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Item Details
| Title:
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STORMS FROM THE SUN
THE EMERGING SCIENCE OF SPACE WEATHER |
| By: |
Michael J. Carlowicz, Ramon E. Lopez |
| Format: |
Paperback |
| List price:
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£15.99 |
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We currently do not stock this item, please contact the publisher directly for
further information.
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| ISBN 10: |
0071356851 |
| ISBN 13: |
9780071356855 |
| Publisher: |
MCGRAW-HILL EDUCATION - EUROPE |
| Pub. date: |
1 August, 2000 |
| Pages: |
224 |
| Description: |
Scientists predict a peak of solar activity from 1999 to 2001. This activity will come just as we finish routing most of our broadcast networks and navigation systems through untested satellites working in the hazardous space around Earth. This text asks: what does it all mean to us down here? |
| Synopsis: |
On March 13, 1989, the US Department of Defense tracking system that keeps tabs on 19,000 objects orbiting Earth briefly lost track of 11,000 of them. When those objects reappeared, more than 1,500 satellites had slowed down and dropped several miles of altitude in their orbits. At th same time, in New Jersey, a $36 million transformer was burned up by a surge of extra current in the power lines. But that damage was mild compared to what was happening 500 miles to the north. Similar shocks to a power station in Quebec left six million people without electricity for nine hours, some for months. For several hours, utilities fought off a blackout that nearly spread across all of New England. On that same night, radio listeners who tuned in to their local stations in Minnesota heard the broadcasts of the California Highway Patrol instead of the Top 40 Countdown. And awe-struck and wary residents of Florida, Mexico, and the Grand Cayman Islands saw glowing curtains of light in the sky...their first glimpse of th aurora borealis in several generations. All of the bizarre events of March 13 were catalysed by a storm on the Sun and a fire in the sky.A series of solar flares and explosions - solar physicists call them coronal mass ejections - had launched blobs of hot, electrified gas at the Earth and stirred up the second largest magnetic storm in recorded history. Perhaps more than 1500 gigawatts of electricity had poured into the atmosphere, double the power generating capacity. But in a modern, electrically powered and space-faring world, the greatest storm of the 22nd solar maximum rang like a wake-up call. Imminently, we will reach the next solar maximum, the peak of the Sun's 11-year cycle of activity. It comes at an exciting time, as this is the first time that we have been able to actually study the solar maximum up close, thanks to SOHO, the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory launched in 1996 as joint effort between NASA and ESA. |
| Illustrations: |
colour illustrations |
| Publication: |
US |
| Imprint: |
McGraw-Hill Inc.,US |
| Returns: |
Non-returnable |
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