Space

7287 readers

32 users here now

News and findings about our cosmos.

Subcommunity of Science

This community's icon was made by Aaron Schneider, under the CC-BY-NC-SA 4.0 license.

founded 2 years ago

MODERATORS

[email protected]

A solar storm on Thursday is expected to make the Northern Lights visible in 17 states (apnews.com)

submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

11 comments fedilink hide all child comments

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

They’re guessing, and no doubt fishing for clicks.

X-rays from flares travel at the speed of light and hit us in about 8 minutes. Solar energetic particles (related to flares) take minutes to hours. A coronal mass ejection usually takes about 3 days. At the moment we have no way of predicting them before they happen, so X-ray flares have no early warning because nothing is faster than the speed of light. We can see a CME erupt and know if it’s heading our way.

There are a couple of good sized sunspots at the moment that are facing towards us so the chances of something happening are decent, but we don’t know if and when and how much.