Solar Energy Has its Downsides Too...

If you are like me, and have experienced the frustration of having your television’s satellite knocked out of place by a big wind storm, perhaps you should worry more about the storms outside the atmosphere instead of inside.

A recent study at the University of California says that low-Earth orbiting satellites might not be designed to handle a solar Megastorm. Now, we are a long way’s away from having to worry about satellites falling from the sky, but the study shows that a Megastorm could make the satellites malfunction much faster than expected, which is bad news for your satellite TV.

Normally, we wouldn’t have to worry about this, but on June 7^th, scientists monitored a large solar flare which shot out an unusually large amount of solar material. What was unusual about this flare was that it caught scientists by surprise; no one was expecting the spot to turn into a solar flare.

The simultaneous launch of particles into space is called a ‘coronal mass ejection’ or CME for short. Astrophysicist Phillip Chamberlin of NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory was one of the scientists monitoring the event, and says that he had never seen a CME this enormous.

Again, this wouldn’t be a big deal, if the material released from this CME isn’t the same material that could cause satellites to fail, and could even threaten power lines here on Earth.

I think this would be an interesting story to cover, simply because it’s something different, something that not everyone hears about all that often, and could have a significant impact on a lot of people.