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Founded January 1970
Julian date: 2457661.16
"A proton is to a human {in size] as a human is to the volume of space separating the Sun and Alpha Centauri."
-John Allen Paulos "Innumeracy"
THE DAILY ASTRONOMER
Thursday, September 29, 2016
Solar Storm?
It is said that the Titanic's 1912 sinking demonstrated that nature will sometimes appear deceptively quiescent, but will never relinquish control. Solar storms are other reminders that, despite humanity's impressive technological advancements, we remain disquietingly vulnerable to nature's whims. The Sun constantly propels a "solar wind" from its uppermost layers, a wind that pervades the solar system all the way out to the heliosphere. Along with this wind, the Sun often issues forth coronal mass ejections and flares that, if sufficiently powerful, could disrupt communications and make life a sordid horror for the 98% of Earthlings psychologically addicted to smart phones.
However, Earth is presently under a somewhat gentle assault from a G1 class geomagnetic storm, a comparatively minor solar storm which poses little to no danger to our electrical infrastructure. However, this storm is still producing a continuous outflow of charged solar particles that have produced stunning auroras around Earth's higher latitudes.
Jubulant skywatchers celebrate the appearance of an aurora
display over Iceland. An onslaught of solar wind has produced aurora over this island nation for six consecutive nights. Image: Olivier Staiger, spaceweather.com
Aurora occur when these charged particles "excite" atoms with the atmosphere. When an atom is excited, one or more of it electrons are elevated into higher energy levels. One can envision these levels as being like a series of concentric orbits, provided one realizes that such a vision does not reflect reality. (Electrons are not as neatly discrete as planets.) When the excited electrons settle back down to lower energy levels, they'll emit the photons that comprise the aurora glow.
The Sun has been curiously quiet so far this year. Our parent star has experienced 20 "spotless days," when the region facing us has shown no sun spots at all. There were only three spotless days between 2011-2015, inclusive. Fewer spots generally indicate lower solar activity. At the moment, however, a nifty little sunspot complex AR2597 is percolating along the Sun's southern limb, but doesn't pose much of a threat to us. Instead, Earth is basking in a smooth solar outflow that is alighting the high northern skies and reminding us of what is truly in charge, after all.
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PANDORA PARCHMENT # 2: "What happened before the Big Bang?"
-J.C.
-J.C.
This question is perhaps the most common of the "unaskables," those questions that are self-negating. Mind you, it is a sensible question that many people ask, but to which we cannot offer a satisfactory answer. According to cosmologists, literally nothing happened prior to the Big Bang because time, itself, was created in that event, The word "before" is temporally relative. Intuitively, this notion seems nonsensical, for we are accustomed to living in a world that operates on cause and effect. Find a rock on a beach and you know that something happened to put it there: perhaps a melting glacier? The genesis event, popularly called the "Big Bang" was an effect without a known cause. It created space-time and energy, some of which formed the matter comprising the material Universe. There was no "before," anymore than there is anything "outside" of the Universe, because the word "outside" is spatially relative.
Some cosmologists wonder if, perhaps, our Universe was born out of a black hole that formed in another Universe. This notion does supply a cause, albeit in an alternate reality. While this hypothesis does satisfy our intuitive need to have a preceding cause to the cosmic birth event, it doesn't address the ultimate first cause: what made the first Universe. It would surprise me if that question is ultimately unaskable, as well.
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FROM THE CATACOMBS OF INFINITE KNOWLEDGE
"Black Moon Rising"
At the risk of sounding behaving like wet blankets, tomorrow's "black moon" shouldn't bring out a global-wide catastrophe. If it does, we'll apologize profusely and live stoically with the shame. A "black moon" is nothing more than the second new moon in a single month. This term is not as well known as "blue moon," the nickname given to the second full moon in a single calendar month.
Black moons and blue moons are not that rare. They happen once in about three to four years. An entire lunar phase cycle lasts approximately 29.5 days, which is known as the moon's synodic period. Every month, save February, consists of either 30 or 31 days, so one can have a blue moon or a black moon in any given month. This time, the black moon happens to occur in September, And, to reiterate, we do not anticipate that Earth will be destroyed as a consequence of Friday's "black moon." (Yes, we understand that this last statement will prove devastatingly disappointing to those who've been closely watching the Presidential campaign.)
We advise you to simply enjoy the commencement of another lunation cycle. Look for the crescent moon in the western evening sky starting early next week. Of course, if, by chance, we happen to have a black moon in February, feel free to panic.
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Damn....that's the end of the article.
We always hate to stop.