Solar minimum is here - but even now strangely beautiful auroras are dancing around the poles. Deep inside the Arctic Circle, the expert guides of Aurora Holidays in Utsjoki, Finland, can help you chase them. Book now! | | |
GEOMAGNETIC UNREST TODAY: Earth is entering a stream of high-speed solar wind. The gaseous material is flowing from a minor hole in the sun's atmosphere. Full-fledged geomagnetic storms are unlikely, but geomagnetic unrest and Arctic auroras are likely on March 28th as Earth moves deeper into the stream. Aurora alerts: SMS text, email.
CAN HUMANS SENSE MAGNETIC STORMS? Close your eyes and relax. Daydream about something pleasant. In this state your brain is filled with "alpha waves," a type of electrical brainwave associated with wakeful relaxation.
Now try it during a geomagnetic storm. It may not be so easy. A new study just published in the journal eNeuro by researchers at Caltech offers convincing evidence that changes in Earth's magnetic field can suppress alpha waves in the human brain.
The human magnetoreception test chamber at Caltech. [full caption]
Researchers have long known that living creatures can sense magnetic fields. For instance, honeybees, salmon, turtles, birds, whales, and bats use the geomagnetic field to help them navigate, and dogs can be trained to locate buried magnets.
"Many animals can do it, so why not us?" asks Connie Wang, Caltech graduate student and lead author of the eNeuro study.
To find out if humans can indeed sense magnetic fields, the researchers built an isolated radiofrequency-shielded chamber where participants sat in utter darkness for an hour. As magnetic fields shifted silently around the chamber, participants' brain waves were measured using electrodes positioned at 64 locations on their heads.
In some of the 34 participants, alpha brainwaves decreased in power by as much as 60 percent in response to the shifting fields. Additional runs of the experiment showed that the effect was reproducible.
Changes in alpha brainwave amplitude following rotations of an Earth-strength magnetic field. The darker the blue color, the more dramatic the drop.
Study co-authors Joseph Kirschvink and Shin Shimojo say this is the first concrete evidence of a new human sense: magnetoreception.
Remarkably, participants who experienced the changes reported no awareness of them. It appears to be a completely unconscious effect, never rising to the level of a conscious interruption. This led the researchers to suggest it may be vestigial, some remnant of an ancient ability to navigate using local magnetic cues.
"It is perhaps not surprising that we might retain at least some functioning neural components [of magnetoreception], especially given the nomadic hunter-gatherer lifestyle of our not-too-distant ancestors," says Kirschvink.
"As a next step, we ought to try bringing this into conscious awareness," adds Shimojo.
Does this mean people may be able to sense geomagnetic storms? It's unclear.
When solar storms hit Earth, they cause our planet's magnetic field to shake, moving back and forth. Compass needles at mid-latitudes can move by as much as 4 or 5 degrees (ref). The Caltech study did not look at changes of that size, however. Magnetic fields inside their test chamber shifted by +/- 90 degrees--much, much larger than a typical geomagnetic storm. As a result, we do not yet know if human magnetorecepton is sensitive enough to detect the relatively subtle changes associated with space weather.
Says Kirschvink, "the full extent of [human magnetoreception] remains to be discovered." Stay tuned.
A sharable version of this story may be found here.
Realtime Space Weather Photo Gallery
A GIFT FROM THE EDGE OF SPACE: Are you looking for a far-out gift? Nothing says "I love you" like a moonstone from the edge of space. On Jan 27th, the students of Earth to Sky Calculus flew this moonstone wrapped in a hand-crafted sterling silver Celtic love knot 35.1 km (115,158 feet) above Earth's surface:
You can have it for $179.95. The students are selling these pendants to support their cosmic ray ballooning program. Each one comes with a greeting card showing the item in flight and telling the story of its journey to the edge of space. All sales support the Earth to Sky Calculus cosmic ray ballooning program and hands-on STEM research.
Far Out Gifts: Earth to Sky Store
All sales support hands-on STEM education
Realtime Space Weather Photo Gallery
Realtime Aurora Photo Gallery
Every night, a network of
NASA all-sky cameras scans the skies above the United States for meteoritic fireballs. Automated software maintained by NASA's Meteoroid Environment Office calculates their orbits, velocity, penetration depth in Earth's atmosphere and many other characteristics. Daily results are presented here on Spaceweather.com.
On Mar. 27, 2019, the network reported 8 fireballs.
(8 sporadics)
In this diagram of the inner solar system, all of the fireball orbits intersect at a single point--Earth. The orbits are color-coded by velocity, from slow (red) to fast (blue). [Larger image] [movies]
Potentially Hazardous Asteroids (
PHAs) are space rocks larger than approximately 100m that can come closer to Earth than 0.05 AU. None of the known PHAs is on a collision course with our planet, although astronomers are finding
new ones all the time.
On March 28, 2019 there were 1967 potentially hazardous asteroids.
|
Recent & Upcoming Earth-asteroid encounters: Asteroid | Date(UT) | Miss Distance | Velocity (km/s) | Diameter (m) |
2019 FP | 2019-Mar-23 | 3.7 LD | 12.1 | 21 |
2019 FF | 2019-Mar-23 | 3.2 LD | 8.6 | 20 |
2019 EK2 | 2019-Mar-23 | 4.7 LD | 8.1 | 11 |
2019 FQ | 2019-Mar-23 | 0.9 LD | 8.5 | 14 |
2019 ER2 | 2019-Mar-25 | 8.9 LD | 4.8 | 23 |
2019 EN | 2019-Mar-27 | 9.7 LD | 15.2 | 205 |
2019 FX | 2019-Mar-28 | 5.4 LD | 5 | 23 |
2019 FW | 2019-Mar-29 | 8.1 LD | 6.2 | 22 |
2016 GE1 | 2019-Apr-04 | 3.9 LD | 10.1 | 17 |
2019 FV | 2019-Apr-06 | 14.9 LD | 7.7 | 58 |
2019 FU | 2019-Apr-09 | 5.3 LD | 14.2 | 86 |
2014 UR | 2019-Apr-09 | 13 LD | 4.6 | 17 |
2016 GW221 | 2019-Apr-09 | 10.1 LD | 5.3 | 39 |
2014 HD177 | 2019-Apr-10 | 6.1 LD | 14 | 102 |
2012 XO134 | 2019-Apr-18 | 14.8 LD | 11 | 56 |
522684 | 2019-Apr-19 | 19 LD | 11.5 | 214 |
2018 KK1 | 2019-May-05 | 13.9 LD | 13.9 | 71 |
2017 RC | 2019-May-09 | 14.5 LD | 10.6 | 9 |
2008 HS3 | 2019-May-09 | 14.6 LD | 5.3 | 162 |
2018 VX8 | 2019-May-12 | 6.2 LD | 15.5 | 118 |
2012 KT12 | 2019-May-18 | 3.3 LD | 3.9 | 20 |
2015 KQ18 | 2019-May-25 | 10.7 LD | 13.1 | 30 |
66391 | 2019-May-25 | 13.5 LD | 21.5 | 1780 |
Notes: LD means "Lunar Distance." 1 LD = 384,401 km, the distance between Earth and the Moon. 1 LD also equals 0.00256 AU. MAG is the visual magnitude of the asteroid on the date of closest approach. | Cosmic Rays in the Atmosphere |
SOMETHING NEW! We have developed a new predictive model of aviation radiation. It's called E-RAD--short for Empirical RADiation model. We are constantly flying radiation sensors onboard airplanes over the US and and around the world, so far collecting more than 22,000 gps-tagged radiation measurements. Using this unique dataset, we can predict the dosage on any flight over the USA with an error no worse than 15%.
E-RAD lets us do something new: Every day we monitor approximately 1400 flights criss-crossing the 10 busiest routes in the continental USA. Typically, this includes more than 80,000 passengers per day. E-RAD calculates the radiation exposure for every single flight.
The Hot Flights Table is a daily summary of these calculations. It shows the 5 charter flights with the highest dose rates; the 5 commercial flights with the highest dose rates; 5 commercial flights with near-average dose rates; and the 5 commercial flights with the lowest dose rates. Passengers typically experience dose rates that are 20 to 70 times higher than natural radiation at sea level.
To measure radiation on airplanes, we use the same sensors we fly to the stratosphere onboard Earth to Sky Calculus cosmic ray balloons: neutron bubble chambers and X-ray/gamma-ray Geiger tubes sensitive to energies between 10 keV and 20 MeV. These energies span the range of medical X-ray machines and airport security scanners.
Column definitions: (1) The flight number; (2) The maximum dose rate during the flight, expressed in units of natural radiation at sea level; (3) The maximum altitude of the plane in feet above sea level; (4) Departure city; (5) Arrival city; (6) Duration of the flight.
SPACE WEATHER BALLOON DATA: Approximately once a week, Spaceweather.com and the students of Earth to Sky Calculus fly space weather balloons to the stratosphere over California. These balloons are equipped with radiation sensors that detect cosmic rays, a surprisingly "down to Earth" form of space weather. Cosmic rays can seed clouds, trigger lightning, and penetrate commercial airplanes. Furthermore, there are studies ( #1, #2, #3, #4) linking cosmic rays with cardiac arrhythmias and sudden cardiac death in the general population. Our latest measurements show that cosmic rays are intensifying, with an increase of more than 18% since 2015:
The data points in the graph above correspond to the peak of the Reneger-Pfotzer maximum, which lies about 67,000 feet above central California. When cosmic rays crash into Earth's atmosphere, they produce a spray of secondary particles that is most intense at the entrance to the stratosphere. Physicists Eric Reneger and Georg Pfotzer discovered the maximum using balloons in the 1930s and it is what we are measuring today.
En route to the stratosphere, our sensors also pass through aviation altitudes:
In this plot, dose rates are expessed as multiples of sea level. For instance, we see that boarding a plane that flies at 25,000 feet exposes passengers to dose rates ~10x higher than sea level. At 40,000 feet, the multiplier is closer to 50x.
The radiation sensors onboard our helium balloons detect X-rays and gamma-rays in the energy range 10 keV to 20 MeV. These energies span the range of medical X-ray machines and airport security scanners.
Why are cosmic rays intensifying? The main reason is the sun. Solar storm clouds such as coronal mass ejections (CMEs) sweep aside cosmic rays when they pass by Earth. During Solar Maximum, CMEs are abundant and cosmic rays are held at bay. Now, however, the solar cycle is swinging toward Solar Minimum, allowing cosmic rays to return. Another reason could be the weakening of Earth's magnetic field, which helps protect us from deep-space radiation.
| The official U.S. government space weather bureau |
| The first place to look for information about sundogs, pillars, rainbows and related phenomena. |
| Researchers call it a "Hubble for the sun." SDO is the most advanced solar observatory ever. |
| 3D views of the sun from NASA's Solar and Terrestrial Relations Observatory |
| Realtime and archival images of the Sun from SOHO. |
| from the NOAA Space Environment Center |
| fun to read, but should be taken with a grain of salt! Forecasts looking ahead more than a few days are often wrong. |
| from the NOAA Space Environment Center |
| the underlying science of space weather |
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