Space Weather Has A Huge Impact On People Via Sun’s Activity

What Is Space Weather? It's not just the weather here on Earth that affects us.

There is only one thing that undoubtedly affects every single person every single day all across the plant. It’s the weather. But it’s not just the weather on earth that we have to watch. Space weather also impacts us, so much so that the National Weather Service has an entire space weather prediction center.

NASA defines space weather as the way that the earth is affected by the activity on the sun’s surface. It says that even though the sun is ninety three million miles from the earth, space weather has a very big impact on the earth and the entire solar system. The sun is constantly spewing gas and particles into space. The gas and particle are called the corona and the stream of those particles is called solar wind. The particles that come from the corona are eclectically charged and the solar wind carries them all the way to earth. They are travelling up to one million miles per hour. The magnetic force surrounding the earth protects it from most of the solar wind blasts, but it can’t block everything. Sometimes particles slip through.

The process of electricity travelling from the sun to other places can be as dangerous as it sounds. Sometimes there are solar storms when there are huge spikes in those charged particles and they arrive at earth all at once due to solar flares. Those flares shoot off energy through space at the speed of light.

The US department of homeland security says that the strongest storm resulting from space weather was in 1859. Current electrified telephone lines and physically shocked technicians and set telegraph papers on fire. Now a days the threats are a little different. The space weather prediction center says the storms can hurt radio frequencies. The ones used by commercial airlines and government agencies like the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the Department of Defence. Plus they can damage power grids that can greatly affect or even burn out all of the power in your home or your business.

In addition, our GSP capacities are also affected, even that app on your phone. The GPS receivers in cell phones or cars, even the ones used for farmer or construction need satellites orbiting in space in order to work. Not to mention that NASA warns that the events can essentially happen out of nowhere. Without warning they can reach earth within minutes. Scientists try to predict when they will happen but it’s a challenge. That is because solar activity is different every solar cycle and the sun goes through different solar cycles every eleven years. There is however progress in predicting what will come next, even though it is nothing close to a five day forecast. The goal is the same way we can pack an umbrella for the rain, we can prepare for the impact that the space weather brings.

Can you imagine looking up space weather every day in addition to looking at your regular weather?