By Bill Korbel

If someone were to ask you if there was weather in outer
space, you’d probably answer no. There
is no atmosphere out there, so how could there be weather? Well, there are storms in space and they can
be every bit as dangerous the earthbound variety.
A few days ago I spent some time at the Space Weather
Prediction Center in Boulder, Colorado. I’ll wager you had no idea such
as place even existed, but it does, and
the forecasts made there have a huge impact on our lives.
Like earth weather, space weather starts with the sun. From time to time, storms and explosions on
the sun shoot high energy particles towards the earth and these solar particles
can not only be lethal to astronauts but can have disastrous affects right here
on the earth. For instance, strong geomagnetic storms can cause widespread
power grid failures if precautions are not taken before the storm hits.
Is
a cell phone or blackberry an important part of your
life? Communication satellites can be
damaged if certain procedures are not followed to protect them. The GPS
system in your car can fail. That’s really not so important, but GPS is
used in aviation for everything from navigation to landing in bad
weather. Losing a GPS signal in an airplane can be
very dangerous. Long range radio can be
knocked out. That means re-routing long
range airliners because they must always be in radio contact. So those
trans-polar flights may take several
hours longer. The radiation produced by
solar particles can be a danger for crews and passengers flying across
the
north pole. Airlines must monitor storms
so their crews don’t exceed safe levels of exposure. Several airlines
make sure any pregnant crew
members do not fly when solar storms are hitting the planet.
For more information, The web site for the Space Weather
Prediction Center is: http://www.swpc.noaa.gov Here are two more: www.spaceweather.com and: http://hesperia.gsfc.nasa.gov/sftheory/spaceweather.htm
Bill Korbel
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