Micro bursts from the sun

Anything can happen. So just put on your shades and enjoy the ride!

I agree - this doesn't exactly answer the question, but puts things in perspective:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tyqnBYw3RkE

TCMTech,

Come on.............you folks in Minot are not allowed to see sunshine.....just sneaux and black ice!

I am not sure what sneaux is?

We got loads of snow though!

Yea we do see the sun some times though. its sort of like when the wind stops blowing too. It make use real uneasy and jumpy. We are not used to it being its such a rare occurrence, sort of a blue moon type event.

Its often talked about by the old timers but mostly considered a myth or folk lore legend.

SNEAUX:

A .25" layer of white stuff that falls in the Bayou Country every 20 years or so . It makes the state police stop all traffic 'cause nobody down here except the Northern transplants ( which the federal government says we can no longer call Yankees) know how to drive in it without killing somebody.

sa va?

Smitty

I thought Yankees wore that name with pride...They do in Texas anyway...around here anyone north of the Red River is considered a Yankee... No offense to my transplanted bretheren...

I assume you have a good recipe for etouffee?

"That will not happen here."

Stand at the edge of the abyss, and tell me what won't happen, here or anywhere else.

PS; Off topic.

The reason "That will not happen here..." is simply due to mass. Our sun does not have enough stellar mass to go nova. You need a star that has at least 4 to 5 solar masses in size to be a candidate for a nova. 1 solar mass is the size of our sun. Our sun's fate will be more of a red giant; swelling in size considerably.

There is some debate about exactly how large that swelling will be and whether it will envelope Earth. Regardless, life will probably be exterminated before that time as the sun goes through its terminal phases.

In the mean time our sun is in a steady state mode that should last another 4 to 6 billion years, which is far longer than Social Security checks will likely last.

Here is an interesting short video to give you a perspective of sizes of our planets, sun, and some other stars in our neighborhood. Remember, stars that are greater than 4 or so solar masses are candidates for an explosive end. Novas are directly responsible for life in the universe. When a star explodes it releases huge amounts of heavy elements, which form the molecules that seed life. The resulting shock waves also contribute to planetary formation and new solar systems.

You can turn off the audio on this one...(after all, there is no sound in space :) )

Size of our Earth

AH,

Thank you again. I'll bet you have or have had a career in Astro Physics?

Smitty

No, started out as an astro degree the first year, finished with a 4.0 pre-med, then jumped into electrical engineering at the end. So it goes. ;-)

That is soooo far past anything I've ever accomplished.

Smitty

AH,

That was a very enlightening video. Where is the Giant VY Majoris located in the universe...how far away you think?

Smitty

Look Here

Good video AH. Yep, there are Galaxies like grains of sand on a beach. And the Sol-centrists are stuck in the mud of recalcitrance. Now imagine if you will that what we percieve is slap in the middle of our perception, then infinity takes on another dimension.

God washes her hair, while we circle the drain. Yeee Haaa!

Not likely the sun will finish us. There's a lot of stuff flying around 'out there'. All we are is ducks in the wind. Sometimes you're the windshield, and sometimes the bear eats you.

Excellent answer! You might want to explain to him what is a "mass ejection" is and how one is created.

By the way, I remember that really big solar event a few years back. I live in Silicon Valley where stars are seldom seen, yet I could see the aurora overhead very clearly!!!

Worst luck would be when CME would happen in the midst of the earths magnet reversal

This is the first and only information that makes sense with respect to "magnetic filed reversal" ofour Earth.

So this breakup into smaller and more poles -i assume- is equivalent to the circulation of the electrically conducting or magnetic (or both) streams of hot and dense material in Earths amntle and ? core.

This is like low Reynolds number vorticity, stable for some time and then rearrahnging.

Much more likely than total fading and regeneration of the magnetic field!

RHABE

Hello Anonymous Hero:

It's Friday night (typical night for viewing horror movies) and we need to leave some room for the Hollywood horror stories. I don't believe Hollywood's made a movie about it yet, and I'm sure when they do they'll be able to figure out some way to save the Earth, but I seem to remember reading somewhere that a regular old supernova within 30 light years or so could cause devastation similar to that described in the original posters question.

I also came across a term that was new to me , hypernova ( there is a candidate within 8000 ly)a hypernova could similarly lead to , well at least some pretty severe sunburns, if it happened to be in our cosmic backyard and 8000 ly is considered our backyard.

Of course the problem with reading things nowadays is I forget where, however you seem to be in the know, so give them a break if this is true, we need to leave them something to write about.

AH,

Your answer sounds very sceintific and thought out. Thank you.

A few added points;

I am NOT that guillible. I simply asked a question which you gave a very good answer.

Its hurricane season and we live 24 miles inland.... anyone who does not have TV with a weather station this time of year will wind up like those folks in New Orleans after Katrina....waiting for someone else to rescue them. They do not mail announcements of TD's .

I said I watched a movie........... not TV. TV channels show very little entertainment anymore.

Thank you again for a scientific answer, after the DVD movie which featured MIT by the way , I was just curious.

I am sure you meant no harm and I mean no foul....sa va bien mon amis?

Smitty

8 miles inland just south of Cape Canaveral, so I know what you mean. No offense intended, just Hollywood gets under my skin. You have a cast of people that have a career living in non-reality that try to tell the rest of the world how we should live in the real world.

AH,

ce bon my friend.

I know what you mean. I lost a job a few years ago for a marine fisheries project to a guy who hired a computer wiz . I showed up with a VCR tape of the actual gear in use...they had the most beautiful Disney-like video of the "intended to be built" gear.

• Current runing the wrong way.
• Foam cell surface floats at 1000M
• fish swimming the wrong direction.
• Fish blowing bubbles at 1000M
• tow bridles and Tom weights with no curvature at 4000M
• ...on and on and on...

It was so pretty I wanted to hire on with them...musak...sea gulls' squawking in the back ground .... I was mesmerized. So were the customers and the IT guys got the job!

I well understand your point about Hollywood and these movies. I was just curious about this one .

Take care and thank you again.

Smitty

OFF TOPIC

AH says: "For this reason we don't have a TV. I might recommend turning off the TV and picking up a good book. If enough people did this we might be able to throw off the yoke of ignorance... Umm... Now I am living in a fantasy world."

TV is a vast wasteland and I find little harm in owning one. What irritates me is that I have to pay for 200 channels just to utilize the 2-3 that I do. I'm fond of LinkTV, Turner Classic Movies, and Fox Movie Channel. LinkTV's Democracy Now at least covers stories that will never see the light of day on any other "news" channel. I don't always agree with the slant of the coverage but at least I am aware of the subject afterwords, which I would be ignorant of otherwise. LinkTV also airs some interesting documentaries, etc.

The 2 mentioned movie channels are commercial-free and I tape 3-4 movies a month for later viewing -- only up until now I don't find the time to go back and watch them. Just like the 7,000+ books I've accumulated over a lifetime, I hope to enjoy some of them in retirement.

(P.S. - I wish somebody would do something about the way the post editor works. It's pretty maddening to have to go back several times to diddle with extra line returns and some that disappear. Then the carat symbols that appear from nowhere are meddlesom, too.)

"(P.S. -..."

Sounds like you are using Safari. Try Firefox!

Yes. I wish the moderators would look into supporting Safari, too.

Right! Especially since version 4 came out. I've now had more than one PC user tell me it's their favorite browser (they know I'm a Mac user). It's now been at least a couple of years since one of the CR4 staff told me they tried, but couldn't get Safari to work. Perhaps it's time they tried again. I'm virtually certain that Apple would help.

Dick

FireFox is also written for Linux and Macs??? Not just Windows.

You can download a copy in your preferred language from here:-

http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/all.html

Forget Safari and its problems, try the best Browser of all on the Computer of your choice......!

Good Stuff! I remember the aurora. My sister and I argued for an hour whether it was clouds or some kind of cosmic event. Sure enough the weather man verified it as an aurora...

The only radiation coming from the sun that goes into mines is neutrinos. They pass through everything, so are no problem. In a few billion years the sun will become a red giant and will envelop the earth, cooking it good. Until then, don't worry.

If it ever happens, we will all be dead so quickly, we will not notice the change.....or feel the pain!!

Not true!

May be true if radiation is very intense.

Merging of two neutron stars or two black holes - not very likely but possible and predicted to take place in our galaxy in around 80 Myears - is said to produce enough intense radiation to burn us completely within 1 to 2 days.

(Not my calculation but from an expert in tehoretical astrophysics.)

RHABE

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There was a young lady from Riga, who rode with a smile on a tiger, they returned from the ride with the lady inside and the smile on the face of the tiger.

OK,

Educate a man who has looked at more compasses than gps'.........

How does this MULTIPLE MAGNETIC POLE thing work?

Now I'm real curious............

Some useful information and overview here:

http://pesn.com/2005/02/27/6900064_Magnet_Pole_Shift/

http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/Y2003/29dec_magneticfield.htm

Correct me here if I misunderstand.

The compass I had in my boat, a basic water filled brass pivoting type, would point to a location as Magnetic North in 1990.

Today, 2009, that spot has moved a few degrees more or less?

Smitty

Yes. One of the articles shows a map of the 'wandering' of the north pole. I think that for all we know this type of wandering may be normal even in the long periods between pole reversals. But we may be heading into a reversal period now, a process we don't know much about, but both articles suggest that during the transition multiple 'north' and 'south' poles may form. A new north pole may be opening up for business in a neighborhood near you. At that point your magnetic compass will be a lot less useful.

Well, the days of having to navigate old school are gone for sure now.

Thank you for the info..........I learn so much on this site. I've been laid up for a while and this gives me some time to catch up on learning..........old dog, new tricks?

Smitty,

"The compass I had in my boat, a basic water filled brass pivoting type,"

Not likely it was water filled. Probably oil or alcohol. If it was a good one, it probably came with 2 compensators. I kept mine, knowing that pole shift was inevitable. (It's about 3° different from when I was younger)

Check your rhumb line.

I never wanted to know or even ask what was the liquid in a compass. As long as it got me out in the Gulf where we wanted to go and back to the dock , who cared.

Simple things like that were of no interest to me back then. If they worked, so be it...if not... we went to plan B! I just did not have an inquisitive mind, like most of you all on here.

I guess that attitude is why i am so banged up today in my wiser years.

Thank you for filling the gap between then and now.

Smitty

Really interesting links! The first works as expected, but the second points to the same site. Fortunately, cutting and pasting the second does work.

Does anyone have any links or more info on that African shift?

I have used FireFox for several years and several updates, very few problems. I am now on version 3.5.....no problems at all.....