June 2019
Solar superstorms and their effects on Earth
... since the legendary 1859 Carrington Event. The intensity of a solar superstorm is measured by the velocity and size of a coronal mass ejection - a magnetic bubble of hot solar atmosphere thrust from the Sun into the solar wind. CMEs are...
May 2021
Forecasting space-weather effects on Earth
...which releases radiation into space. Sometimes, this release is accompanied by an ejection of plasma (hot clouds of ionised gas) from its surface. These are called Coronal Mass Ejections (CME), the frequency of which depends on the phase of the solar...
August 2019
Lessons from the Sun
..., they could not know that associated with the flares were two ‘plasma cannonballs’ (now known as coronal mass ejections or CMEs) were aimed at Earth. The CMEs arrived at Earth in tandem early on 4 August. Travelling through interplanetary space...
25 November 2020
Solar astronomers "listening" to the Sun can now predict future sunspots
... the more tangled the magnetic field, the more likely it will result in large solar flares and coronal mass ejections that can end up on a collision course with Earth. When the charged solar particles hit Earth's magnetic...
August 2019
Architectural challenges of a Moon village
The concept of a ‘Moon village’, introduced in 2016 by Director General of the European Space Agency, Jan Wörner, isn’t an active project or a space programme in the traditional sense. Rather, it represents an intention or vision for spaceflight and...
23 December 2020
Harmful stellar flares might not prevent life on exoplanets after all, new study says
When researchers discovered an exoplanet around our nearest star four years ago, it seemed the perfect object in which to mount an exploration mission in the hopes of finding life. But then further studies showed that Proxima b was subjected to ...
