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Comment by jnorthrop | Hacker News Reader

Forgive my ignorant question, but what if that eruption was aimed at us? Was that a mass ejection of something? If so, could that something have ruined the electronics in orbiting satellites or stripped our atmosphere?

Maybe I'm over-reacting but that appears to be an absolutely massive explosion.

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This was a 'coronal mass ejection'. Inevitably, you're right - particles will no doubt make their way towards us.

These incoming particles will probably cause an increase in Northern/Southern Lights (Aurora Borealis/Australis). The earth has a 'Van Allen Radiation Belt' surrounding it - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Van_Allen_Belt - which takes magnetically charged particles, often fired from the sun, and blasts them back down to earth. Upon impact with the planet's atmosphere, beautiful Auroras can be created.

However, satellites can't orbit anywhere nearby the Van Allen Belt, as obviously these radiating particles can damage sensitive instruments. I'd guess by the size of this mass ejection, a geomagnetic storm will be created. Wikipedia has a good list of the various negative effects of these things: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geomagnetic_storm#Geomagnetic_s...

Of course, it depends on the direction the eruption was aiming as a primary factor. This wonderful image - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Magnetosphere_rendition.jp... - shows a perfect example of the Van Allen Belt. If you tip your head 90 degrees to the left, it kind of looks like an angel around earth - the 'halo area' is the main Van Allen Belt loop causing Auroras by firing the particles towards each polar cap.

(Disclaimer: I have an interest in astronomy, but nothing to put to my name except for a B-grade Astronomy GCSE - it's likely much of that explanation is scientifically inaccurate, but, I tried my best! :)

It takes on the order of three days to reach Earth.

If you tip your head 90 degrees to the left, it kind of looks like an angel around earth - the 'halo area' is the main Van Allen Belt loop causing Auroras by firing the particles towards each polar cap.

That reminds me of the passage in the Bible claiming four angels standing at corners of the earth. Not to get into a theistic thread or anything, but who needs religion when science is that stunning? Beautiful imagery!

Yeah, but it's going to take science a while just to find the corners on the earth. ;)

Shh! I was trying not to point that out ;)

It takes a liberal arts major about a second to find the metaphor. ;)

I'm assuming the video was taken from somewhere in the vicinity of Earth, so it doesn't look like it was aimed anywhere near us. We'll likely see some increase in solar particles, but not nearly as much as whatever was directly in its path.

Probably not much. According to the blog, this was a lower-energy explosion than, say, this one[1], which was aimed right at us.

[1] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=himC51J23vQ

Flares and CMEs can certainly cause damage to electronics or to astronauts.

It is believed that the CPU outage that caused the loss-of-pointing of the Galaxy IV satellite that in turn caused the giant pager outage in 1998 (about 80% of US pagers failed) was due to solar flares and CMEs.

It's also conjectured that flares cause many other satellite electronics failures:

http://books.google.com/books?id=nmdfazhEWzsC&pg=PA122&#...

The general phenomenon is called "Space Weather".

There is a monitoring center in Boulder, CO, run by NOAA, called the Space Weather Prediction Center (http://www.swpc.noaa.gov/), that tries to predict and assess space weather. They use physical models and observational data, but it's not nearly as evolved a science as numerical weather prediction.

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