Now We Know How Fast We're Traveling Through Space

Ask a scientist for our cosmic address, and you'll get quite a mouthful. Here we are, on planet Earth, which spins on its axis and revolves around the Sun, which orbits in an ellipse around the center of the Milky Way, which is being pulled towards Andromeda within our

By Ethan Siegel www.forbes.com 6-16-17

local group, which is being pushed around inside our cosmic supercluster, Laniakea, by galactic groups, clusters, and cosmic voids, which itself lies in the KBC void amidst the large-scale structure of the Universe. After decades of research, science has finally put together the complete picture, and can quantify exactly how fast we're moving through space, on every scale.

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There's a Hole in The Sun – Geomagnetic Storms Imminent!

By Brian K Sullivan
www.bloomberg.com
11-3-15

     Get ready for a light show.

The sun’s about to spit charged particles our way. And that solar wind of protons and electrons will interact with the Earth’s magnetic field to light up the skies with a dazzling display of color through Wednesday.

The solar wind coming out of a hole on the sun will almost certainly spark an aurora that may be seen by millions of people. The hole contains less material than other parts of the sun, allowing the wind to flow outward much faster than normal -- “more than two and a half times” faster, according to Robert Rutledge, a forecaster at the U.S. Space Weather Prediction Center in Boulder, Colorado.

People across large parts of Asia, Europe and North America should be able to catch the aurora. Those as far south as Illinois in the U.S. may count themselves lucky. [...]

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Gigantic Hole In The Sun's Atmosphere Has Opened

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By spaceweather.com
10-14-15

     A gigantic hole in the sun's atmosphere has opened up and a broad stream of solar wind is flowing out of it. This is called a "coronal hole." It is the deep blue-colored region in this extreme UV image from NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory (see above).

Coronal holes are places in the sun's atmosphere where the magnetic field unfurls and allows solar wind to escape. In the image above, the sun's magnetic field is traced by white curving lines. Outside the coronal hole, those magnetic fields curve back on themselves, trapping solar wind inside their loops. Inside the coronal hole, no such trapping occurs. Solar wind plasma is free to fly away as indicated by the white arrows.

For much of the next week, Earth's environment in space will be dominated by winds flowing from this broad hole. This should activate some beautiful Arctic auroras. [...]

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Massive Solar Blast that Almost Wreaked Havoc on Earth

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By FoxNews.com
3-19-14

     Earth dodged one of the most massive magnetic solar bursts ever on July 23, 2012, scientists with the University of California, Berkeley revealed on Wednesday -- saving the planet from widespread havoc.

"Had it hit Earth, it probably would have been like the big one in 1859, but the effect today, with our modern technologies, would have been tremendous," UC Berkeley research physicist Janet G. Luhmann said in a press release.

According to researchers had the quick succession of coronal mass ejections, the most intense kind of solar eruptions, come nine days earlier, it would have hit Earth, potentially disabling satellites and GPS and the electrical grid.

A study from last year revealed that a solar storm like the one Earth narrowly avoided could have cost up to $2.6 trillion in damages. A similar event in March 1989 caused Canada's Hydro-Quebec power grid to collapse and left six million people with no electricity for nine hours.

"The cost of an extreme space weather event, if it hits Earth, could reach trillions of dollars with a potential recovery time of 4-10 years," professor at China's State Key Laboratory of Space Weather Ying D. Liu warned in a press release. "Therefore, it is paramount to the security and economic interest of the modern society to understand solar superstorms." . . .

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A 4-day movie of AR1944 from the Solar Dynamics Observtory

By spaceweather.com
1-7-14

     Giant sunspot AR1944 erupted on Jan 7th at approximately 1832 UT, producing a powerful X1-class solar flare. First-look coronagraph images from the STEREO-Ahead spacecraft appear to show a coronal mass ejection (CME) emerging from the blast site. If so, the CME is almost certainly heading for Earth. . . ..

Rocky Raybell photographed the active region named "AR1944" yesterday from his backyard in Keller, Washington.

The sprawling sunspot contains dozens of dark cores, the largest big enough to swallow Earth three times over. This makes it an easy target for amateur solar telescopes -- or even regular cameras. Raybell used an SX40 digital camera on a tripod whole holding a Baader solar filer over the lens to capture his image. . . .

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What Happened to Comet ISON? | VIDEO

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Click to view a SOHO coronagraph movie of the solar flyby

By science.nasa.gov
12-4-13

     Astronomers have long known that some comets like it hot. Several of the greatest comets in history have flown close to the sun, puffing themselves up with solar heat, before they became naked-eye wonders in the night sky.

Some comets like it hot, but Comet ISON was not one of them.

The much-anticipated flyby of the sun by Comet ISON on Thanksgiving Day 2013 is over, and instead of becoming a Great Comet….

"Comet ISON fell apart," reports Karl Battams of NASA's Comet ISON Observing Campaign. “The fading remains are now invisible to the human eye.”

At first glance this might seem like a negative result, but Battams says “rather than mourn what we have lost, we should perhaps rejoice in what we have gained—some of the finest data in the history of cometary astronomy.”

On the morning of Nov. 28th, expectations were high as ISON neared perihelion, or closest approach to the sun. The icy comet already had a riotous tail 20 times wider than the full Moon and a head bright enough to see in the pre-dawn eye with the unaided eye. A dose of solar heat could transform this good comet into a great one.

During the flyby, more than 32,000 people joined Battams and other solar scientists on a Google+ Hangout. Together they watched live images from a fleet of solar observatories including the twin STEREO probes, the Solar Dynamics Observatory, and SOHO. As Comet ISON approached the sun it brightened and faded again.

"That might have been the disintegration event," says Matthew Knight of NASA's Comet ISON Observing Campaign.

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Click to view a SOHO coronagraph movie of the solar flyby

COMET ISON LIVES!

By spaceweather.com
11-29-13

     COMET ISON LIVES! Cancel the funeral. Comet ISON is back from the dead. Yesterday, Nov. 28th, Comet ISON flew through the sun's atmosphere and appeared to disintegrate before the cameras of several NASA and ESA spacecraft. This prompted reports of the comet's demise. Today, the comet has revived and is rapidly brightening.

Before the flyby, experts had made many predictions about what might happen to the comet, ranging from utter disintegration to glorious survival. No one predicted both.

Karl Battams of NASA's Comet ISON Observing Campaign says, "[colleague] Matthew Knight and I are ripping our hair out right now as we know that so many people in the public, the media and in science teams want to know what's happened. We'd love to know that too! Right now, here's our working hypothesis:

"As comet ISON plunged towards to the Sun, it began to fall apart, losing not giant fragments but at least a lot of reasonably sized chunks. There's evidence of very large dust in the long thin tail we saw in the [SOHO coronagraph] images. Then, as ISON plunged through the corona, it continued to fall apart and vaporize, losing its coma and tail completely just like sungrazing Comet Lovejoy did in 2011. What emerged from the Sun was a small but perhaps somewhat coherent nucleus that has resumed emitting dust and gas for at least the time being." . . .

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All of Klass' "Skeptics UFO Newsletter" (SUN) Now Available!

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FINALLY! All Issues of Klass' "Skeptics UFO Newsletter" (SUN) are On-Line!

By Robert Sheaffer badufos.blogspot.com 11-9-13

      Several years ago I pointed out to CSI(COP) that the collection of Klass' influential and significant Skeptics UFO Newsletter (SUN) hosted on their website was incomplete. I was assured that the librarian would get right on it, but that didn't happen.

Then on October 23, 2013 UFO researcher and archivist Isaac Koi posted a plea on the UFO Updates mailing list, noting that

Luis R. Gonzalez (a Spanish researcher) has scanned his almost complete run of xerox copies of Klass' skeptic UFO Newsletter, and filled the gaps with the help of others. Only a small number of issues are currently available online, at the CSICOP website... Perhaps CSI/CSICOP will give permission for me to share a link to a much more complete collection of SUN, as searchable PDF files, on a free file storage website; and/or (2) CSI/CSICOP may like to make this more complete collection available to download from its own website....I have yet to receive any positive answer to either of the above possibilities or any reasons for refusing the requests... If anyone has a good relationship with CSICOP then perhaps they could have a word with someone there.

As soon as I saw that I put together an email in support of Koi to the appropriate persons, and they began talking. Soon the matter was resolved, I think, to everyone's satisfaction. Koi has uploaded the complete collection of SUN #1 - SUN #76 to on-line storage, with a nice introduction and explanation here. He also links in a two-part YouTube video from 1987 by Ted Koppel interviewing Klass and Stanton Friedman. (You will note, to no one's surprise, that Friedman is given far more time to speak than Klass [See below]).

Soon after that, the full collection of SUNs was posted to the CSI(COP) website. Both of the scans appear to be searchable.

The on-line presence of SUN is a huge boon to serious UFO researchers of all stripes, as Klass was invariably the best-informed skeptical researcher, and the newsletter is filled with information concerning many famous (and less-famous) UFO claims. Klass was a meticulous researcher, and while you may not agree with his conclusions (even I do not agree with Klass 100% of the time), you can be confident that all of the facts he cites are correct and can be substantiated. You can then draw your own conclusions from that. "Write only what you know," Klass admonished me on more than one occasion. Don't state something as a fact unless you know that it is a fact, and can demonstrate it.

Koi provides some nice examples above of what SUN contains. These searchable files are also a huge boon in making the skeptical viewpoint about UFOs available to interested persons.

I should mention that following in the footsteps of SUN today is Tim Printy's SUNlite, continuing Klass' tradition of meticulous and careful UFO investigation with a skeptic's eye. Tim puts out six issues a year, covering all manner of contemporary UFO claims and controversies.

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Solar Storms Cause Dropped Cell Phone Calls And Amazing Light Shows

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By Gabriela Aoun
The Huffington Post
10-11-13

     Stop blaming AT&T and Verizon; all those dropped calls you’re experiencing may be coming from the sun.

Eruptions of hot gas, called solar storms, produce shock waves that travel through space at millions of miles per hour. The energy from their unimaginable speeds causes electrons to create radio waves that eventually reach the earth’s atmosphere.

These waves disrupt satellite and terrestrial communications on earth on a weekly if not daily basis, according to University of Hawaii scientist Dr. Jason Byrne.

Dr. Byrne contributed to a recent study by Trinity College Dublin, University College London and the University of Hawaii that makes never-before-known connections between these solar storms and radio wave disruptions on earth.

By combining high-resolution photography from two spacecrafts with radio burst detections from antennas in Ireland, the study was able to pinpoint where exactly solar storms originated on the sun and their exact impact time on earth. It was already known before the study that radio waves would peak due to solar activity, but the origin of the peaks and what specific processes were at work were still mysteries. . . .

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By Sara Gates
The Huffington Post
8-6-13

     Get ready, Earth. The sun's magnetic field is about to do a 180 when the celestial body's electromagnetism flips and changes polarity.

According to NASA-supported observations, the complete reversal is expected to take place in the coming months.

"It looks like we're no more than three to four months away from a complete field reversal," Todd Hoeksema, a solar physicist and director of Stanford University's Wilcox Solar Observatory, said in a statement released by the agency. "This change will have ripple effects throughout the solar system."

So should we be concerned about the reversal of the sun's magnetic field? . . .

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By The Huffington Post
6-6-13

     We're not sure whether to be amazed or alarmed.

A "massive" coronal hole that rotated toward Earth from May 28-31 was one of the largest such holes NASA says it has observed all year.

The amazing part is that NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory was able to capture some spectacular ultraviolet footage of the hole in the sun's corona. (Watch in the video below.)

The potentially alarming part?

Coronal holes (dark, cold areas in the sun's outermost atmospheric layer) are the sources of solar winds -- streams of charged particles that travel at more than 1 million mph and can cause auroras and geomagnetic storms (worldwide disturbances of the Earth's magnetic field) when they reach our planet. . . .

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Huge Sunspot May Trigger Solar Activity & Flares, NASA Says

By Tariq Malik
The Huffington Post
2-20-13

      A colossal sunspot on the surface of the sun is large enough to swallow six Earths whole, and could trigger solar flares this week, NASA scientists say.

The giant sunspot was captured on camera by NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory as it swelled to enormous proportions over the 48 hours spanning Tuesday and Wednesday (Feb. 19 and 20). SDO is one of several spacecraft that constantly monitor the sun's space weather environment.

"It has grown to over six Earth diameters across, but its full extent is hard to judge since the spot lies on a sphere, not a flat disk," wrote NASA spokeswoman Karen Fox, of the agency's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., in an image description.

The sunspot region is actually a collection of dark blemishes on the surface of the sun that evolved rapidly over the last two days. Sunspots form from shifting magnetic fields at the sun's surface, and are actually cooler than their surrounding solar material. . . .

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Hidden Magnetic Portals Around Earth | SPACE NEWS | VIDEO

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By Dr. Tony Phillips
science.nasa.gov
6-29-12

     A favorite theme of science fiction is "the portal"--an extraordinary opening in space or time that connects travelers to distant realms. A good portal is a shortcut, a guide, a door into the unknown. If only they actually existed....

It turns out that they do, sort of, and a NASA-funded researcher at the University of Iowa has figured out how to find them.

"We call them X-points or electron diffusion regions," explains plasma physicist Jack Scudder of the University of Iowa. "They're places where the magnetic field of Earth connects to the magnetic field of the Sun, creating an uninterrupted path leading from our own planet to the sun's atmosphere 93 million miles away."

Observations by NASA's THEMIS spacecraft and Europe's Cluster probes suggest that these magnetic portals open and close dozens of times each day. They're typically located a few tens of thousands of kilometers from Earth where the geomagnetic field meets the onrushing solar wind. Most portals are small and short-lived; others are yawning, vast, and sustained. Tons of energetic particles can flow through the openings, heating Earth's upper atmosphere, sparking geomagnetic storms, and igniting bright polar auroras.

NASA is planning a mission called "MMS," short for Magnetospheric Multiscale Mission, due to launch in 2014, to study the phenomenon. Bristling with energetic particle detectors and magnetic sensors, the four spacecraft of MMS will spread out in Earth's magnetosphere and surround the portals to observe how they work.

Just one problem: Finding them. Magnetic portals are invisible, unstable, and elusive. They open and close without warning "and there are no signposts to guide us in," notes Scudder.

Actually, there are signposts, and Scudder has found them. . . .

* Special Thanks To Andrew Ackerley

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* Special Thanks Ryan

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Nasa Image of 'UFO' Near Sun Sparks Debate

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By www.straitstimes.com
5-14-12

     (THE KOREA HERALD/ASIA NEWS NETWORK) - A YouTube video purportedly showing an unidentified flying object (UFO) near the Sun has re-ignited the decades-old debate over alien existence.

The video, posted by user 'rob19791' on May 5, shows what the user claims to be a triangular object hovering just above the Sun's surface. The image featured in the video was provided by National Aeronautics and Space Administration's (NASA) Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (Soho).

The object seems to be over 100,000 kilometres in length - as big as the planet Saturn - with long mechanical arms.

A day after the video was uploaded on YouTube, Nasa shut down Soho's video feed, citing technical issues. . . .

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UFO NEWS | VIDEO | YouTuber Claims NASA Has Edited Footage of Spaceship Near Sun . . .

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By Peter Farquhar
www.news.com.au
5-9-12

EITHER we aren't alone, or it's nigh time NASA fixed its dodgy cameras.

    For the third time this year, the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) has returned an image of a giant UFO hovering near, or feeding off the Sun. Maybe.

SOHO was launched in 1995 as a joint effort between NASA and the European Space Agency, with a sole aim to study the Sun. The mission was supposed to last just two years, but it is still plugging away and has approved support from ESA to continue to do so until at least December.

In recent years, SOHO has found an extended role as a predictor of solar weather activity, helping scientists on Earth prepare for radiation bursts sent our way by solar flares. . . .

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By www.foxnews.com
4-26-12

     UFO hunters have spotted a curious object near the sun in a new NASA image. It is, in the words of a blogger for the website Gather, "what looks like a metallic, jointed spaceship with a gigantic extension, perhaps a boom arm, anchored off its lower end."

The YouTube video drawing attention to the object has quickly made its way to discussion forums and the tabloid press, and many seasoned UFO believers are calling it a definite "spot."

But does this image, which was taken by a camera on board NASA's Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) on Tuesday (April 24), really show a spaceship dropping by the sun to harvest some solar energy, as one YouTube commenter suggested? Or is this object something much more mundane? We asked scientists in the solar physics branch at the United States Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) — the group that analyzes data from Lasco 2, the telescopic camera that snapped the picture.

According to Nathan Rich, lead ground systems engineer in the NRL's solar physics branch, the "spaceship" is merely a collection of streaks left by cosmic rays, charged particles from space, which whizzed through the camera's sensor, or CCD, as the image was taken. . . .

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