Centauri, the closest star to the Earth (only 4.28 light-years away) is getting a lot of attention these days. It hosts a planet, Proxima Cen b, whose mass is about 1.3 Earth-mass (though it could be larger, depending ...
Astronomy
Apr 3, 2017
4
389
Our constantly-changing sun sometimes erupts with bursts of light, solar material, or ultra-fast energized particles—collectively, these events contribute to space weather. In a study published Jan. 30, 2017, in Space Weather, ...
Space Exploration
Mar 2, 2017
0
32
Powerful solar storms can charge up the soil in frigid, permanently shadowed regions near the lunar poles, and may possibly produce "sparks" that could vaporize and melt the soil, perhaps as much as meteoroid impacts, according ...
Space Exploration
Jan 6, 2017
35
1086
A team led by the University of Colorado Boulder has found the mechanism behind the sudden onset of a "natural thermostat" in Earth's upper atmosphere that dramatically cools the air after it has been heated by violent solar ...
Space Exploration
Dec 14, 2016
0
17
Caltech applied physicists have experimentally simulated the sun's magnetic fields to create a realistic coronal loop in a lab.
Space Exploration
Nov 7, 2016
28
272
Launched 10 years ago, on Oct. 25, 2006, the twin spacecraft of NASA's STEREO mission – short for Solar and Terrestrial Relations Observatory – have given us unprecedented views of the sun, including the first-ever simultaneous ...
Space Exploration
Oct 26, 2016
0
156
From our vantage point on the ground, the sun seems like a still ball of light, but in reality, it teems with activity. Eruptions called solar flares and coronal mass ejections explode in the sun's hot atmosphere, the corona, ...
Space Exploration
May 10, 2016
4
402
