Guest guest Posted October 30, 2003 Report Share Posted October 30, 2003 Second Blast From Sun Zaps Earth By Deborah Zabarenko, Reuters WASHINGTON (Oct. 30) - A second huge magnetic solar storm arrived at Earth on Thursday, just a day after an earlier one hit our planet in what one astronomer called an unprecedented one-two punch. ''It's like the Earth is looking right down the barrel of a giant gun pointed at us by the sun ... and it's taken two big shots at us,'' said John Kohl of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Massachusetts. Kohl, the principal investigator for an instrument aboard NASA's sun- watching SOHO spacecraft, said the probability of two huge flares aimed directly at Earth coming so close together, as they have this week, ''unprecedented ... so low that it is a statistical anomaly.'' Kohl said the second solar storm, known as a coronal mass ejection, peeled off the sun around 4 p.m. EST Wednesday. Charged particles from the ejection started arriving at Earth around 10 a.m. EST Thursday. This was just a day after an earlier ejection was first detected on Earth, arriving around 1 a.m. EST Wednesday. The second blast from the sun was moving even faster than the first one did, and some particles from the first linger even as the second onslaught continues, Kohl said in a telephone interview. While such solar storms do not directly endanger humans, the charged particles can play havoc with electric grids, satellites and other equipment. They can also create spectacular displays of the northern and southern lights. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), which runs the U.S. early warning center for such solar events, said that Wednesday's storm prompted a report that northern lights had been seen as far south as El Paso, Texas. The X-ray and solar radiation storms rank as the second largest such events recorded in the latest 11-year cycle, according to NOAA data. Records of solar cycles date from 1755. This is the tail end of the 23rd cycle. Wednesday's geomagnetic particle storm measured G5, or extreme, making it one of the three or four strongest such storms in the latest 11-year cycle. By contrast, Kohl said the storm that hit on Thursday was a K8, still substantial but not as intense as the previous one. 10-30-03 15:00 ET Copyright 2003 Reuters Limited. All rights reserved. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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