Free Republic

In November 2021, the Parker Solar Probe skimmed within a more-than-hair-singeing 8.5 million kilometers (5.3 million miles) of the Sun, a feat enabling it to detect the fine structure of the solar wind as it gusted tons of charged particles out into the Solar System through a hole in the Sun's corona, or atmosphere.The probe's readings give us the closest look yet at how the fast solar wind is generated, suggesting that a specific type of magnetic reconnection is what drives this powerful force of nature, according to a team of physicists led by Stuart Bale of the University of...

Filaments In Space - MeerKAT data of the orientations of all the filaments, color-coded with position angles. (Farhad Yusef-Zadeh/Northwestern University) *********************************************************** An investigation into the mystery filaments hanging in space around the heart of the Milky Way has turned up an entirely new population of them, aligned along the galactic plane and pointing in the direction of the galactic center. The magnetized strands are likely the remnants of an outflow from the supermassive black hole Sagittarius A* interacting with the surrounding gas a few million years ago, says astrophysicist Farhad Yusef-Zadeh of Northwestern University. Although Sgr A* is pretty quiet...

Scientists reveal the potential for massive, and potentially destructive, eruptions from the sun. On May 1, 2019, the star next door erupted. In a matter of seconds, Proxima Centauri, the nearest star to our sun, got thousands of times brighter than usual — up to 14,000 times brighter in the ultraviolet range of the spectrum. The radiation burst was strong enough to split any water molecules that might exist on the temperate, Earth-sized planet orbiting that star; repeated blasts of that magnitude might have stripped the planet of any atmosphere. It would be bad news if the Earth’s sun ever...

Exit, Lori Lightfoot; enter, Brandon Johnson — and the song remains the same. Or does it?It’s hard to imagine conditions in Chicago getting more desperate than under former Mayor Lori Lightfoot, but new Mayor Brandon Johnson — in office less than a week, as I write — is already doing his damnedest to make everyday life and business survival in one of the country’s most iconic cities even worse.But imagine, we must.As reported by The New York Post, the iconic Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME) opened in 1898, only 27 years after the infamous Great Chicago Fire. Proud Chicagoans heralded the...

The Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME) has been operating in the Loop since 1898, just 27 years after the Great Chicago Fire. The exchange was part of the city’s rebirth and helped establish Chicago as a financial hub. Now, we see the opposite of rebirth with Chicago’s population shrinking. And the $66 billion CME may not be around to help with future renewal: The company has rewritten the terms of its lease so it can leave the city if politicians pursue “ill-conceived” public policy. “We’re in a very strong position,” CME CEO Terry Duffy said in a recent interview. “If we...

A planet sized hole has ripped through the surface of the sun letting out intense 1.8 million mph winds which could threaten our entire planet by the end of the week. The gaping hole, which stretches 20 times the size of the Earth, is the second to appear in a week and has sent solar winds hurling towards our planet within the next 24 hours. If the winds make impact with our planet, the Earth’s magnetic field, satellites, and most technologies would cease to work leading to a potential worldwide power cut. The first hole appeared March 23, and triggered...

“We only have 12 years to save the planet,” we may hear. “Man may only have 10 years left if we don’t ________” (fill in the doomsayer prescription). The truth, though, is that we don’t know if humanity has still one year or six months — or less. And this reality was brought home by something that occurred March 12. It was on that day, not two weeks ago, that there was a huge solar eruption. It was perhaps 100 times more powerful than the Carrington Event in 1859, which rendered inoperable a good part of the “Victorian Internet”: telegraph...

A little over a week ago, on Sunday, March 12, a near-catastrophic event occurred that could have wrecked the lives of everyone reading this: A Powerful Solar Eruption on Far Side of Sun Still Impacted Earth. A massive eruption of solar material, known as a coronal mass ejection or CME, was detected escaping from the Sun at 11:36 p.m. EDT on March 12, 2023. The CME erupted from the side of the Sun opposite Earth. This was a replay of the Carrington event of September 1, 1859: Suddenly, [British astronomer Richard Christian] Carrington spotted what he described as “two patches...

A huge solar storm will strike Earth on Thursday, potentially disrupting power grids and pushing the aurora as far south as Michigan and Maine. Alerts issued by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration early Thursday morning ranked as a K-5 index (out of 9). A ranking of five or above is needed for the administration to issue an alert for upcoming solar storms. Minor impacts to satellites, power grid fluctuations and a visible aurora were noted by NOAA. The highest geomagnetic storm category predicted thus far is a G2 storm on Feb. 18, which is considered “moderate” by NOAA’s rating...

The Sun has always fascinated astronomers. And now, a new development has baffled scientists. A huge part of the Sun broke off of its surface and created a tornado-like swirl around its North Pole. Though scientists are trying to analyse how this occurred, the video of the development has stunned the space community.

For all that the Sun is a ubiquitous and vital part of our lives, a lot about it remains baffling. And now it's done something decidedly peculiar. Material from a filament of plasma erupting from the Sun's surface broke away and appeared to form a crown-like vortex over the solar north pole. Further analysis will be required to determine whether or not this is what actually occurred. For now, scientists are saying that they've not quite seen anything like it – and the footage itself is undoubtedly spectacular. olar shenanigans are not entirely unexpected currently. Our star is ramping up...

A huge filament of solar plasma has broken off the sun's surface and is circling its north pole like a vortex of powerful winds, but scientists have no clue what caused it. Scott McIntosh, a solar physicist and deputy director at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado, told Space.com that while he has never seen a vortex like this, something odd is happening at the sun's 55 degree latitudes with clockwork regularity once every solar cycle, the 11-year period characterized by an ebb and flow in the generation of sunspots and eruptions. The prominence...that McIntosh describes as...

Billions of light years away, there is a giant ball of hot gas that is brighter than hundreds of billions of suns. It is hard to imagine something so bright. So what is it? Astronomers are not really sure, but they have a couple theories. They think it may be a very rare type of supernova — called a magnetar — but one so powerful that it pushes the energy limits of physics, or in other words, the most powerful supernova ever seen as of today. This object is so luminous that astronomers are having a really difficult time finding...

More than 2,600 years ago, strange red clouds over Mesopotamia drew the attention of soothsayers across the land. Their royal reports have now helped confine the date of a severe solar storm that washed over the planet. Based on readings of carbon isotopes trapped in tree rings deposited around that time, astronomers already suspected there was a period of intense solar activity around the middle of the 7th century BC... And it seemed like it had pretty far-ranging effects. Earlier in the year, geologists reported similar signs of a storm from around this period in traces of radioactive particles buried...

X1.9 Solar Flare January 9 2023 An X1.9 class solar flare flashes on the left edge of the Sun on January 9, 2023. This image was captured by NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory and shows a blend of light from the 171, 131, and 304 angstrom wavelengths. Credit: NASA/GSFC/SDO ******************************************************** The Sun emitted a strong solar flare, peaking at 1:50 p.m. EST on January 9, 2023. Imagery of the event was captured by NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory, which constantly watches the Sun. Solar flares are intense explosions of energy that can disrupt radio communications, damage power grids, and affect navigation signals....

A mysterious shock wave in a gust of solar wind has sent a barrage of high-speed material smashing into Earth’s magnetic field, opening up a crack in the magnetosphere. The barrage of plasma could lead to a geomagnetic storm today (Dec. 19), according to spaceweather.com. The shockwave’s origins aren’t exactly known, but scientists think it could have come from a coronal mass ejection launched by the sunspot AR3165, a fizzing region on the sun’s surface that released a flurry of at least eight solar flares on Dec. 14, causing a brief radio blackout over the Atlantic Ocean. Sunspots are areas...

In December 2021, a massive blast of energy hit the Earth’s atmosphere. Its source was a gamma-ray burst – one of the most powerful explosions in the universe – but not just any gamma ray burst. One scientist said at the time that the event – named GRB 211211A – “looks unlike anything else we have seen before The event was detected in December 2021 by NASA’s Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory and the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope. The gamma-ray burst was significantly longer than average, which might normally suggest it had been produced by the collapse of a massive star...

The coronal hole is a gigantic solar gulf stretching across the sun’s center. Coronal holes are areas in the sun's upper atmosphere where our star's electrified gas (or plasma) is less hot and dense than in other regions, which makes them appear black in contrast. Around these holes,the sun's magnetic field lines, instead of looping back in on themselves, point outward into space, beaming solar material outwards at up to 1.8 million mph (2.9 million km/h)... This barrage of energetic solar debris, mostly consisting of electrons, protons and alpha particles, is absorbed by Earth’s magnetic field, which becomes compressed, triggering...

On Nov. 3 a solar storm caused a temporary crack in Earth's magnetic field. The resulting hole enabled energetic particles to penetrate deep into the planet's atmosphere and set off extremely rare pink auroras. An explosion of extremely rare pink auroras recently lit up the night sky above Norway after a solar storm slammed into Earth and ripped a hole in the planet's magnetic field. The breach enabled highly energetic solar particles to penetrate deeper into the atmosphere than normal, triggering the unusual colored lights. The stunning light show was spotted Nov. 3 by a tour group led by Markus...

A medium-intensity solar flare hit the Earth's magnetosphere in the early hours of Monday, Spaceweather.com reported. It is unlikely that a coronal discharge will follow the solar activity, and if it does, whether will head toward Earth. The recent solar flare came from the sunspot AR 3141, which has grown in size in the past 24 hours, EarthSky.org said in its report. The eruption was classified as an M5.2, even where M denotes the class of solar flares and is a medium-intensity eruption. In comparison, classes A, B, and C are low-intensity events, while Class X flares are wildly the...