  
Solar storms and the geomagnetic storms they produce in the Earth's environment, have been known for decades to be responsible for many harmful effects upon human technology on the ground and in space. Solar storms and their geomagnetic effects are known to do far more than just paint the sky with pretty colors!
The multi-billion dollar 'Global Positioning System' consists of a constellation of over a dozen navigation satellites orbiting within the Van Allen radiation belts. These satellites let humans find their position anywhere on Earth using a hand-held receiver no bigger than a pocket calculator. During solar storms, these positions are quite a bit less accurate than under calm conditions, which impacts the navigation of ships at sea and jets in the air. |
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Geomagnetic storms have disabled multi-million dollar communication and navigation satellites such as Anik-A, Molynia, Marecs-A and have been implicated in many electrical problems experienced by other satellites. Solar storms were responsible for Skylab burning up in the atmosphere, and for altering the orbits of other satellites and even the Space Shuttle itself. A storm on March 13, 1989 knocked out the Quebec-Hydro power system, plunging 6 million people into darkness for 9 hours. |
| Geomagnetic storms cause the magnetic field near the Earth's surface to change rapidly in just a matters of minutes or hours. These changes cause electrical currents to flow in long power transmission lines, telephone wires, and even in pipelines which makes the pipes corrode. On June 5, 1991 a natural gas pipeline in Russia was weakened by corrosion and began to leak its deadly, flammable cargo. A passenger train loaded with 1,200 people ignited the liquified gas and caused an explosion equal to 10,000 tons of TNT. Over 500 people were killed, and 700 more were badly injured. |
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Would You Believe...
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Auroras can never get closer to the ground than about 60 kilometers |
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A sunspot has a temperature of nearly 4000 C, and would be brighter than the Full Moon if placed in the night sky. |
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Sunspots are often several times larger than the entire earth |
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The Sun rotates once every 25 days at the equator, but take up to 36 days to rotate once around at the poles. |
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The corona of the Sun is over 5 million degrees hotter than the surface of the Sun |
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The total power produced by an auroral event can exceed 1 million megawatts and produce voltages over 100,000 volts in the upper atmosphere. |
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Aurora are produced where the atmosphere has the same density as the vacuum inside a light bulb. |
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Some aurora occur at altitudes of over 1000 kilometers above the Earth's surface. |
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The Earth's magnetic north pole is actually a magnetic south pole because the north end of a bar magnet is attracted to it. |
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The north and south magnetic poles are not on exactly opposite sides of the Earth. |
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Lightning storms can eject particles into space at nearly the speed of light which are seen as 'sprites' on the top side of a thundercloud. |
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A single lightning storm can be heard on the other side of the earth because some of its energy travels along local magnetic field lines which connect pairs of points on the surface of the Earth which can be thousands of kilometers apart. |
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Congratulations!
Now that you have taken the Tutorial, you might want to visit the Sun-Earth Connection Resource Index. The index is divided into three sections: Earth, Wind, and Fire. You'll find plenty of things for the General interest Surfer as well as a section devoted to Teaching Tools. |
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