I’m a Scientist is like school science lessons meet the X Factor! School students choose which scientist gets a prize of $1000 to communicate their work.
Scientists and students talk on this website. They both break down barriers, have fun and learn. But only the students get to vote.
This zone is the Disease Zone. It has scientists studying the causes and processes of illness . Who gets the prize? YOU decide!
Dear Epicrocket; I do not know. It is a big question. It looks like it is a political issue in a way as I look it up on internet. I am curious how you got interested in this subject. Why don’t you study in that subject and give us an estimation of the next solar storm, if it is not of near future?
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Other than getting excited about NASA and SpaceX sending things into space, I don’t know much about heliophysics (how the sun interacts with the earth) and predicting solar weather. I can never even figure out if it is going to rain during the day! However, I asked some of my more astronomical friends, and they sent me looking all over the web looking for answers.
Solar wind is caused by the wave of energy that is released when a sun spot erupts into a solar flare. I guess a solar storm is just a really big gust of solar wind. Scientists who study the sun monitor solar ‘cycles’, which keep track of changes in the sun’s surface, and can use that information to help predict things like spots, flares and storms. Some people predict there will be a big solar storm in 2013, but according to NASA, even though there is a ‘solar maximum’ around that time, meaning there will be lots of sunspots, and chances of flares, it doesn’t look like there will be a big storm.
NASA has some cool information about solar storms(here and here), including how a big solar storm would affect us now, compared to the last big solar storm in 1859. Back then, a solar flare caused a wave of protons (an electrically charged particle) so strong that the Northern Lights were seen around the equator(Normally auroras are only able to be seen in places close to the North and South poles, like Alaska, Russia, and sometimes at the bottom of Tasmania), and telegraph stations caught on fire! If we experienced a solar storm the same size today, it would be a lot more serious. There would be blackouts everywhere, planes couldn’t use their GPS, and anything that uses electrical or magnetic currents would be affected. Just think, no computers, no cars, no phones, no hospitals!
If you’re really interested in space weather, check out SpaceWeatherCenter.org and NASA.gov!
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Hi Epicrocket – I have no idea about anything to do with space so I decided to have a go and try doing a bit of reading so I could have a go at answering your question…sorry to say that I’m now more confused than ever! I reckon you should check out the links that Vanessa has found because they are pretty cool and made the most sense to me 🙂 (Thanks Vanessa!)
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tomorrow at 5pm!!!!
nah, just kidding.
I’m a medical scientist, so don’t really know anything about solar storms. But I typed it into Google, and found this on http://www.space.com: “NASA predicts that solar storms are building towards a peak in 2013”
They say our sun will have maxium activity in 2013 and that’s when they expect a lot of solar storms….
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