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The closing will take effect Friday “at the close of business,” CME said in a statement, noting that no coronavirus cases have been reported at the Chicago Board of Trade trading floor. This would make CME the first major U.S. exchange to close a trading floor due to concerns over the coronavirus. CME Group announced Wednesday night it will close its Chicago trading floor in a precautionary move due to the coronavirus outbreak. The closing will take effect Friday “at the close of business,” CME said in a statement, noting that no coronavirus cases have been reported at the Chicago Board of Trade trading...

That fiery ball in space does settle down every 11 years or so. It’s called the solar minimum, and the Space Weather Prediction Center indicates that this phase of low sunspot activity will continue for a few more years. During a solar minimum, the sun has very few sunspots on its surface, which some speculate could affect the earth’s weather. In contrast, a solar maximum has more sunspots on its surface and solar activity is high. “Usually a solar minimum lasts about a year or so, but then sometimes it can last for decades or even longer,” said Prof. Jason...

In November 2018, as seen from Earth and certain spacecraft, the sun seemed to be calm. But it wasn't: The sun was experiencing what scientists call a "stealth" coronal mass ejection. And conveniently, NASA's Parker Solar Probe was completing its first close pass behind the sun, putting its instruments in a perfect position to see what was happening on Nov. 11 and 12 during this usually cryptic event. "If you've ever seen a coronal mass ejection image, you normally see a lot of activity in these images," Kelly Korreck, a solar physicist at the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory, said during a...

Daily observations of the number of sunspots since 1 January 1900 according to Solar Influences Data Analysis Center (SIDC). The thin blue line indicates the daily sunspot number, while the dark blue line indicates the running annual average. The recent low sunspot activity is clearly reflected in the recent low values for the total solar irradiance. Data source: WDC-SILSO, Royal Observatory of Belgium, Brussels. Last day shown: 31 October 2019. Last diagram update: 1 November 2019. [Courtesy climate4you.com] *Deep solar minimum on the verge of an historic milestone* Overview The sun is currently in the midst of a deep solar...

Professor Valentina Zharkova’s recent paper ‘Oscillations of the Baseline of Solar Magnetic Field and Solar Irradiance on a Millennial Timescale’ has been accepted for publishing in Nature. It confirms a Grand Solar Minimum (GSM) from 2020 to 2055, as all four magnetic fields of the sun go out of phase, while also suggesting centuries of natural warming post-Minima. Zharkova’s team’s expanded ‘double dynamo’ calculations match-up almost perfectly with the timelines of past Grand Minimas: the Maunder Minimum (1645–1715), Wolf minimum (1300–1350), Oort minimum (1000–1050), Homer minimum (800–900 BC); as well as with the past Grand Maximas: the Medieval Warm Period...

...why is its outer atmosphere hotter than its fiery surface? University of Michigan researchers believe they have the answer, and hope to prove it with help from NASA's Parker Solar Probe. In roughly two years, the probe will be the first manmade craft to enter the zone surrounding the sun where heating looks fundamentally different than what has previously been seen in space. This will allow them to test their theory that the heating is due to small magnetic waves travelling back and forth within the zone... Such high temperatures cause the solar atmosphere to swell to many times the...

Eruptions from the face of our star are called ‘prominences’ and cause vast amounts of superhot gas to shoot into space, often forming beautiful loops on the solar surface. During the solar minimum, the number of flares and sunspots is dramatically reduced. When the sun leaps back from its minimum after roughly 11 years, we’re likely to see more and more ferocious explosions on the sun. Nasa warned: ‘After our Sun passes the current Solar Minimum, solar activity like eruptive prominences are expected to become more common over the next few years.’ The space agency has just released dramatic pictures...

15,000 to 11,000 years ago Earth experienced a series of climatic fluctuations... there was a short cold spell, known as the Younger Dryas, before the final warming and... end of the last ice age. Based on Greenland ice core data, the Younger Dryas began... 10,900 B.C., and its ending... circa 9700 B.C. and may have occurred within an incredible three years... I once hypothesized that comets were responsible. A comet hitting the land or a shallow ocean, or exploding above the land's surface, scattering dust and debris into the atmosphere, would cause global cooling... This pattern fits well with the...

Scientists with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration say an “extreme” solar flare has been detected and while Earth appears to be in the bull’s-eye, exactly which part of the planet will see the biggest impact isn’t yet known. Such phenomenon can disrupt power grids, radio transmissions and other electronics, and in a worst-case scenario could actually take such systems down, perhaps for extended periods. Officials with the federal agency said the flare is near the center of the sun and happened at 1:45 EDT Wednesday.

A similar process is playing out with the probe's speed: At the peak of its first two perihelions, the spacecraft traveled at about 213,200 mph (343,000 km/h), also breaking records, but future close approaches will see the Parker Solar Probe moving still faster. These close grazes are anxious times for scientists and engineers on the mission because the spacecraft is out of communication with Earth for several days before and after each perihelion. The radio silence is designed to let the spacecraft focus on keeping its instruments tucked safely behind the thick shield that protects them from the incredible heat...

Powerful Solar Storm Likely Detonated Sea Mines During Vietnam War By Brett Carter | November 9, 2018 3:46 pm Solar flares captured on sun. (Credit: NASA/SDO)On Aug. 4, 1972, the crew of a U.S. Task Force 77 aircraft flying near a naval minefield in the waters off Hon La observed 20 to 25 explosions over about 30 seconds. They also witnessed an additional 25 to 30 mud spots in the waters nearby.Destructor sea mines had been deployed here during Operation Pocket Money, a mining campaign launched in 1972 against principal North Vietnamese ports.There was no obvious reason why the mines...

An intense blast of high-energy protons from the Sun pummelled the Earth in about 660 BC and left a distinct record of cosmogenic nuclei in the Greenland ice sheet. The discovery was made by an international team of scientists who say the event was one most powerful solar storms known to have struck Earth. The team calculates that the storm was about ten times more intense than any event that has occurred in the past 70 years. “If that solar storm had occurred today, it could have had severe effects on our hi-tech society”, says Raimund Muscheler of Sweden’s University...

In November 2016, astronomers watched a young star some 1,500 light-years away from Earth belch out an explosion of plasma and radiation that was roughly 10 billion times more powerful than any flare ever seen leaving Earth's sun. This sudden stellar eruption may be the most luminous known flare ever released by a young star — and it could help scientists better understand the still-murky process of star formation. "Observing flares around the youngest stars is new territory and it is giving us key insights into the physical conditions of these systems," Steve Mairs, an astronomer and lead author of the study, said...

In our last post, we looked at seasonal forecasts that have long been calling for a cold late winter in the central and eastern United States based on various signals, including stratospheric warming and the El Niño/Southern Oscillation. A winter storm dubbed Harper is the first salvo in this transition. This weekend, Harper will bring very heavy snows and widespread ice across large parts of the Northeast. See weather.com for frequent updates on Harper. There’s another player in the seasonal prediction game, and it’s one that many forecasters have long derided or dismissed: the 11-year cycle of solar activity. In...

After last month's impressive G3 geomagnetic storm caused by a coronal mass ejection, it is time to welcome back a familiar solar feature on our nearest star today. We have a small coronal hole facing our planet today. The high speed solar wind stream flowing from this coronal hole will likely take about three days to arrive at Earth which means the solar wind stream should impact Earth somewhere this Friday, 7 September. Active geomagnetic conditions are likely which is great news for northern hemisphere high latitude sky watchers who finally enjoy proper dark nights again.

Tiny gap between private trade confirmations and public data feed can be exploited to detect market moves, critics say Five years ago, the world’s largest exchange operator vowed to fix a flaw in its systems that allowed high-speed traders to infer the direction of the futures market a fraction of a second before everyone else. Now, the defect is back at CME Group Inc.,traders say. And some allege it is yielding rich profits for ultrafast firms at the expense of ordinary investors. The problem arises from the two ways that CME distributes information about a trade. One is the private...

Just had the largest X-ray Flare in history while the biggest Hurricane in history is in the Atlantic. CME from previous X-5 Flare is going to hit Earth tonight around 5-6 PM EDT. The initial estimate of the arrival of the X-10 Flare is 6-7 AM EDT on 8 September 2017. This could be a repeat of the 1859 Carrington Event. We could be doing Irma without electronics or electricity.

His only qualification was giving lots of money to the Clinton Foundation A few weeks ago, ABC broke the story of Raj Fernando, a big-money donor to the Clinton Foundation - as well as past campaigns of both Obama and Hillary - and how he managed to land a spot on the prestigious International Security Advisory Board. That’s a board generally populated by former generals, governors and top diplomats, who advise the Secretary of State on international security matters. Lots of eyebrows were raised when a securities trader with no background in any of this was introduced as a new...

The Solar storm of August 28 to September 2, 1859—known as the Carrington Event—was a powerful geomagnetic solar storm during solar cycle 10 (1855–1867). A solar coronal mass ejection(CME) hit Earth's magnetosphere and induced one of the largest geomagnetic storms on record. The flare traveled directly toward Earth, taking 17.6 hours to make the 150 million kilometer (93 million mile) journey. It is believed that the relatively high speed of this CME (typical CMEs take several days to arrive at Earth) was made possible by a prior CME, perhaps the cause of the large aurora event on August 29, that...