Solar Energy Has its Downsides Too…
If you are like me, and have experienced the frustration of having your television’s satellite knocked out of place by a big wind storm, perhaps you should worry more about the storms outside the atmosphere instead of inside.
A recent study at the University of California says that low-Earth orbiting satellites might not be designed to handle a solar Megastorm. Now, we are a long way’s away from having to worry about satellites falling from the sky, but the study shows that a Megastorm could make the satellites malfunction much faster than expected, which is bad news for your satellite TV.
Normally, we wouldn’t have to worry about this, but on June 7th, scientists monitored a large solar flare which shot out an unusually large amount of solar material. What was unusual about this flare was that it caught scientists by surprise; no one was expecting the spot to turn into a solar flare.
The simultaneous launch of particles into space is called a ‘coronal mass ejection’ or CME for short. Astrophysicist Phillip Chamberlin of NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory was one of the scientists monitoring the event, and says that he had never seen a CME this enormous.
Again, this wouldn’t be a big deal, if the material released from this CME isn’t the same material that could cause satellites to fail, and could even threaten power lines here on Earth.
I think this would be an interesting story to cover, simply because it’s something different, something that not everyone hears about all that often, and could have a significant impact on a lot of people.
