NASA spacecraft to probe the sun
Earth’s star is also the source of some of its greatest threats
The source of light and life on Earth is also the source of one of its biggest natural threats: space weather. The sun’s atmosphere regularly erupts with flashes of protons and explosions of energetic particles that can hit Earth within minutes and disrupt radio communication, interfere with GPS and fry the electric grid. A “worst-case scenario” space weather event could cause more damage than Hurricanes Katrina, Harvey and Sandy combined.
“It sounds like science fiction,” said National Oceanic and Atmospheric
Administration meteorologist William Murtagh, who heads the Space Weather Forecasting Center. “But it’s something that’s not only possible, but very likely to happen in the nottoo-distant future.”
Scientists have long struggled to understand and predict space weather events, because the ferocious
environment around the sun makes them difficult to witness as they form.
But as early as Saturday morning, Murtagh and scores of other researchers will watch as NASA’s newest spacecraft, the Parker Solar Probe, embarks on a mission to get closer to the sun than any human-made
object has before.
It’s the culmination of a half-century effort to understand our star, Murtagh said, and may help us prepare for the hazards the sun may throw at us in the future.
Part of the sun erupted on Sept. 1, 1859. English astronomer Richard Carrington noticed a brilliant white solar flare on the sun, brighter than the sunspots he usually observed. Roughly a day later, a blast of charged particles arrived at Earth, jostling the planet’s magnetic bubble. People as far south as Cuba saw the sky light up with auroras. Geomagnetic currents sent surges of electricity through copper telegraph wires, zapping operators and setting telegraph paper aflame.
If a similar event happened today, it would bring life as we know it to a halt.