Originally posted by paulwhannel
always an interesting phenomenon.
here's what i want to know. x-rays constitute much of the problem, and hit at the same time as the magnetic waves (correct me if i'm wrong). x-rays travel at the speed of light. scientists were able to get about two day's notice of the event at least, how did they monitor the surface of the sun to know this was coming? are there sensors to read faster than the speed of light?
am i making any sense?
pnw
-paulwhannel
Well, ok. Here's how it works. The sun is loaded with twists in its magnetic field, and some get so twisted, they loop, then snap throwing a large amount of surface material into space - this mass of material used to be called a "Solar Flare" but has since been remonikered "Coronal Mass Ejection" - meaning that material has escape velocity from the Sun.
That material is not composed of light or magnetism itself, but is a huge amount of ionized gas - electrically charged material, no longer plasma as the temperature will fall in the cold of space.
This is why it is predictable and takes two days to reach Earth's orbital path. Once at Earth, these electrically charged particles interact with Earth's magnetic field, and spill over the lines of force like water on a basketball. Much of the ions end up heading to the poles where the magnetic field originates - and we get Aurora Borealis - "Northern Lights", at the collision of those ions with the ionosphere.
As for the the magnetic field itself, such interference with electrically charged material can distort the shape of the magnetic field during the interaction - the worry is what happens at the end, the magnetic field can snap back and such a large flux of that snap acts like a planetwide electromagnetic pulse. And satellites can overload, computers can burn out, etc.
