Yes, he is expecting more storms until the end of the maximum, which next year.
Yes, it looks almost as if something ate the energy from the storm.
Northern & Southern Lights (aurora borealis/australis)
- Thread starter Voyageur
- Start date
Yes, he is expecting more storms until the end of the maximum, which next year.
Yes, it looks almost as if something ate the energy from the storm.
Wandering Star
The Living Force
How about certain consciousness units that read collinear waves, capable of assimilating much more electromagnetic energy in their environment and that thanks to them that energy was assimilated, managing to stop the damage to everyone?
I don't think that we are there yet. On the other hand, it could be that the STS guys did some magic to reduce the damage so that their precious technology won't be fried.
I was looking up "current sheet grounding", and there's this:
Session 17 July 2022:
So, yes, that's a possibility. Or, we should expect it to still happen, just delayed, like the guy in the video Persej posted said.
And/or, the effects are not always the same, depending on who knows how many factors. Sometimes it may fry technology, other times people's brains. The Jamaica/New Caledonia + riots connection sure is interesting. As above so below?
Session 17 July 2022:
So, yes, that's a possibility. Or, we should expect it to still happen, just delayed, like the guy in the video Persej posted said.
And/or, the effects are not always the same, depending on who knows how many factors. Sometimes it may fry technology, other times people's brains. The Jamaica/New Caledonia + riots connection sure is interesting. As above so below?
SOTTREADER
The Living Force
Here's a thought, what happens to transhumanists with all their nanobots when we have such events from the sun? 
Wandering Star
The Living Force
Just in case, I wasn't referring to the few thousand people on this forum.
Millions and millions across the planet who have the ability to do that.
I felt clearly when this solar storm was reported, that there were not going to be serious problems.
I'm sure many of you had the same feeling.
Well, you could make an argument that the sheer number of people on Earth at this time played a role in assimilation of this energy. At the time of the Carrington event, there was about 1.2 billion of people, and now there is more than 8 billion. So perhaps at least a quantity of consciousness was an important factor, if we don't yet have a better quality of it.
Wonder if the recent aurora display caused by the solar flares of 10-11 May is in any way related to the many instances of heavy precipitation recorded across the world. Floods killed several people in both Afghanistan and Iran while Germany, France and Northern Italy were heavily affected by floods last week. Flash floods also hit parts of Indonesia and India and rare snow storms were seen in South Korea and Turkey, the latter being caused by a cyclone affecting the European part of Russia which caused a drop in temperature by 8-10 C.
Given what we know about the impact of coronal mass ejections on earth changes via the magnetosphere as described by Pierre, it will be interesting to see if we witness an increase in earthquakes and volcanic activity in the coming weeks. Maybe there's a link to the recent eruption of Semeru in Indonesia and of the mud volcano in Azerbaijan.
XPan
The Living Force
Stockholm Aurora Outbreak
13 Aug 2024
It was one of the bigger outbreaks, albeit not as great in terms of brightness. Yet, they did reach all the way to and beyond zenit ! Mostly dull looking to the naked eye (except a few moments) - but as soon I aimed a camera at the sky - they turned out to be pretty nice and colorful. I started to watch the sky a bit before midnight - at a time it was all overcast. Luckily, they moved suddenly towards NE - so the green curtains became increasingly visible.
Here are a few images I took last night - albeit here the quality is of lesser nature, due to the strong jpg compression I have been using in order to keep the thread fluid.
13 Aug 2024
It was one of the bigger outbreaks, albeit not as great in terms of brightness. Yet, they did reach all the way to and beyond zenit ! Mostly dull looking to the naked eye (except a few moments) - but as soon I aimed a camera at the sky - they turned out to be pretty nice and colorful. I started to watch the sky a bit before midnight - at a time it was all overcast. Luckily, they moved suddenly towards NE - so the green curtains became increasingly visible.
Here are a few images I took last night - albeit here the quality is of lesser nature, due to the strong jpg compression I have been using in order to keep the thread fluid.
Beginning of October, 2 X-class flares produced coronal mass ejections oriented toward the Earth.
Northern Lights were seen for a brief moment, early evening of the 6 October 2024, in Estrie and Montérégie (Qc, Canada).
Although, it would seem they were visible everywhere, from East to West, even in the northern USA.
They were also seen during the night of 7-8 Oct.
Northern Lights were seen for a brief moment, early evening of the 6 October 2024, in Estrie and Montérégie (Qc, Canada).
Although, it would seem they were visible everywhere, from East to West, even in the northern USA.
They were also seen during the night of 7-8 Oct.
Auroras are visible today across many countries which are not normally get it - due to some CME's directed at earth.
From New Jersey , USA
from Asheville, NC
From Netherlands
General scope of the area
From New Jersey , USA
from Asheville, NC
Aurora is naked eye visible due east of Asheville, NC!!! pic.twitter.com/CKZr8UrZVR
— Evan Fisher (@EFisherWX) May 11, 2024
From Netherlands
Wow!!
— Buitengebieden (@buitengebieden) October 10, 2024
Northern Lights in front of my house right now..
Near Lauwersoog, The Netherlands#aurora #noorderlicht pic.twitter.com/mT73Pw3X8h
General scope of the area
🥳🤪auroras are starting to be visible in mid Atlantic states, higher southern states, and maybe lower.
— Dr. C. Alex Young (@TheSunToday) October 10, 2024
Go outside!!! YAY!!! pic.twitter.com/46JmwFX5vE
**AURORA ALERT**
— Jake Stehli (@eljakeo30) October 10, 2024
If you are in North America this evening, look up or toward the north. Things have just become exciting! Incredible data supports intense auroras, likely visible overhead across much of the northern half of the U.S. and in the northern sky if you live in the… pic.twitter.com/QxhCpQQEjk
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A mysterious, 100-year solar cycle may have just restarted — and it could mean decades of dangerous space weather
A new paper suggests that a mysterious 100-year solar cycle, known as the Centennial Gleissberg Cycle, may have just "turned over."
The unexpected surge of solar activity during the ongoing solar maximum may be tied to a lesser-known, 100-year-long cycle that is just beginning to ramp up again, a new study suggests.
If that's true, the next few decades could see further increases in solar activity that may threaten Earth-orbiting spacecraft and continue to trigger vibrant auroras across the globe. However, other experts are skeptical of the new findings.
Solar activity naturally waxes and wanes throughout the solar cycle — a roughly 11-year period in which our home star goes from being mostly calm in a phase called solar minimum to being a chaotic mass that frequently spits out powerful solar storms at solar maximum, and back again. This cycle is also known as the "sunspot cycle" because the number of dark patches on the sun rises and falls due to changes in the sun's magnetic field, which completely flips during solar maximum.
However, there are several other cycles that dictate solar activity. One example is the Hale cycle, which governs how individual magnetic bands move across the sun's surface and has recently been shown to influence the progression of the sunspot cycle. Historical records also show that the sun has experienced several long-term fluctuations in solar activity over the past few millennia. These included the Maunder Minimum — a period of greatly reduced solar activity between 1645 and 1715.
Another, lesser-known repeating pattern in solar activity is the Centennial Gleissberg Cycle (CGC) — a variation in the intensity of sunspot cycles that rises and falls every 80 to 100 years. The CGC is still poorly understood, but it is likely tied to "subtle sloshing" of the magnetic fields in each of the sun's two hemispheres that slightly alters the Hale cycle, Scott McIntosh, a solar physicist at the newly formed space weather solutions company Lynker Space, who was not involved in the research, told Live Science.
In the new study, published March 2 in the journal Space Weather, researchers suggest that the CGC might have just "turned over," or started again. This could also explain why the ongoing solar maximum, which officially began in early 2024, has ended up being much harder to predict than initially expected.
The study team came to this conclusion after analyzing changes to the "proton flux," or number of positively charged particles, in Earth's inner radiation belt — the first of two doughnut-shaped bands of charged particles surrounding our planet. Collectively, these bands are known as the Van Allen belts.
The inner belt's proton flux decreases when solar activity increases because of interactions with Earth's upper atmosphere, which swells as it soaks up more solar radiation. On the flip side, the proton flux increases as solar activity decreases.
The new analysis shows that the flux increased over the past 20 years but has just started decreasing over the past year or so. This suggests that we have "just passed the CGC minimum" and that average solar activity will start to rise again, study lead author Kalvyn Adams, an undergraduate researcher at JILA, a joint institute of the University of Colorado Boulder (CU Boulder) and the National Institute of Standards and Technology, told Live Science.
The proton flux data were collected by National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) satellites as they passed through the South Atlantic Anomaly (SAA) — a mysterious dent in Earth's magnetic field above South America and the South Atlantic Ocean where our planet's protective shield is the weakest. This was a key reason these trends became apparent, the researchers said.
"The SAA is a region where the Earth's magnetic field is weak and allows trapped protons to reach lower altitudes," Adams said. This allows the NOAA spacecraft to "see into" the inner radiation belt without having to fly directly into it, which would be extremely tricky, he added.
Surprising solar activity
We may be nearing the end of the maximum phase of the current sunspot cycle, Solar Cycle 25 (SC25). This peak has been very active and has included some extreme space weather events, such as a supercharged geomagnetic storm in May 2024 that triggered some of the most widespread auroras in the past 500 years. However, this flourish of activity was not initially expected.
During the previous sunspot cycle, SC24, the sun was surprisingly quiet throughout solar maximum. This led space weather experts from NASA and NOAA to initially forecast that the same would happen during SC25, which they later admitted was a mistake.
The new research hints that SC24's lull was caused by the CGC minimum, likely making it the quietest sunspot cycle for around a century. If this is the case, then the unexpected activity of the current solar maximum means the sun is returning to "business as usual," McIntosh said.
Previous research had already suggested that the CGC may have played a role in the recent sunspot cycle confusion, including a 2023 study from members of Adam's research group and a 2024 paper that analyzed sunspot patterns with machine learning. However, the most recent findings are the first to suggest that the CGC minimum may be over.
The new study also suggests that the CGC may have a greater influence on the sunspot cycle than researchers previously realized, Adams said. As a result, solar cycle forecasters should "definitely" keep a closer eye on this phenomenon when predicting upcoming cycles, he added.
More to come?
If the CGC is turning over, then upcoming sunspot cycles will likely be as active as the current cycle and could eventually get stronger as we approach the CGC maximum, the researchers wrote.
"We just passed the CGC minimum, and it will be another 40 to 50 years before the CGC maximum," Adams told Live Science. "As a result, the next CGC maximum will likely occur around Solar Cycle 28."
Using "back-of-the-envelope calculations," we can assume that when this happens, solar activity could be around twice as high as it has been during the current maximum, Adams added. However, it is hard to tell for sure, because the CGC's effect on solar activity "can be a little inconsistent," he admitted.
If future solar maxima are more active than the ongoing peak, it could spell trouble for satellites, which can be knocked out of orbit as Earth's upper atmosphere swells. Several spacecraft have already fallen foul of this in the past few years. However, the problem could get worse in the coming decades due to the rapid expansion of private satellite "megaconstellations" that may be ill-equipped to deal with radiation spikes.
"Most [private] satellites usually take into account a model of the space climate when they are being made," Adams said. But they "are not considering the long-term variations that we are seeing."
Increased solar activity could also be a problem for astronauts, who are vulnerable to harmful radiation shooting out of our home star, Adams added. And there will likely be lots more people in space in the coming decades due to upcoming missions to the moon and Mars, as well as an increase in private spaceflight.
An uncertain future
But not everyone completely agrees with the new findings.
McIntosh, who was one of the first researchers to correctly forecast SC25 when he previously worked at the National Center for Atmospheric Research at CU Boulder, told Live Science that it is "too early" to make any firm conclusions about the CGC.
The main issue is that proton flux has only gone down over the past year, so it could just be a temporary dip caused by the natural variability of the sun, McIntosh said. As a result, the study team probably needs a couple more years of data for their results "to be definitive," he added.
There's also no baseline data for comparing CGC cycles, since satellites have only been able to accurately track proton flux over the past 30 to 40 years.
McIntosh also warned that the new study could be overestimating the effects of the CGC on the sunspot cycle, because we still don't know how the two cycles interact. At present, researchers are also struggling to agree on what the CGC is and how we define it, he added.
However, while McIntosh does not entirely agree with the new study, he did say it is "intriguing" and "well intentioned," and that the findings could help forecast the next sunspot cycle. While the CGC remains mysterious, it is likely "an intrinsic part of the [sunspot cycle] puzzle," he added.
A mysterious, 100-year solar cycle may have just restarted — and it could mean decades of dangerous space weather
New research suggests that the unexpected intensity of the ongoing solar maximum may be partly tied to a lesser-known, 100-year solar cycle. If true, solar activity could spike further in the coming decades. But some experts are skeptical.www.livescience.com
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