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Strongest solar storm in nearly 6 years slams into Earth catching forecasters by surprise

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The most powerful solar storm in nearly six years slammed Earth today (March 24), but strangely, space weather forecasters didn’t see it coming.

The geomagnetic storm peaked as a severe G4 on the 5-grade scale used by the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) to assess the severity of space weather events. The storm’s unexpected ferocity not only made auroras visible as far south as New Mexico in the U.S., but it also forced spaceflight company Rocket Lab to delay a launch by 90 minutes.

Geomagnetic storms are disturbances to Earth’s magnetic field caused by solar material from coronal mass ejections (CME) — large expulsions of plasma and magnetic field from the sun’s atmosphere. It turns out that this particular geomagnetic storm was triggered by a “stealth” CME which — as the name suggests — is rather tricky to detect.

NOAA’s National Space Weather Service originally announced a “geomagnetic storm watch” on March 22 (opens in new tab), to come into effect on 23-25 March with possible moderate G2 storm conditions expected on March 24. So forecasters weren’t completely caught off-guard, they however didn’t expect a magnitude G4 storm.

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It wasn’t until 00:41 a.m. EDT ( 0441 GMT) on March 24 that NOAA uprated the warning to a severe G4 storm, which was after a stronger than forecasted G3 storm (opens in new tab)escalated to a G4 at 12:04 a.m. EDT (0404 GMT).

U.S. space weather forecaster Tamitha Skov explained to Space.com in an email why the space weather community got it so wrong with this latest storm.

“These nearly invisible storms launch much more slowly than eruptive CMEs and are very difficult to observe leaving the sun‘s surface without specialized training,”  she said, adding that the stealth CMEs can also be “camouflaged” by other, more dense structures emanating from the sun, which makes them difficult to observe.

“This is why they are the cause of “problem geomagnetic storms” like the G4-level storm we are in now.” Skov continued.

You can learn more about these stealthy solar storms in Skov’s latest YouTube video (opens in new tab) where she describes the space weather event in more detail.

NOAA (opens in new tab) ranks geomagnetic storms on a scale running from G1, which could cause an increase in auroral activity around the poles and minor fluctuations in power supplies, up to G5, which includes extreme cases like the Carrington Event — a colossal solar storm that occurred September 1859, which disrupted telegraph services all over the world and triggered auroras so bright and powerful that they were visible as far south as the Bahamas.

Strong geomagnetic storms can be troublesome for spaceflight as they increase the density of gases in Earth’s upper atmosphere, thereby increasing the drag on satellites and other spacecraft. In February 2022 SpaceX lost up to 40 brand-new Starlink satellites when they failed to reach orbit after being launched into a minor geomagnetic storm.

Rocket Lab delayed its launch this morning by approximately 90 minutes while assessing the evolving conditions (opens in new tab) of the geomagnetic storm, the company announced on Twitter. They successfully launched at 5:14 a.m. EDT (0914 GMT).

Another side effect of powerful geomagnetic storms is the incredible aurora displays they trigger. When energized particles from the sun slam into Earth’s atmosphere at speeds of up to 45 million mph (72 million kph), our planet’s magnetic field funnels the particles toward the poles. The ensuing supercharging of molecules in Earth’s atmosphere triggers the colorful spectacles, which usually remain limited to areas at high latitudes. This time, skywatchers around the world were treated to a dazzling auroral display that reached as far south as Colorado and New Mexico.

We can expect more extreme space weather events like this powerful geomagnetic storm as the sun builds towards a peak in its 11-year solar activity cycle, expected to occur in 2025.

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ESA – Cheops explores mysterious warm mini-Neptunes – European Space Agency

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Brightest gamma-ray burst ever seen, the largest known explosion since Big Bang, has a unique jet structure unlike any other

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Scientists may finally know what made the largest explosion in the universe ever seen by humankind so powerful.

Astronomers have discovered that the brightest gamma-ray burst (GRB) ever seen had a unique jet structure and was dragging an unusually large amount of stellar material along with it.

This might explain the extreme properties of the burst, believed to have been launched when a massive star located around 2.4 billion light-years from Earth in the direction of the constellation Sagitta underwent total gravitational collapse to birth a black hole, as well as why its afterglow persisted for so long.

The GRB officially designated GRB 221009A but nicknamed the BOAT, or the brightest of all time, was spotted on October 9, 2022, and stood out from other GRBs due to its extreme nature. It was seen as an immensely bright flash of high-energy gamma-rays, followed by a low-fading afterglow across many wavelengths of light.

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Related: A tiny Eastern European cubesat measured a monster gamma-ray burst better than NASA. Here’s how

“GRB 221009A represents a massive step forward in our understanding of gamma-ray bursts and demonstrates that the most extreme explosions do not obey the standard physics assumed for garden variety gamma-ray bursts,” George Washington University researcher and study lead author Brendan O’Connor said in a statement. O’Connor led a team that continued to monitor the BOAT GRB with the Gemini South Telescope in Chile following its initial discovery in Oct 2023.

Northwestern University doctoral candidate Jillian Rastinejad, who was also part of a team that observed the BOAT on Oct. 14 after its initial discovery,told Live Science that GRB 221009A is thought to be brighter than other highly energetic GRBs by a factor of at least 10.

“Photons have been detected from this GRB that has more energy than theLarge Hadron Collider (LHC) produces,” she said.

Even before the BOAT was spotted, GRBs were already considered the most powerful, violent, and energetic explosions in the universe, capable of blasting out as much energy in a matter of seconds as the sun will produce over its entire around ten billion-year lifetime. There are two types of these blasts, long-duration, and short-duration, which might have different launch mechanisms, both resulting in the creation of a black hole.

Further examination of the powerful GRB has revealed that it is unique for its structure as well as its brightness. The GRB was surprisingly wide. So wide, in fact, that astronomers were initially unable to see its edges.

“Our work clearly shows that the GRB had a unique structure, with observations gradually revealing a narrow jet embedded within a wider gas outflow where an isolated jet would normally be expected,”  co-author and Department of Physics at the University of Bath scientist  Hendrik Van Eerten said in a statement.

Thus, the jet of GRB 221009A appears to possess both wide and narrow “wings” that differentiate it from the jets of other GRBs. This could explain why the afterglow of the BOAT continued to be seen by astronomers in multiple wavelengths for months after its initial discovery.

Van Eerten and the team have a theory as to what gives the jet of the BOAT its unique structure.

“GRB jets need to go through the collapsing star in which they are formed,” he said. “What we think made the difference in this case was the amount of mixing that happened between the stellar material and the jet, such that shock-heated gas kept appearing in our line of sight all the way up to the point that any characteristic jet signature would have been lost in the overall emission from the afterglow.”

Van Eerten also points out the findings could help understand not just the BOAT but also other incredibly bright GRBs.

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“GRB 221009A might be the equivalent of the Rosetta stone of long GRBs, forcing us to revise our standard theories of how relativistic outflows are formed in collapsing massive stars,” O’Connor added.

The discovery will potentially lay the foundation for future research into GRBs as scientists attempt to unlock the mysteries still surrounding these powerful bursts of energy. The findings could also help physicists better model the structure of GRB jets.

“For a long time, we have thought about jets as being shaped like ice cream cones,” study co-author and George Washington University associate professor of physics Alexander van der Horst said. “However, some gamma-ray bursts in recent years, and in particular the work presented here, show that we need more complex models and detailed computer simulations of gamma-ray burst jets.”

The team’s research is detailed in a paper published in the journal Science Advances.

 

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Scientists discover first ‘virgin birth’ in a crocodile

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Scientists have recorded the first known case of a “virgin birth” in a female crocodile who had no contact with males for around 16 years.

The reptile was able to produce a fully formed foetus that was 99.9% genetically identical to her.

The researchers said this discovery, reported in the journal Biology Letters, provides “tantalising insights”, suggesting its evolutionary ancestors such as the dinosaurs may also have been capable of self-reproduction.

Also known as facultative parthenogenesis, virgin birth has been documented in species of birds, fish lizards and snakes, but never before in crocodiles.

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It is the process by which an egg develops into an embryo without fertilisation by sperm.

The American crocodile (Crocodylus acutus) was taken into captivity in 2002 when she was two years old and placed in an enclosure in Costa Rica.

She remained there alone for the next 16 years.

In January 2018, zookeepers discovered a clutch of 14 eggs in the enclosure.

These eggs did not hatch but one contained a fully formed foetus.

Genetic analysis of the tissues from the foetus’s heart and from the mother’s shed skin revealed a 99.9% match – confirming that the offspring had no father.

Facultative parthenogenesis is rare but is thought to occur when a species faces challenging or unfavourable conditions, such as environmental stress or lack of mates.

 

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