Space In General

Dotini
There is no reason this mild CME should have produced a strong geomagnetic storm.
Click to expand...
Except for it being a direct strike on the magnetosphere, while the IMF was southward, with a high Kp value (7) from a C-class flare, no reason at all.

But sure, physics is wrong, it was magic, the sky is falling in.
 
Famine
Except for it being a direct strike on the magnetosphere, while the IMF was southward, with a high Kp value (7) from a C-class flare, no reason at all.

But sure, physics is wrong, it was magic, the sky is falling in.
Click to expand...
The KP index of 7 indicates it was a strong solar storm, but doesn't explain why. The NOAA, NASA and other forecasts predicted KP indexes of between 1 and 4. The CME peak speed was barely moderate and not dense. But unusually strong deviations appeared in the magnetic field. C-class flares are small with few noticeable consequences here on Earth. IMHO, there was no known historical reason for the storm to have reached strong category.
 
Dotini
The KP index of 7 indicates it was a strong solar storm, but doesn't explain why. The NOAA, NASA and other forecasts predicted KP indexes of between 1 and 4. The CME peak speed was barely moderate and not dense. But unusually strong deviations appeared in the magnetic field. C-class flares are small with few noticeable consequences here on Earth. IMHO, there was no known historical reason for the storm to have reached strong category.
Click to expand...

https://www.spaceweatherlive.com/co...e-geostorm-kp-index-vs-solar-flare-intensity/

The above thread is about a prediction of a maximum KP index of 7 for a class-c flare which didn't pan out to be at the maximum. The poster's question was why. Here's one answer:

"There are several reasons why NOAA predicted a G3 storm. The problem in predicting a geomagnetic storm is that we don't know what happens to the CME when it's traveling through space. We can calculate the speed of a CME from coronagraph imagery, but we don't know what happens after that. Dr. Tamitha Skov had an interesting theory about what happened to the CME. She believes the northern coronal hole "pushed" the CME (coming from a southern sunspot) further towards the south. This resulted in the earth only getting a glancing blow.

Another factor to take into account is the Bz value. It's happened several times that NOAA predicts G3 storming, but the Bz value is still largely unpredictable. If the CME coming from this C-class flare hit us fully, and the Bz-value would have gone to -15 for example, we definitely would have seen a geomagnetic storm. Generally, whenever NOAA predicts a G1 magnetic storm, I'm always on the watch for bigger storming because you never know what the Bz will do.

The CMEs coming from a C-class flare do cause geomagnetic storms, but it doesn't happen that often. In the archive of the 50 heaviest geomagnetic storms, there is one storm that was caused by a C-class flare. The maximum Kp-value during that storm was Kp8. So yes, it does happen, but generally the M-class and X-class flares are the really interesting ones for strong geomagnetic storming."

So that's an example of a KP8 from a Class-C flare. Dotini, you're looking hard for cataclysm in a lot of threads. Look inward.


Edit:

For reference, I believe when @Famine refers to a southward IMF he's invoking the same BZ value that this poster above is.
 
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First Super Heavy and Starship orbital flight details are available. Both will try to do a soft landing in the ocean.



Also, official video of SN15 flight.

 
SN15 going on Pad B right now.

Screenshot_20210514-071702_YouTube.jpg


Edit:

 
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Required reading from today's edition of Spaceweather.com

GEOMAGNETIC STORM WATCH: 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. Aurora alerts: SMS Text.

THE GREAT GEOMAGNETIC STORM OF MAY 1921: You know a solar storm is serious when buildings catch on fire. It really happened 100 years ago.

On May 15, 1921, the biggest solar storm of the 20th century hit Earth. Around 02:00 GMT that Sunday morning a telegraph exchange in Sweden burst into flames. Across the Atlantic, the same thing was going on in New York. Flames engulfed the switch-board at the Brewster station of the Central New England Railroad and quickly spread to destroy the whole building. During the conflagration, long distance telephone lines burned out in New Brunswick; voltages on telegraph lines in the USA spiked as high as 1000 V; and auroras were sighted by ships at sea crossing the equator. It was a Big. Solar. Storm.



The outburst happened during the lazy tail end of Solar Cycle 15, an unremarkable cycle that was almost over in 1921. Sunspot numbers were low--but it only took one. Giant sunspot AR1842 appeared in mid-May and started flaring, hurling multiple coronal mass ejections (CMEs) toward Earth. In those days scientists had never even heard of "CMEs," so they were completely surprised when the clouds of plasma arrived.

As one CME after another struck, Earth's magnetic field swayed back and forth, rippling with energy. Fires were a direct result. Physics 101: When a magnetic field changes rapidly, electricity flows through conductors in the area. It's called "magnetic induction." Early 20th century telegraph lines suddenly found themselves buzzing with induced currents. In Sweden and New York, wires grew so hot they ignited telegraph papers and other combustibles.


Above: Headlines in New York newspapers on May 15, 1921.

What would happen if the same storm struck today? A 2013 Royal Academy of Engineering report summarizes the possibilities. Suffice it to say, fire would be the least of our worries. Modern technology is far more sensitive to solar activity than the simple copper wires of 1921. The same solar storm today could cause regional power blackouts, expose air travelers to radiation, knock out satellites, and disable radio-based technologies such as GPS.

Loss of electricity is often cited as the worst likely side-effect of a solar superstorm, but power systems are more resilient than they used to be. Thanks to improvements made after the Great Quebec Blackout of 1989, many modern grids would bounce back quickly. A more worrisome loss might be GPS. We think of GPS as our main way of finding things: ambulances finding accidents, pilots finding runways, and so on. But there's more to it than that. GPS tells us what time it is, a service of atomic clocks onboard the satellites. In fact, GPS time is woven into the fabric of modern society.


Above: An artist's concept of a GPS satellite. Credit: USAF

Consider the following paragraph from a report in the Atlantic entitled "What Happens if GPS Fails?":

"Telecom networks rely on GPS clocks to keep cell towers synchronized so calls can be passed between them. Many electrical power grids use the clocks in equipment that fine-tunes current flow in overloaded networks. The finance sector uses GPS-derived timing systems to timestamp ATM, credit card, and high-speed market transactions. Computer network synchronization, digital television and radio, Doppler radar weather reporting, seismic monitoring, even multi-camera sequencing for film production—GPS clocks have a hand in all."

"What if all these flying clock radios were wiped out, and everything on the ground started blinking 12:00?" asks the author, Dan Glass. Answer: "Nobody knows."

Space weather scholars routinely call the May 1921 event a "100 year storm." However, recent research (both historical and statistical) suggests that such storms come along more often--every 40 to 60 years. Either way, we're overdue.
 
Dotini
Required reading from today's edition of Spaceweather.com

GEOMAGNETIC STORM WATCH: 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. Aurora alerts: SMS Text.

THE GREAT GEOMAGNETIC STORM OF MAY 1921: You know a solar storm is serious when buildings catch on fire. It really happened 100 years ago.

On May 15, 1921, the biggest solar storm of the 20th century hit Earth. Around 02:00 GMT that Sunday morning a telegraph exchange in Sweden burst into flames. Across the Atlantic, the same thing was going on in New York. Flames engulfed the switch-board at the Brewster station of the Central New England Railroad and quickly spread to destroy the whole building. During the conflagration, long distance telephone lines burned out in New Brunswick; voltages on telegraph lines in the USA spiked as high as 1000 V; and auroras were sighted by ships at sea crossing the equator. It was a Big. Solar. Storm.



The outburst happened during the lazy tail end of Solar Cycle 15, an unremarkable cycle that was almost over in 1921. Sunspot numbers were low--but it only took one. Giant sunspot AR1842 appeared in mid-May and started flaring, hurling multiple coronal mass ejections (CMEs) toward Earth. In those days scientists had never even heard of "CMEs," so they were completely surprised when the clouds of plasma arrived.

As one CME after another struck, Earth's magnetic field swayed back and forth, rippling with energy. Fires were a direct result. Physics 101: When a magnetic field changes rapidly, electricity flows through conductors in the area. It's called "magnetic induction." Early 20th century telegraph lines suddenly found themselves buzzing with induced currents. In Sweden and New York, wires grew so hot they ignited telegraph papers and other combustibles.


Above: Headlines in New York newspapers on May 15, 1921.

What would happen if the same storm struck today? A 2013 Royal Academy of Engineering report summarizes the possibilities. Suffice it to say, fire would be the least of our worries. Modern technology is far more sensitive to solar activity than the simple copper wires of 1921. The same solar storm today could cause regional power blackouts, expose air travelers to radiation, knock out satellites, and disable radio-based technologies such as GPS.

Loss of electricity is often cited as the worst likely side-effect of a solar superstorm, but power systems are more resilient than they used to be. Thanks to improvements made after the Great Quebec Blackout of 1989, many modern grids would bounce back quickly. A more worrisome loss might be GPS. We think of GPS as our main way of finding things: ambulances finding accidents, pilots finding runways, and so on. But there's more to it than that. GPS tells us what time it is, a service of atomic clocks onboard the satellites. In fact, GPS time is woven into the fabric of modern society.


Above: An artist's concept of a GPS satellite. Credit: USAF

Consider the following paragraph from a report in the Atlantic entitled "What Happens if GPS Fails?":

"Telecom networks rely on GPS clocks to keep cell towers synchronized so calls can be passed between them. Many electrical power grids use the clocks in equipment that fine-tunes current flow in overloaded networks. The finance sector uses GPS-derived timing systems to timestamp ATM, credit card, and high-speed market transactions. Computer network synchronization, digital television and radio, Doppler radar weather reporting, seismic monitoring, even multi-camera sequencing for film production—GPS clocks have a hand in all."

"What if all these flying clock radios were wiped out, and everything on the ground started blinking 12:00?" asks the author, Dan Glass. Answer: "Nobody knows."

Space weather scholars routinely call the May 1921 event a "100 year storm." However, recent research (both historical and statistical) suggests that such storms come along more often--every 40 to 60 years. Either way, we're overdue.
Click to expand...

GPS is a network of 32 satellites in a constellation at a variety of different inclinations around the earth, and at half-geosynchronous orbital altitude. 24 of those satellites are needed to maintain full global GPS coverage, making 8 of them redundant. GPS satellite orbital radius, being half-geosynchronous, is about 20,000 km. This means that at any given time there are GPS satellites that are at least 40,000 km apart. Given what we know about the trajectories of CMEs, and how they don't always hit earth dead center, I don't know how likely it is that a CME can wipe out the entire GPS constellation. Consider also that GPS satellites in the "shadow" of Earth's magnetic field may benefit from the CME's interaction with the field. If you have part of the constellation, GPS still works (depending on which parts), just less consistently. GPS clock synchronization can still occur, probably daily, even with a much compromised constellation. Maybe that's not frequently enough for some applications, but it would be for others.

CMEs are a concern for space missions, but usually not associated with a total loss of the spacecraft. Often recovery is a straightforward process.
 
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SN15 on its way back to the build site. It's fate unknown. Edit: looks like they'll be putting it on display? It rolled right past the build site and back to an area where there are display pads.

Screenshot_20210526-142014_YouTube.jpg


Screenshot_20210526-152649_YouTube.jpg


Also, this is amazing work...

 
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Great clip of Falcon 9 breaking the sound barrier during the Starlink mission on Wednesday. SpaceX's 100th straight successful flight.



SN16 and BN2 or BN3 (Elon's caption is confusing) snuggled up in the high bay.

 
SXM-8 mission in 10 minutes as I type this.



Also, this animation is AMAZING and pretty close to what you might expect for the first Starship/Super Heavy orbital launch. (maybe minus the Cybertruck. But I wouldn't be surprised if it does :P )

 
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From today's edition of Spaceweather.com:

THE TERMINATION EVENT: Something big may be about to happen on the sun. "We call it the Termination Event," says Scott McIntosh, a solar physicist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), "and it's very, very close to happening."

If you've never heard of the Termination Event, you're not alone. Many researchers have never heard of it either. It's a relatively new idea in solar physics championed by McIntosh and colleague Bob Leamon of the University of Maryland - Baltimore County. According to the two scientists, vast bands of magnetism are drifting across the surface of the sun. When oppositely-charged bands collide at the equator, they annihilate (or "terminate"). There's no explosion; this is magnetism, not anti-matter. Nevertheless, the Termination Event is a big deal. It can kickstart the next solar cycle into a higher gear.


Above: Oppositely charged bands of magnetism march toward the sun's equator where they annihilate one another, kickstarting the next solar cycle. [more]

"If the Terminator Event happens soon, as we expect, new Solar Cycle 25 could have a magnitude that rivals the top few since record-keeping began," says McIntosh.

This is, to say the least, controversial. Most solar physicists believe that Solar Cycle 25 will be weak, akin to the anemic Solar Cycle 24 which barely peaked back in 2012-2013. Orthodox models of the sun's inner magnetic dynamo favor a weak cycle and do not even include the concept of "terminators."

"What can I say?" laughs McIntosh. "We're heretics!"

The researchers outlined their reasoning in a December 2020 paper in the research journal Solar Physics. Looking back over 270 years of sunspot data, they found that Terminator Events divide one solar cycle from the next, happening approximately every 11 years. Emphasis on approximately. The interval between terminators ranges from 10 to 15 years, and this is key to predicting the solar cycle.


Above: Marked in red, the official forecast for Solar Cycle 25 is weak.

"We found that the longer the time between terminators, the weaker the next cycle would be," explains Leamon. "Conversely, the shorter the time between terminators, the stronger the next solar cycle would be."

Example: Sunspot Cycle 4 began with a terminator in 1786 and ended with a terminator in 1801, an unprecedented 15 years later. The following cycle, 5, was incredibly weak with a peak amplitude of just 82 sunspots. That cycle would become known as the beginning of the "Dalton" Grand Minimum.

Solar Cycle 25 is shaping up to be the opposite. Instead of a long interval, it appears to be coming on the heels of a very short one, only 10 years since the Terminator Event that began Solar Cycle 24. Previous solar cycles with such short intervals have been among the strongest in recorded history.

These ideas may be controversial, but they have a virtue that all scientists can appreciate: They're testable. If the Termination Event happens soon and Solar Cycle 25 skyrockets, the "heretics" may be on to something. Stay tuned.
 

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