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Huge, potentially disruptive sunspot will swing round to face Earth this weekend
.livescience.com ^ | 08/05/2022 | y Jamie Carter

Posted on 08/06/2022 9:24:46 AM PDT by BenLurkin

The spot is so big it's changing the way the sun vibrates, according to spaceweather.com. If the dark spot hurls a blob of plasma at Earth, it could disrupt our magnetic field, affecting GPS and communication satellites orbiting close to Earth as well as airplane navigation systems. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Space Weather Prediction Center issued a forecast for an unsettled geomagnetic field around Earth on Aug. 6 and 7, which could means auroras, though whether it becomes a full-blown solar storm is not yet clear.

The telltale vibrational changes showed up in a helioseismic map near the sun's southeastern limb.

Solar flares can heat clouds of electrically charged particles from the sun's upper atmosphere to enormous temperatures, which can launch gigantic blobs of plasma at Earth known as, coronal mass ejections (CMEs).

The sun has an 11 year cycle during which its activity waxes and wanes, with a distinct "solar maximum" and "solar minimum" when the number of sunspots are most and least numerous, respectively. The sun is now headed for a solar maximum in 2024 or 2025. Lately, the sun has been more active than NASA predicted. CMEs are normal behavior for sunspots at this point of the sunspot cycle...

(Excerpt) Read more at livescience.com ...


TOPICS: Astronomy; Science
KEYWORDS: astronomy; aurora; carringtonevent; catastrophism; cme; coronalmassejection; humor; science; sida; sunspot; sunspots
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To: BenLurkin

I hope fishing will be good next week


41 posted on 08/06/2022 7:57:57 PM PDT by VastRWCon (Fake News")
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To: BenLurkin

Oh noes! We’s all goin to die! 😮


42 posted on 08/07/2022 5:58:16 AM PDT by Georgia Girl 2 (The only purpose of a pistol is to fight your way back to the rifle you should never have dropped)
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