Free Republic

A federal lawsuit is being filed on behalf of dozens of U.S. Navy SEALs seeking religious exemptions from the Defense Department's (DOD) vaccination mandate, claiming the military is infringing upon service members' First Amendment freedoms and intimidating them into getting vaccinated against COVID-19. First Liberty Institute is filing a lawsuit Tuesday representing approximately 35 active-duty SEALs and three reservists, claiming the military is violating their constitutional rights. According to the filing, exclusively obtained by Fox News, the SEALs represented are all members of various denominations within the Christian faith and are objecting to the vaccine mandate based on "their sincerely...

Solar particles blasted out in association with the flare could hit Earth tomorrow (Oct. 29). A major solar flare erupted from the sun on Thursday (Oct. 28) in the strongest storm yet of our star's current weather cycle. The sun fired off an X1-class solar flare, its most powerful kind of flare, at 11:17 a.m. EDT (1517 GMT), according to an alert from the U.S. Space Weather Prediction Group, which tracks space weather events. The group warned that the eruption could spawn a wide-area radio communications blackout for high-frequency signals for about an hour. "Area of impact consists of large...

A new study published in Nature’s Scientific Reports by researchers at the Danish National Space Institute at the Technical University of Denmark (DTU) and The Hebrew University of Jerusalem suggests that the Sun’s activity in screening cosmic rays affects clouds and, ultimately, the Earth's energy budget with concomitant climatic effects. Science editor David Whitehouse interviews Professor Henrik Svensmark, one of the study's authors.

A powerful solar storm is due to hit Earth today and could cause havoc for power grids, weather agencies have warned. The UK's Met Office and the US's National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) have forecasted a coronal mass ejection (CME) – a massive expulsion of plasma from the Sun's corona (its outermost layer) at around 12pm EST (5pm BST) today. Possible effects of the solar storm, caused by the CME, are power grid fluctuations and orientation irregularities for spacecraft in the form of 'increased drag' on low-Earth orbiters. The aurora – a natural light display in Earth's sky, also...

A massive solar flare is due to hit Earth today, authorities are warning - potentially disrupting power grids and bringing the Northern Lights as far south as New York. The flare - officially known as a coronal mass ejection (CME) - was observed on Saturday on the side of the sun directly facing our planet and comes as we enter a period of increased solar activity. An alert was published by the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) which warned the geomagnetic storm could cause power grid fluctuations with voltage alarms at higher latitudes, where the Earth is more...

(NASA/SDO) ______________________________________________________________________________ What will our Sun look like after it dies? Scientists have made predictions about what the end will look like for our Solar System, and when that will happen. And humans won't be around to see the final act. Previously, astronomers thought it would turn into a planetary nebula – a luminous bubble of gas and dust – until evidence suggested it would have to be a fair bit more massive. An international team of astronomers flipped it again in 2018 and found that a planetary nebula is indeed the most likely solar corpse. The Sun is about...

Solar Cycle 25 is heating up faster than expected. The latest sign may be found in sunspot counts from July 2021. Continuing a trend that started last year, they overperform the official forecast. Issued by the NOAA/NASA Solar Cycle 25 Prediction Panel in 2019, the official forecast calls for Solar Cycle 25 to peak in July 2025. However, a better fit to current data shows Solar Cycle 25 peaking in October 2024. This is just outside the 8-month error bars of the Panel's forecast. July 2021 was a remarkable month. Solar Cycle 25 crossed multiple thresholds, including its first X-flare...

The flare region can be seen on the right. (NASA/SDO) The Sun appears to be waking up from the quiet period of its 11-year cycle. On 3 July 2021, at 14:29 UTC (10:29 EDT), our wild star spat out its first X-class flare of Solar Cycle 25; it was the most powerful flare we've seen since September 2017. X-class flares are among the most powerful solar eruptions from our host star, with the mightiest on record being an astonishing X28 in November 2003. This new flare wasn't quite so intense, clocking in at X1.5 - but, even so, it produced...

If this weekend's heat wave sends temperatures soaring well above 90 degrees in king county as meteorologists expect, some communities are likely to suffer much worse than neighbors mere miles away. That takeaway comes from a new map of temperature data thorough King County collected during a scorching day last July +++++++++ They hid this article online after people called the Bush guy who authored this on his G.W. bs

Minor G1-class geomagnetic storms are possible on May 18-19 when a pair of coronal mass ejections (CMEs) is expected to hit Earth's magnetic field. The two CMEs left the sun on consecutive days: One from sunspot AR2822 on May 13th, the next from sunspot AR2823 on May 14th. Individually, the CMEs appear to be weak and insubstantial; however, they could add up to a geomagnetic storm when they arrive in quick succession this Tuesday.

EARTH’S MAGNETIC FIELD JUST STRUGGLED WITH A WEAK CME: SIGN OF THE TIMES MAY 14, 2021 CAP ALLON On May 12, a weak Coronal Mass Ejection (CME) released from the Sun hit Earth. The event was supposed to pass by uneventfully — it would perhaps spark a few auroras, but nothing more. So how did a strong G3 geomagnetic storm ensue?Nobody was expecting a level 3 event from this CME.Nobody saw the KP Index hitting 7.

Unknown to most people except those with an interest in solar science, the sun is about to shut down. Well, not completely – we’ll still have plenty of sunlight and heat, but the small dark blotches on the sun’s surface called sunspots, visible in the figure below, are on the verge of disappearing. According to some climate scientists, this heralds a prolonged cold stretch of maybe 35 years starting in 2020, despite global warming.How could that happen? Because sunspots, which are caused by magnetic turbulence in the sun’s interior, signal subtle changes in solar output or activity – changes that...

I wrote last week about the coming Grand Solar Minimum, something that will have much more impact on the environment than anything we puny humans can do. It generated a lot of interest from all sides, so it’s time to delve deeper into what we can expect. Starting with the hype: During the last grand solar minimum (GSM), the Maunder Minimum of 1645 to 1715, glaciers advanced, rivers froze, sea ice expanded -- in short, the Little Ice Age. Is another one is almost upon us? Probably not. Maunder occurred at the tail end of a bi-millennial cycle. These cycles...

Bill Gates backs project to 'dim the sun', Tucker Carlson reacts 'Apocalypse Neve' author Michael Shellenberger calls idea 'terrible' on 'Tucker Carlson

Today is hard, tomorrow will be worse, but the day after tomorrow will be sunshine.Were we not to take it for granted it would seem a miracle, the sun - glowing, growing, lighting, warming. Every day, a new sunrise.And everyday, just as reliably, sunset.So the cycle can start over again; God’s gift to earth. Sometimes you’re heading into the daybreak.Just as often you catch day’s end in your rearview mirror.But what we know intuitively is that the sun is our friend. It warms the earth that grows the food that provides us sustenance. And now it seems it kills the...

Although sunlight is more intense on Saturday, winter in the Northern Hemisphere is unaffected, due to the 23.5-degree tilt of Earth's axis. Being closer to the sun does not change the Earth's tilt, so the North Pole is still tilted away from the sun. Six months from now, on July 5, Earth will be at its farthest from the sun, known as its aphelion, meaning "far from the sun." At perihelion, Earth is about 91.5 million miles from the sun, and at aphelion, it is around 94.5 million miles away. Between perihelion and aphelion, there is about a 6.7% difference...

<p>Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates participates in a discussion during a luncheon of the Economic Club of Washington in June 2019.</p><p>Bill Gates is now best known as a philanthropist, not the guy who started Microsoft or was the avatar for everyone’s annoyance with Windows 95.</p>

The Sun may be in for a very busy time. According to new predictions, the next maximum in its activity cycles could be the one of the strongest we've seen. This is in direct contradiction to the official solar weather forecast from NASA and the NOAA, but if it bears out, it could confirm a theory about solar activity cycles that scientists have been working on for years. "Scientists have struggled to predict both the length and the strength of sunspot cycles because we lack a fundamental understanding of the mechanism that drives the cycle," said solar physicist Scott McIntosh...

Like all stars, our Sun is powered by the fusion of hydrogen into heavier elements. Nuclear fusion is not only what makes stars shine, it is also a primary source of the chemical elements that make the world around us. Much of our understanding of stellar fusion comes from theoretical models of atomic nuclei, but for our closest star, we also have another source: neutrinos created in the Sun’s core.Whenever atomic nuclei undergo fusion, they produce not only high energy gamma rays but also neutrinos. While the gamma rays heat the Sun’s interior over thousands of years, neutrinos zip out...

A CME launched by yesterday's M4.4-class solar flare might sideswipe Earth's magnetic field on Dec. 1-2, according to NOAA analysts. Yesterday (Nov. 29th at 1311UT), Earth-orbiting satellites detected the biggest solar flare in more than 3 years. NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory recorded this extreme-ultraviolet movie of the M4.4 category blast: X-rays and UV radiation from the flare ionized the top of Earth's atmosphere, producing a shortwave radio blackout over the South Atlantic: map. Ham radio operators and mariners may have noticed strange propagation effects at frequencies below 20 MHz, with some transmissions below 10 MHz completely extinquished. Remarkably, this flare...