A massive solar storm in July 2012 was more intense than thought—and it blasted right through the Earth’s orbit. Luckily for us, we were on the other side of the sun, thus missing the chaos completely. But if that storm had hit this beautiful little blue marble in space? "The solar bursts would have enveloped Earth in magnetic fireworks matching the largest magnetic storm ever reported on Earth, the so-called Carrington event of 1859," Science Daily reports.
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Millions of charged particles are rushing toward earth after a gigantic solar flare on Tuesday. Bad news for NASA’s latest mission, but good news for sky-watchers: Those charged particles also collide with the earth’s atmosphere to produce the ethereal-looking northern lights.
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Alt-week peels back the covers on some of the more curious sci-tech stories from the last seven days.
Some weeks things get a little science heavy, sometimes it’s a little on their weird side, and there’s usually a bit of space travel involved, but these week’s trend seems to be “mind-blowing.” Want to grow carrots on the Moon? We got you covered. How about bringing a 50,000 year-old ancient human back to life? Sure, no biggie. Oh but what about a solar eruption that reaches some half a million miles in height. We’ve got the video. No, really we have. Mind blown? This is alt-week.
Filed under: Misc, Science, Alt
Alt-week 9.8.12: Moon farming, self powered health monitors and bringing a 50,000 year-old girl to life originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 08 Sep 2012 17:30:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Radio telescope operators have as much of a problem coping with the avalanche of data as getting that information in the first place. The Victoria University of Wellington is all too aware and is leaning on IBM for a powerful (if very tongue-tying) iDataPlex dx360 M3 compute cluster to sift through the deluge at the upcoming Murchison Widefield Array. Combined, the 4,096 array antennas probing deep space and solar atmospherics will have the Xeon-based cluster tackling signal data to the tune of 8GB per second, and about 50TB per day — that’s a Nexus 7‘s worth of astronomy faster than you can sneeze, folks. A 10Gbps network connection will feed the results to Perth to save scientists a roughly 435-mile trek. Construction is still in mid-stride, but the $51 million Australian ($52.2 million US) being spent on the Murchison array may be worthwhile if it helps solve the riddles of star formation and solar flares.
Filed under: Science
IBM cluster powers Murchison Widefield Array’s radio telescope, answers mysteries of the universe faster than ever (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 24 Jul 2012 20:54:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Yesterday, a solar flare set off from the sun, launching a coronal mass ejection (CME) heading toward Earth, and it’s set to make an appearance in our fair skies this Saturday. While the wave of charged particles headed our way is much weaker than the most powerful solar flares (like the X28+ gust from 2003), it ranks in the extreme (X) class, and it’s already caused a wave of UV radiation that interfered with radio signals, not to mention an uptake in solar protons swarming around Earth. According to SpaceWeather.com, the flare could cause some geomagnetic storms, which could endanger satellites and astronauts in space in addition to possibly interfering with communication signals. That (relatively minor) risk aside, those of you living up north could be in for a pretty sweet light show, so check the skies for the aurora borealis.
Filed under: Science
‘Extreme’ class solar flare heading toward Earth, hopefully bringing nothing but auroras originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 13 Jul 2012 16:57:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Alt-week peels back the covers on some of the more curious sci-tech stories from the last seven days.
This week we swing by some superhero news, look at how solar panels might shape up in the future, explore a Lego forest and see how to grab dark matter just using some household gold and strands of DNA. Not only that, we discover how the sun likes to celebrate the fourth of July with its own firework display. This is alt / week
Continue reading Alt-week 7.8.2012: Solar flares, trapping dark matter, and life-sized Lego trees
Alt-week 7.8.2012: Solar flares, trapping dark matter, and life-sized Lego trees originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 08 Jul 2012 16:30:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Permalink | Technabob, Space, PhysOrg, Wired, Wired (2), Lego Festival | Email this | Comments
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