sun – SOLAR MAX NEWS

Solar Activity Could Cause Lightning Storms On Earth

January 1, 2016 Adminlighting, nature, solar flares, sun, weather

A link has been found between storms in the atmosphere of the sun and those here on Earth, but not in the direction expected. The discovery could improve weather forecasting and save the lives of people who might otherwise be trapped in the open during electrical events. The sun spits out charged particles that hit our atmosphere two to four days later at 1.5-.2.7million kph, but it does not do so evenly. “The solar wind is not continuous, it has slow and fast streams. Because the Sun rotates, these streams…

Featured Solar Activity

Sun Could Unleash Devastating ‘Superflare’

December 7, 2015January 3, 2016 Adminsolar activity, sun, sunspots

The sun is capable of firing off an incredibly powerful superflare that could wreak havoc on Earth’s technology-dependent society, a new study suggests. The same basic processes drive the “normal” flares of high-energy radiation emitted by the sun and superflares blasted out by faraway stars, which can be thousands of times more powerful, researchers found. This result “supports the hypothesis that the sun is able to produce a potentially devastating superflare,” study co-author Anne-Marie Broomhall, from the University of Warwick in England, said in a statement. The research team analyzed…

Featured Solar Activity

How Solar Flares Make Matter Move at (Nearly) the Speed of Light

December 3, 2015January 3, 2016 Adminmatter, science, solar activity, solar flares, solar rain, sun

Solar flares aren’t just fearsome displays of power capable of sending Earth’s technology back 200 years. They are also peculiar stellar phenomena that generate so much energy, they make particles move at nearly the speed of light. To that end, they may be models of future space travel. But how exactly they work that kind of magic stumps the scientific community. A new study published Thursday in the journal Science might have some answers. Using data gathered by the National Science Foundations’ Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array radio telescope,…

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NASA: Sun has Flipped Upside Down

December 30, 2013January 3, 2016 Adminpole shift, solar activity, sun

The sun has fully “flipped upside down”, with its north and south poles reversed to reach the midpoint of Solar Cycle 24, Nasa has said. Now, the magnetic fields have once again started moving in opposite directions to begin the completion of the 22 year long process which will culminate in the poles switching once again. “A reversal of the sun’s magnetic field is, literally, a big event,” said Nasa’s Dr. Tony Phillips. “The domain of the sun’s magnetic influence (also known as the ‘heliosphere’) extends billions of kilometers beyond…

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Does the Earth’s Magnetic Field Influence Suicide Rates?

August 1, 2008January 1, 2016 Adminbrain, emotions, geomagnetic storm, magnetic field, solar flares, suicides, sun

Many animals can sense the Earth’s magnetic field, so why not people, asks Oleg Shumilov of the Institute of North Industrial Ecology Problems in Russia. Shumilov looked at activity in the Earth’s geomagnetic field from 1948 to 1997 and found that it grouped into three seasonal peaks every year: one from March to May, another in July and the last in October. Surprisingly, he also found that the geomagnetism peaks matched up with peaks in the number of suicides in the northern Russian city of Kirovsk over the same period.…