Solar Winds

[snazee1]

How (if they even do) do solar winds affect us on Earth?  I understand that they can do some harm to the astronauts in space, but does it affect us on Earth?  Also what do they mean when they say "Active Galaxy" when referring to the CHandra Observatory findings in space???  Just read an article about A Centuri being an active galaxy by x-ray means.  Just wondering, you know me curious george!

Thanks!
snazee1

[dingo15068]

Yes the solar wind does effect the Earth.  Depending on the activity of the Sun, and the flares it generates, disruption of communications and electrical transformers does occure

[yales]

imagine.gsfc.nasa.gov/doc...axies.html


--- yale

[snazee1]

Yales, thanks for the link, very informative!!! So what type of galaxy is the Milky Way?? Would we be a quasar since they think the middle of our galaxy is a massive black hole?

[Aetius1]

I think (??...Please correct me anyone if I'm wrong) quasars form the cores of very young galaxies. Eventually, I think the quasars undergo gravitational collapse and become the ubiquitous supermassive black holes we all know and love. I don't think the Milky Way is an active galaxy because as far as I know, our supermassive (central) black hole has run out of interstellar hydrogen to "eat" (for the moment?).

P.S. I'd love to know what kind of gravitational assist a hypothetical starship could get from a singularity with 2.5 million solar masses! Oh, darn. Not like I really want Earth to be any closer to all that radiation, but it's almost too bad that the galactic core is so far away.

[quasar14billion]

Well im sure were not a quasar, quasars were one of the first things made after the big bang thats why there so far out there.  

i dont thing that quasar form black holes but i know that black holes do fuel quasars\

OOPS sorry they do form black holes

[quasar14billion]

solar winds also cause what we know as aurora boreallisus and aurora australis

[Astronuc]

http://www.noaa.gov/solar.html

NOAA's Spaceweather site
http://www.spaceweather.noaa.gov/

Space Weather Data and Products
http://www.sec.noaa.gov/Data/

Advanced Composition Explorer (ACE) Real Time Solar Wind information
http://sec.noaa.gov/ace/ACErtsw_home.html
http://www.srl.caltech.edu/ACE/

[Astronuc]

See this page - http://cfa-www.harvard.edu/cfa/ep/almanac/0298C.htm

NEW UNDERSTANDING OF THE SOLAR WIND: THE IMPACT OF ULYSSES AND SOHO MEASUREMENTS

SOLAR WIND APPARENTLY ACCELERATED BY HIGH FREQUENCY WAVES

[Astronuc]

From a Japanese Satellite, Here Comes the Sun
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/11/science/space/11sun.html

Telescopes aboard the Hinode satellite, launched by the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency in September 2006, have been returning some of their first results, featured in the current issue of Science. Left, a photo in visible light shows threadlike features in a prominence on the Sun's surface. Right, an image of Mercury in transit across the disk of the Sun.

According to an article in an AIAA news summary, the Hinode results indicate "X-rays may create solar wind."

[Astronuc]

Using Hinode's high resolution X-ray telescope, a team led by Jonathan Cirtain at Nasa's Marshall Space Flight Centre, Huntsville, Alabama, peered into the atmosphere at the Sun's poles and observed record numbers of jets of X-rays, sent out as fountains of rapidly-moving hot plasma.

Cirtain's team observed an average of 240 jets per day, some up to 12,000 miles wide and 600,000 miles long, and conclude that Alfven waves are being formed at the same time.

"The large number of jets, coupled with the high speeds of the outflowing plasma, lends further credence to the idea that X-ray jets are a driving force in the creation of the fast solar wind."

Scientists discover sun's solar wind source