Transcript The Sun, our enemy! - EST - European Shared Treasure

The Sun, our enemy!
CME Cocoon (March 9, 2007)
The Sun, our enemy!
Coronal Mass Ejections
Prominences
Sunspots
Sunspot cycle
Sunspot history and misteries:
the Maunder minimum, a little ice age
Solar cycle prediction
STEREO
a mission to understand CME
(solar terrestrial relations observatories)
Sun attacks!
Earth´s surveillance police
Speed:653 Km/s - density 3.98 p/cm3
July 14, 2000 - The Bastille day
July 14, 2000 -- This morning
NOAA satellites and the orbiting
Solar and Heliospheric
Observatory (SOHO) recorded one
of the most powerful solar flares
of the current solar cycle. Space
weather forecasters had been
predicting for days that an intense
flare might erupt from the large
sunspot group 9077, and today one
did.
"Energetic protons from the flare
arrived at Earth about 15 minutes
after the eruption," says Gary
Heckman, a space weather
forecaster at the NOAA Space
Environment Center. "This
triggered a category S3 radiation
storm."
http://www.spaceweather.com
http://www.sec.noaa.gov/SWN/
http://www.spaceweathercenter.org/
http://sohowww.nascom.nasa.gov/spaceweather/
Our natural shield:
the Magnetosphere
Our natural shield:
the Magnetosphere
War signs on the shield:
Van Allen belts
Waterloo!
Waterloo!
The HydroQuebec Blackout of March 1989
On March 13, 1989, at 2:44 am, a transformer failure on one of the main power transmission
lines in the HydroQuebec system precipitated a catastrophic collapse of the entire power grid. The
string of events that produced the collapse took only 90 seconds from start to finish. There was no
time for any meaningful intervention. The transformer failure was a direct consequence of ground
induced currents from a space weather disturbance high in the atmosphere. 6 million people lost
electrical power for 9 or more hours. The space weather disturbance that produced this devastation
was a great magnetic storm. Great magnetic storms are awesome disturbances in the near-Earth
space environment that occur relatively rarely. The last five occurred in February 1986, March
1989, March 1991, November 1991 and May 1992. The frequency of large and great storms
increases markedly as we enter the maximum in the solar activity cycle.
After the bombing
Atmosphere erosion
Electric ”storms” on earth
Climate change
Dec. 8, 1998: Residents of the far north who saw a massive display of the aurora borealis
in late September were also staring through an invisible fountain of gas being accelerated
into space by a powerful bubble of solar wind, which pumped about 200 gigawatts of
electrical power into the Earth.
At the same time, a special space weather research satellite was taking measurements
showing that solar events can directly affect our outer atmosphere.
Solar particles injuries
Space Weather
on Mars
Future human explorers of Mars can
leave their umbrellas back on Earth,
but perhaps they shouldn't forget
their Geiger counters!
Alien planets have alien weather.Take Mars,
for example. A morning weather report on the
Red Planet might sound like this:
"Good morning, Martians! It looks like
another solar storm heading our way. An Xclass solar flare exploded this morning and
proton counts have soared 1000-fold. More of
the deadly particles are en route, so don't
leave shelter today without your radiation
suit!"
"Coming up next, the sunspot report, right
after this word from our sponsor: Levi's
Relaxed Fit LeadPants."
South Atlantic Anomaly
South Atlantic Anomaly
The Phantom Torso
An unusual space traveler named Fred is
orbiting Earth aboard the International Space
Station. His job? To keep astronauts safe from
space radiation.
Fred has no arms. He has no legs. His job is keeping
astronauts safe.
Fred is the Phantom Torso, an
approximately 95-pound, 3 foot high mockup of a
human upper body. Beneath Fred's artificial skin are
real bones. Fred's organs -- the heart, brain, thyroid,
colon and so on -- are made of a special plastic that
matches as closely as possible the density of human
tissue.
Fred, who's spending the next four months on board
the International Space Station (ISS), will measure
the amount of radiation to which astronauts are
exposed. High-energy particles that pass through the
human body can disrupt the way cells function.
Although no astronaut has ever been diagnosed with
space radiation sickness, excessive exposure could
lead to health problems.
Flashes from nowhere
To get to the moon we must venture beyond the electromagnetic shield of the Earth
into dangerous waters, waters we have only just begun to chart. Therein lies our
challenge. Beyond this shield we are subject to the full impact of cosmic radiation,
lethal to life as we know it.
The Earth's magnetic field, a product of its liquid core, spreads from pole to pole like a
giant belt, extending from 400 to 40,000 miles above the planet's surface. Trapped within
this magnetic belt are charged particles, both electrons and ions, the nuclei of atoms
stripped of their electrons.
Raining down on this electromagnetic shield are ions of both solar and galactic origin.
Some 85% of these ions are protons, the nuclei of hydrogen atoms. About 13% are
nuclei of helium, known as alpha particles, our next most common atom. The remaining
2% is composed of the nuclei of heavier atoms including oxygen, nitrogen and iron, all
traveling at tremendous speeds and known as the "heavies". Those of galactic origin
have been brought to near light speed by powerful events such as supernovae and
have energy levels some 10,000 times those of solar origin.
Life as we know it developed within this protected zone known as Earth. Now, on the
way to the moon and to Mars, we are beginning to venture out beyond our shield.
Protection from these extraordinarily energetic particles will be an immense
challenge for they pass through the walls of a spacecraft as if the walls did not exist.
Their impact on the human body is quite predictable.
Flashes from nowhere
In 1971 when Apollo 14 was some 100,000 miles out on its journey to the moon, the crew
became aware of curious light flashes, especially noted in the darker recesses of their spacecraft
and during scheduled sleep periods. By then, the Earth had receded in size to that of a large marble
held at arm's length and they were well outside our planet's protective shield. Because they felt fine
and did not wish to upset "ground", the crew elected to make their report several days later on their
return leg of the mission.
On the basis of this observation, "ground" was quick to realize the likelihood that cosmic radiation
was responsible for this light flash phenomenon and quickly conceived the Biostack
experimental packages carried on Apollo 16 and 17. These bioscience studies, in which
emulsion plates sandwiched such specimens as bacteria, crustaceans and insects in various
stages of development, helped greatly to reveal the flux and energy levels of these energetic
particles zooming through the spacecraft walls with ease and demonstrated clearly the biologic
consequences when hits occurred in susceptible tissues, especially during embryogenesis.
In 1973 "Bill" Pogue, commander of Skylab 3, was the first astronaut to experience the now
infamous South Atlantic Anomaly (SAA) and attempt to measure its unusual radiation levels.
Roughly over the Easter Brazilian coastline, our 400-mile high electromagnetic belt circling the
Earth is pulled downwards by a mysterious force to within 100 miles of the Earth's surface. As a
result, all spacecraft launched into a relatively high orbit such as our three Skylab missions
must pass through this zone of intense radiation several times each day.
Flashes from nowhere
In attempting to quantify this anomaly by "keying into his mike" with each light flash for the
benefit of ground, Pogue at times could not key fast enough to record all hits. From what we
know today, each flash represented a cosmic ray hit to the visual cortex of the brain, just as a
neurosurgeon can induce such retinal flashes by direct stimulation with a needle electrode.
Jerry Linenger, in summarizing his 6-month adventure with fellow cosmonauts onboard MIR
in 1996, reported that at times during passage through the SAA, sleep was impossible. On
some occasions he even tried moving his sleeping platform so as to reposition his head behind lead
storage batteries and other places offering thicker spacecraft walls but little benefit was obtained
and when finally the SAA was passed the flashes were temporarily over.
Today on the International Space Station the situation is no different when passing through
the dreaded SAA. I say dreaded because now we know that these flashes of light are recording
hits by cosmic radiation directly on the brain and, as yet, we know very little about their possible
long-term consequences to astronaut health.
We do know that spacecraft walls as currently constructed present no significant barrier to
galactic cosmic radiation. If an occasional aluminum atom within the spacecraft wall is hit by one
of these cosmic darts, the result is a shower of secondary radiation within the cabin from
"daughter" breakdown products of aluminum and associated gamma radiation.
The challenge: Space Exploration
Radiation Concerns
- current astronaut limit 50 rem/year
- ISS concern is trapped protons from South Atlantic Anomaly
- Moon and Mars concerns: galactic cosmic radiation and solar
particle events
- 2 major effects of chronic long-term exposure are neoplasia and
lenticular cataracts
Future directions in research
- determine carcinogenic effects of GCR exposure and high-energy heavy
charged particle exposure
-improved characterization of GCR environment and solar cycle variations
- further investigations in shielding options chemopreventive strategies.
- besides shielding as 1st line of defense, chemoprevention strategies
also effective.
Galactic cosmic rays: gamma rays
Galactic cosmic rays
Cosmic rays blamed for global warming
By Richard Gray, Science Correspondent, Sunday Telegraph
Man-made climate change may be happening at a far slower rate
than has been claimed, according to controversial new
research.Scientists say that cosmic rays from outer space play a
far greater role in changing the Earth's climate than global
warming experts previously thought.
In a book, to be published this week, they claim that fluctuations
in the number of cosmic rays hitting the atmosphere directly
alter the amount of cloud covering the planet.
High levels of cloud cover blankets the Earth and reflects radiated
heat from the Sun back out into space, causing the planet to cool.
Henrik Svensmark, a weather scientist at the Danish National Space
Centre who led the team behind the research, believes that the planet
is experiencing a natural period of low cloud cover due to fewer
cosmic rays entering the atmosphere.
This, he says, is responsible for much of the global warming we are
experiencing.
The poet`s impression: Themis
THEMIS is a mission to investigate what causes auroras in the Earth's
atmosphere to dramatically change from slowly shimmering waves of light to
wildly shifting streaks of color. Discovering what causes auroras to change will
provide scientists with important details on how the planet's magnetosphere
works and the important Sun-Earth connection.
Soho artists