Prologue “Come on, it’s leaving!” “You know, maybe I’m having second thoughts on this whole ‘Jamestown’ ordeal…” “Aw you’re just scared, what do think will happen? Us get stranded or something? As if!” Ok fine, let me bring an extra flare gun in case something does happen. Let’s get going!” It was the 10th of December, 1606 when John Lorell and his close friend, Thomas Locke, boarded the Discovery, the smallest of the three ships sailing to create the first successful colony in North America. The two watched the harbor in London slowly shrink into nothingness as they day-dreamt about how wondrous this new colony would be once they got there. About 2½ months later, John and Thomas were on the lowest level of the ship, cowering from the raging…
When the northern lights come out, it sometimes appears as if the sky is on fire. There is an eerie connection between the Sun and our planet’s atmosphere that can sometimes cause the sky to unexpectedly glow with shades of red, yellow, purple and green; an atmospheric phenomenon called the northern lights or Aurora Borealis. The Sun is constantly spraying the solar system with millions of tons of charged particles each minute. The stream of charged particles from the Sun, or solar wind,…
The medium sized ‘M-class’ (Mid-sized solar flare) solar flares can release enough charge particles to strip electrons from the earth’s ionosphere blocking communications signals to and from the satellites. The ionosphere also begins bouncing off the particles and waves back into space colliding with the satellites communication waves and momentarily interrupting signals between the satellites and earth. When a large ‘X-class’ (largest of all solar flares) solar flare occurs it carries enough…
The Sun, the closest star to Earth, and a life-sustaining necessity. It is also the center of space and solar weather, which powers and affects much of the solar system’s activities and life on Earth. Space weather goes hand in hand with the Sun’s constant gaseous activities, which depend on the Sun’s natural occurrences. This paper discusses the important topics of solar plasma, solar wind, as well as solar flares and coronal mass ejections. It also looks at human abilities to capture and use…
On September 6, the sun let its presence be felt by unleashing two massive solar flares. The first eruption, classified as an X2.2 flare, the strongest since 2008, occurred at 5:10 a.m. ET. Shortly after, at 8:02 a.m ET, the star spewed out a bigger, and more dramatic, X9.3 flare — the strongest on record since December 2006. Solar flares, or storms, beginning with an explosion usually above a sunspot, the area where strong magnetic fields poke through the sun's surface. When these spots become…
The Northern Lights is a wonder that only certain people get to see. This phenomenon is caused by something called a Solar Storm. Solar Storms have causes, events, and after effects. All of which have their own unique functions, these functions have either positive or negative effects to go with them, that can affect us in certain ways. The Sun sometimes has an explosion on its surface called a Solar Storm. Another common name for these explosions is a Solar Flare. Solar Storms is…
On the photosphere of the Sun it can be observed groups of dark spots. These dark spots are called sunspots and are temporarily, during from a few days to a few months. Sunspots are observed as dark compared to the surrounding areas because of the low temperature compared to the rest of the photosphere. The reduced temperature at the sunspots is due to high magnetic fields that counteract the convection preventing hotter material to reach the surface.\par The sunspots can be seen with the naked…
harboring negative emotions and having problems with their comrades [3]. Frank and Leo were arguing about something that was resolved months ago. Just imagine what it would be like if we came across a problem that needed to be solved immediately. It is a common misconception that space is empty. It does appear to be a vast vacuum with nothing happening in most of it. Even though we are millions of miles away from the nearest object, there are still particles around. Our spacecraft has been…
spacecraft. Unfortunately, right after they land on Mars, an unpredicted extreme solar wind and coronal mass ejection also arrive, breaking the engine, the communication system, and several other machines. The survival situation has begun: Before repairing all the electronics, they must fix the force field generating machine first to protect them…
When one thinks of Space Solar power they think of something that is futuristic. In 1941, Issac Asmiov who wrote science fiction published a short story called “Reason.” In the short story, it talked about a space station that collected energy from the sun to send to other planets by the usage of microwave beams. In the story there is a line that says, “"Our beams feed these worlds energy drawn from one of those huge incandescent globes that happens to be near us. We call that globe the Sun ...…