Rough weather in outer space can wreak havoc on Earth

[Susan L Gawarecki <loc@icx.net>]

Rough weather in outer space can wreak havoc on Earth



By ROBERT S. BOYD

Knight Ridder Newspapers

http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/news/4963356.htm



  WASHINGTON - Tornadoes, floods, ice storms, hurricanes, drought -

weather on Earth isn't for sissies. But weather in outer space can be

even rougher.



  Gales of high-energy solar particles race by our planet at speeds of a

million or more miles per hour. Intense magnetic fields, broiling clouds

of electrified gas and deadly cosmic rays fill the space environment

just a few hundred miles over our heads.



  Space weather endangers not only astronauts and spacecraft, but also

people and industry down here on the ground. It has knocked out power

grids, garbled radio transmission, fried sensitive electronic equipment

and wrecked a major communication satellite.



  Electronic navigation for airplanes, ships or backpackers equipped

with Global Positioning System receivers can be in error because of

space weather fluctuations. Radio bursts from the sun can disrupt cell

phone reception.



  "We are increasingly dependent on modern technology that depends on

spacecraft and are very susceptible to space weather," said Jeffrey

Hughes, director of the new Center for Integrated Space Weather

Modeling, a government-sponsored research facility at Boston University.



  "You have to worry: Is my cell phone going to work?" Hughes said. "How

about my TV satellite links? Or the weather forecast satellites? There

is a whole range of ways in which the man in the street depends on space

weather without being aware of it."



  To meet the challenge, the federal government has established a

National Space Weather Program to give earthlings advance warning of

solar storms. New scientific instruments are proliferating in space and

on the ground.



  "We want to be able to forecast the space weather environment anywhere

in Earth's neighborhood many hours or days in advance," said Daniel

Baker, a researcher at the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics,

University of Colorado, Boulder.



  "In a few years we may be able to predict such effects with accuracy

and confidence," Baker said. "That is the goal of the National Space

Weather Program."



  Anyone with access to the Internet can get a daily space-weather

report from the Space Environment Center operated by the National

Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in Boulder.



  The center is the government's official site for space weather alerts

and forecasts. Its customers include NASA, the Air Force, the Federal

Aviation Administration, communications companies, pipeline operators

and other commercial interests.



  The daily report is available at 



  http://www.spaceweather.com/



  The speed and density of the solar wind are updated every 10 minutes.



  To protect military spy satellites and high frequency radios used by

soldiers on the ground, the Air Force operates its own Space Forecast

Center in Colorado Springs, Colo.



  Most space-weather events can be traced to the sun, Earth's home star.

NASA has launched a new program, "Living With a Star," to study the

effect of solar flares and eruptions on our planet.



  The solar wind - a thin blast of electrified gas, or plasma, emitted

by the sun - blows constantly past the Earth at an average speed of

900,000 mph. Usually, a powerful magnetic field that surrounds our

planet deflects it.



  But sometimes explosive events on the sun - known as coronal mass

ejections - hurl huge gobs of highly charged electronic particles toward

the Earth at speeds of more than 5 million mph. These electronic

bullets, mostly hydrogen protons - hydrogen atoms stripped of their

electrons - distort the protective magnetic field and can have a

dramatic effect on the atmosphere.



  During a 10-day solar storm last April, electrons and protons raced

across the 93 million miles from the sun to the Earth in less than a

day, according to Edmond Roelof, a scientist at the Johns Hopkins

Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Md.



  A worldwide array of 90 satellites and 790 ground detectors monitored

the storm, getting a detailed look at the effects of solar explosions.



  "Using the remarkable constellation of available spacecraft, we were

able to follow the particle chain from the sun's surface all the way to

the deep layers of Earth's atmosphere with unprecedented completeness,"

Baker told a conference of the American Geophysical Union in San

Francisco last month.



  Among the new space-weather monitors, a NASA spaceship called GENESIS,

launched in August 2001, is orbiting the sun at a distance of 930,000

miles from Earth, far enough to give an hour's warning of a solar storm.

GENESIS also is collecting samples of solar wind particles, which it

will bring back to Earth in 2004.



  Last month, another new NASA spacecraft called IMAGE took the first

global pictures of a vast sheet of electrified plasma surrounding our

planet. Although the plasma is ferociously hot - an estimated billion

degrees - it helps protect earthlings by absorbing much of the deadly

solar energy.



  If a powerful solar storm struck the airless moon, the radiation

probably would kill an astronaut who was wearing only a space suit. In

contrast, astronomers say Earth is like an "island in the universe,"

where life flourishes under the protective shield of its magnetic field

and atmosphere.



  Some examples of the impact of space weather:



-- For six weeks, beginning in March 2001, a huge solar storm blacked

out radio signals and disrupted two military satellites. Commercial

airlines rerouted planes to avoid the most highly affected polar

regions.



- On May 19, 1998, the communications satellite Galaxy IV's computer

controls failed during a solar storm, interrupting broadcasts on CBS and

National Public Radio.  More than 80 percent of the nation's pagers went

dead. The satellite never recovered.



- On Jan. 11, 1997, a magnetic storm caused by a solar flare wrecked

another satellite, Telstar 401.



- On March 23, 1989, a solar storm overloaded electric transformers in

Quebec, cutting off power for eight hours to 9 million Canadians and New

Englanders.



- During solar storms, navigation systems based on radio signals, such

as LORAN, can be inaccurate by as much as several miles.



- Magnetic storms heat the upper atmosphere, causing air to rise and

slow down orbiting satellites. Unless they are reboosted to a higher

orbit, they can fall to Earth.



- High-energy particles accumulate on satellites and spaceships,

building up an electric charge that fires like miniature lightning and

damages electronic systems.



- Homing pigeons and honeybees get confused or lost when intense

electric currents in near-Earth space upset their magnetic compasses.



- In a fluke incident apparently caused by a magnetic storm, police

officers in San Francisco who were trying to talk to their dispatchers

were answered instead by police in Minneapolis.



-- 

.....................................................

Susan L. Gawarecki, Ph.D., Executive Director

Oak Ridge Reservation Local Oversight Committee

102 Robertsville Road, Suite B, Oak Ridge, TN 37830

Toll free 888-770-3073 ~ www.local-oversight.org

.....................................................

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