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Home Page for www.solarstorms.org
Space
Weather Environment Impacts
Space Weather and Health Impacts
Space Weather and Utility Impacts
Space Weather and Technology Impacts
Computer Impacts
Reference Material about Space Weather
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You may not be aware of it, but space weather costs our technology billions of dollars every year. This amount goes for the replacement of failing satellites in space, creating countermeasures in our technology so that future solar storms don't damage our technology, and also in protecting our astronauts who live and work in space. This web site will guide you through the maze of space weather human impacts, why they happen, and the costs to our society from their comings and goings. We live near a star that provides us with light and heat, but from time to time it also flares up and ejects bursts of gas and radiation into space. Solar flares can be deadly to astronauts caught unprotected in space. The gases, once they arrive, cause the beautiful Northern Lights, but also magnetic storms that disrupt our electrical systems and satellite technology. Scientists have known about the sun's activity cycle for over 150 years. It is commonly called the 'sunspot cycle'. Scientists have also come to describe the sun's storminess in space by using a term 'space weather'. Space weather is like Earth weather. It has its good, mild days, and its stormy active days too. Solar flares are like lightning storms on Earth. They arrive suddenly, cause a variety of problems, and then vanish within a few hours. Solar Wind is like the various breezes that we feel each day, and can transport mild storms from the sun to Earth. It travels at about 400 km/sec and its density varies from a few atoms per cubic centimeter to about 10. Even distant Pluto feels this gentle breeze. Coronal Mass Ejections are clouds of plasma ejected from the Sun that sweep into space at millions of miles per hour. Some are gentle and like a mild rain storm on Earth. Others are like the most intense hurricanes, tornadoes and tsunamis and cause all sorts of problems for our satellites. But they also create the beautiful aurora borealis and aurora australis. This website, created by Dr. Sten Odenwald, will guide you through this exciting topic, and provides authoritative resources for studying this subject further. |
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