In November of 2021, I was introduced to a term I'd never heard before, a "Cannibal CME" (where CME is short for a solar Coronal Mass Ejection). Naturally, I passed that on to anyone interested. I attribute the name to that ubiquitous phenomenon of every news story trying to be more terrifying and fear-inducing than the others to get those clicks. A Cannibal CME is actually two CMEs spaced in time and in speed so that the second one is faster than the first, and overtakes it, "eating" it. The result is a bigger cloud of plasma moving in (more or less) the same direction.
With that background out of the way, Space.com is reporting today that we appear to be in the path of a cannibal that will hit us early on the 18th.
On July 14, the sun launched a CME alongside a dark eruption — a solar flare containing unusually cool plasma that makes it look like a dark wave compared to the rest of the sun's fiery surface — from sunspot AR3370, a small dark patch that until then had gone largely unnoticed, according to Spaceweather.com. On July 15, a second, faster CME was launched from the much larger sunspot AR3363.
A simulation from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Space Weather Prediction Center showed that the second storm will catch up with the first CME and form a cannibalistic cloud, with a strong likelihood of it hitting Earth on July 18.
That NOAA simulation in the previous paragraph shows the large CME hitting Earth at around 0600 UTC, which is 2AM ET. The prediction calls for a minor storm (G1). (Just a note that the simulation has changed while I'm watching it). Both CMEs came from C-class solar flares, the middle band of solar eruption strength (in order: A, B, C, M, X). I think I've said before that most of us can do as much damage to the grid and infrastructure as those lower rank flares do by farting on the powerlines. In a measured test, I did more damage than a B class flare by farting on a powerline transformer. No, that was a joke.
The article on Space.com also includes this interesting animated .gif graphic, showing the first CME followed by the second and finally the impact of the second CME on the first.
I don't know why they animated the sun rotating in a wrong direction (as if looking down the axis the sun rotates around) and don't show realistic depictions of the sunspots moving across the sun's disk. But maybe I'm just being too critical.
We are, of course, moving toward the peak of cycle 25 so the chance of flares and CMEs will be higher for the next four years than the last four years. Get used to the hype.
I bet it makes growling noises as it streaks through space with earf as the bullseye. Meanwhile, unsuspecting housewives hang the laundry to dry under a brilliant blue sky. Timmy plays fetch with Fido.
ReplyDeleteI wonder how they'll now name the series of lows slamming into the west coast off the Pacific one after another. Typically, one low overtakes a preceding low. Just like a set of waves advancing through water. Like, man, this thing called science is weird, ya know.
I have to share this on Virtual Mirage as well.
ReplyDeleteIf we were an intelligent species instead of a merely clever one we could easily make the dangers from a CME simply go away. While it would cost a bit more money up front if we designed, engineered and built all our electrical systems to be immune to the radiation from a CME we could stop worrying about them.
ReplyDeleteBut we are too lazy, selfish, greedy and short sighted to do so. As a species we do NOT deserve to survive and continue. SMOD needs to show up, do the BIG RESET and let Mother Nature try again.
I'm not familiar enough with the way the rest of the world treats this, but amid the constant harping for federal funding to harden the grid I always figure, "why?" A private company selling a service should realize that if that Bad Thing happens it puts them out of business and should harden the grid on their own. Since it's always improbable that something really bad would happen, don't do it all at once, but do some amount of prep every year.
DeleteBut the governments have killed off the "private company" part of that and made it so that they couldn't charge enough to pay for a little of that prep work every year. Here in Florida we have the Public Service Commission that sets rates (by approving rate hikes - or not). When they do that, they make themselves responsible for protecting the grids.
Just look at any day's news to see why government running anything is a bad idea.
ZOMG!!! ELEVENTY!!!
ReplyDeleteyawn.....
If only Gates had gotten his solar shield up sooner!
ReplyDeleteIt's interesting that neither this one nor the last one even registered on the aurora predictor.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.swpc.noaa.gov/products/aurora-30-minute-forecast
It's almost as though the news stories are completely imaginary hype designed to scare people.
Mr. Chekov, shields up. Brace for impact!
ReplyDelete