SOLAR WATCH: Sun Comes Alive - Monster Sunspot Region Emerging From the Southeastern Limb!

Originally posted by happykat39

Originally posted by Wongbeedman
reply to post by happykat39

 

Can anyone prove they've repeated this? If not can they tell me the exact moment in the film where this happens?

Repeated what? Please be more clear with your question and I will try to answer it.

Don't worry I'm in the wrong tab on the wrong thread, my bad.

Originally posted by Aleister
Looking like a monster of a flare and you know what - I never thought of the sun as a revolving object. I didn't know it revolved! How long does it take to circle around once? Thanks for the thread.

edit on 15-12-2012 by Aleister because: edit

I didn't realize this for a long time, until an astro-physicist ai was lucky enough to take an early college course with explained that *everything* in the universe rotates and revolves. From subatomic particles rotating on the axis and revolves around its nucleus, to the moon rotating on its axis and revolving around the earth, earth to sun, sun to galactic center, and milky way galaxy to yet a larger central rotation point,..and beyond. That simple bit of knowledge was honestly one of the most profound things I ever learned.

reply to post by happykat39


Even though the huge complex of sun spots is not flaring or very active, on the 21st those spots will be lined up with us like the barrel of a shotgun. Any extra influence, say a large body could be devastating. Not much mention on what they are doing.

reply to post by prophetboy12


A large biosphere placed between Earth and the sun could shield us from our sun.
As of now 1633 looks like a dud.

Originally posted by prophetboy12
reply to post by happykat39

 

Even though the huge complex of sun spots is not flaring or very active, on the 21st those spots will be lined up with us like the barrel of a shotgun. Any extra influence, say a large body could be devastating. Not much mention on what they are doing.

Originally posted by TauCetixeta
reply to post by prophetboy12

 

A large biosphere placed between Earth and the sun could shield us from our sun.
As of now 1633 looks like a dud.

I don't buy into the 12/21/2012 hype but sunspots and solar activity can be unpredictable. More than once something that was supposed to be a dud turned out to be anything but. On the other hand, solar activity that was supposed to fry us fizzled out before it even got a good start.

But I am always concerned when we are looking down the barrel of a set of sunspots. In the last few years we have had plenty of solar flares and coronal mass ejections (CMEs) that could have been extremely damaging. They just weren't aimed our way. I remember one a year or so back that had been aimed right at the earth but didn't really go off until it had rotated about 30 degrees past us. But when it did go off it swamped the solar observation satellites so badly that scientists had to estimate it's strength. That one, if it was aimed directly at earth when it went off would have, at the very least, fried many of our satellites and caused scattered power outages.

To understand how the odds of the earth being hit work let's do the following thought exercise...

We know, in somewhat simple terms, that the sun is nothing more than a huge ball of very hot gas. Now imagine that ball enclosed in a huge spherical shell whose diameter coincides with the earth's orbit. BTW, there is a name for a spherical shell that encloses a star. It is called a Dyson Sphere. The next thing to imagine is a solar flare or CME being shot out from the surface of the sun. It will always be shot out at or near to perpendicular to the suns surface at the point of origin.

When you consider that the sun is large enough to hold a million earths inside of it and the imaginary sphere mentioned above has a radius 93 million miles (on average) larger than the radius of the sun, what you end up with is a sphere with a truly humongous inner surface area. The place the earth occupies on the surface of that sphere is a very tiny spot by comparison to the size of the imaginary sphere. Think of something like a marble glued to the inside of a very large beach ball.

Now when you consider that a solar flare/CME event can originate from just about anywhere on the sun's surface and be aimed just about anywhere on the inside of our imaginary sphere you can begin to see just how little the odds are that any one solar event will be aimed at earth directly enough to be a problem.

Since most of the solar flares/CMEs are not large enough to do any real damage the odds are that most of the ones that actually hit earth will also be small as well. But lets throw out all the small ones and just concentrate on the big events like the 1859 Carrington Event.

The fact that it happened once means, given enough time, it will happen again. The earth is a sitting duck in the solar shooting gallery. The only thing that has saved us so far is that the sun is shooting blindly. And eventually one of the big ones will be headed our way again. It's only a matter of time.

Originally posted by Phage
reply to post by Bakatono

 

They would all melt down uncontrollably. Every single last one. Without the electricity to pump water to cool them or drop in control rods or whatever they would all go critical pretty quickly. It would be the end of us all

Some would, if they run out of fuel for their emergency generators. But there are reactors which use the heat from the core to drive pumps.

Within scope of the thread a flare that had enough power to fry our electronics would also fry those generators and any computers whih would tell them to turn on. It would also fry to electronics that would control those pumps. In such an event all electronics would just be dead. There are no backup systems.

Also. Even if for the sake of argument some of the generators did work or whatever the other hundreds of meltdowns would kill us all. Basically nuclear power is really really really stupid.

reply to post by Phage


The controls rods are designed to drop all the way down into the core between the fuel rods. These control rods are typically made of boron and slow or stop the nuclear reaction. This works ok as long as they do actually drop down in to stop the reaction. Sometimes this fails. Eventually over years. They would become saturated and the reaction would start again.

So the reactor is a concern but the cooling pools are a much greater concern. They are full of thousands of massively radioactive spent fuel rods and they are placed really close together to save on space. There are some boron rods in here too because the fuel rods are so close together they would start a nuclear reaction without the boron. The NRC has found that these control rods I the pools have bbeckme saturated and are minimally effective. Additionally these rods alone are not enough to prevent heat buildup so water has to be circulated. I'd any little thing goes wrong the whole pool would melt down.

I am on iPhone so citing isn't easy right now but i encourage you to look up the "14 near misses". It is a report detailing just a few of the hundreds of incidents that happen at theUS reactors alone. You will also see that aost every single one is caused by negligence wherein the company delayed maintenance or cut back on personnel or used cheaper parts. This is under normal operating conditions. If there were an emergency these old and poorly maintained reactors would not function properly and would melt down. This means pretty much all of them because they are all old and in a state of minimal repair.

Nuke power is bad. Very very bad.

reply to post by Bakatono

Within scope of the thread a flare that had enough power to fry our electronics would also fry those generators and any computers whih would tell them to turn on.

No. Geomagnetic events are not EMP events. Geomagnetic events affects long conductors (powerlines) they do not affect electronic devices.

reply to post by GhostyMew


::Your statement sounds like my exwife trying to get out of paying child support::

No need to call CPS as my daughter is 20 years old lol

That series of sunspots is almost facing us...probably Friday, DOOMSDAY!

reply to post by Evildead

They are also rapidly deteriorating.
www.swpc.noaa.gov...

Originally posted by Phage
reply to post by Evildead

 

They are also rapidly deteriorating.
www.swpc.noaa.gov...

That's great news . Makes me feel better.
I don't want to find out how we'd make out without
power lines .

With great regret,.
Im gonna have to say i think this spot will stay quiet..
However, the next runner up.............Maybe?

reply to post by Lil Drummerboy

Don't hold your breath.

Solar activity has been at very low levels for the past 24 hours. The largest event of the period was a B5 event from Region 1633 (S07E13) at 19/0447 UTC. Region 1633 has shown decay in the leader spot and is once again magnetically classified as a beta group. All three numbered regions on the disk have remained stable and quiet. The background x-ray levels, as measured by the GOES 15 spacecraft, continue to decrease. STEREO B EUVI imagery indicates that no new regions will be rotating into view for the next 3 days. SDO magnetogram imagery suggest emerging flux around N05W01, however none of our land based solar observatories have mentioned the presence of sunspots. SOHO C2 and C3 imagery show a large streamer liftoff, however analysis indicated the associated CME is not Earth directed.

www.swpc.noaa.gov...

reply to post by Phage
Thanks Phage,
I watch this stuff every day
Just being hopeful for some excitement

Originally posted by Phage
reply to post by Lil Drummerboy

 

Don't hold your breath.

Solar activity has been at very low levels for the past 24 hours. The largest event of the period was a B5 event from Region 1633 (S07E13) at 19/0447 UTC. Region 1633 has shown decay in the leader spot and is once again magnetically classified as a beta group. All three numbered regions on the disk have remained stable and quiet. The background x-ray levels, as measured by the GOES 15 spacecraft, continue to decrease. STEREO B EUVI imagery indicates that no new regions will be rotating into view for the next 3 days. SDO magnetogram imagery suggest emerging flux around N05W01, however none of our land based solar observatories have mentioned the presence of sunspots. SOHO C2 and C3 imagery show a large streamer liftoff, however analysis indicated the associated CME is not Earth directed.

www.swpc.noaa.gov...

All of that just points out the fickle nature of the sun. It will be the sunspot that nobody thinks is worth worrying about that will jump up and bite us in the tush while the ones everybody worries about will fizzle.

reply to post by happykat39

No. It will, in all likelihood, be the large sunspot group with a Bèta-Gamma-Delta configuration. Those don't tend to pop-up (unless it's by comin' 'round the corner).

reply to post by Phage


Phage, after looking at the same website with the same space weather info for four days, new information that the sun's far side is getting extremely active with no less than 6 CMEs. Is something influencing the far side.

Looking at this latest image from Stereo A, it seems the sun is trying to add a little excitement to doomsday 2012...



Source

reply to post by prophetboy12

Yes. The Sun.
What do you think is causing it?

reply to post by Phage


If there is something on the other side coming into proximity and it was on the left side, wouldn't a shock wave cause a reaction on the left side?