[meteorite-list] Solar flares (ot) ? or are ions meteorites?

From: MexicoDoug <mexicodoug_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Wed, 14 Mar 2012 17:21:47 -0400 (EDT)
Message-ID: <8CED03F9898A121-1FD0-6C8_at_webmail-m129.sysops.aol.com>

Well, if we are talking billions and billions of years, life has
certainly taken a few good ones on the chin during that time, and
robust as it seems to be, it acts as a unified being, just changing
form, where we species are all just incidental cogs climbing a
particular hill in a particular moment ... as we see from out
extinction.

The generalization of 'weak solar flares to do any damage' is a useful
tool, but in the real world out there multiplied by billions and
billions of years, it's easy to fall into a statistical trap ...

Earth represents about one part in 300,000,000,000,000,000,000 of the
area at 1 AU. What is the highest intensity solar flare cross
sectional area of a powerful finger? Probably very big and
delocalized, but if we are talking about the Sun delivering a real,
narrow earth-sized punch once every ten years, in 10 billion years, no
catastrophic flare impact is likely - another useful tool to think
about to better get a handle on this.

and billions and billions ... shouldn't be taken too the bit too far
IMO. A once in a billion year event can certainly cripple the
biosphere and send it in a new direction. Take gamma ray bursts, the
bigger brother of solar flares from distant, more powerful sources,
which as Chris implies,might be detrimental vs. our Sun's relative
burst flux, ... the gamma proton storms realistically could score a
direct hit on Earth every billion years and thus are interesting to
consider side-by-side or as in some case, alternative, with asteroid
impact extinction theories.

If a gamma storm hits, everyone flying above 30,000 feet gets to
automatically becomes hulky, but the problem isn't confined to the
stratosphere. The atmospheric overload would likely initiate a chain
of reactions wiping out the ozone layers and take out many species not
protected enough or overly sensitive in the ensuing time. Not only
that, it would get ... paradoxically dark and acidic and global warming
would be history as the surface hit a low temperature. It is quite
possible, if not probable, that at least one extinction even was
punctuated with a gamma storm like this, which rivaled any doomsday
asteroid scenario by playing with similar large scale climate and
radiation changes.

Back to the billions of years of life vs. the solar flare. I really
don't have time to go skiing with some magnetic poles to Antarctica,
but I sure as heck wouldn't want to be there while this 'deflection'
was in progress ... especially on a big-ozone hole year!

Kindest wishes
Doug




-----Original Message-----
From: Chris Peterson <clp at alumni.caltech.edu>
To: meteorite-list <meteorite-list at meteoritecentral.com>
Sent: Wed, Mar 14, 2012 1:19 pm
Subject: Re: [meteorite-list] Solar flares (ot) ? or are ions
meteorites?


Our Sun isn't active enough to produce flares large enough to
dangerously irradiate the Earth. If it were, given hundreds of millions
of years of land-based life, we almost certainly wouldn't be here.

Keep in mind that those CMEs that look so impressive in the videos
produce a particle density at the Earth that represents a harder vacuum
than can be achieved in a lab, and what's left is effectively blocked
by
our magnetic field and atmosphere.

Other stars are more active, and ours may become so billions of years
from now. But at the moment, we're safe (assuming we can recover from
having our power grids or satellites knocked out... which are very
possible consequences of flares that we know the Sun can produce).

Chris

*******************************
Chris L Peterson
Cloudbait Observatory
http://www.cloudbait.com

On 3/14/2012 10:58 AM, Steve Dunklee wrote:
> What level of flare would cause death on earth from radiation and is
it
possible? like just the flare going in the wrong direction.
> cheers
> Steve

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Received on Wed 14 Mar 2012 05:21:47 PM PDT