The impact of the storm from the sun on the earth

Just like geologists poring over figures from seismographs to identify signs of an imminent earthquake, scientists at the University of Minnesota are ready to explore the sun to find out. signs of the sun's giant aura outbreak that may be imminent soon. The so-called aura or CME outbreak can paralyze satellites, damage the electrical transmission system or even kill astronauts on the space station.

Devices designed and built by the University of Minnesota are placed on NASA's STEREO twin spacecraft - scheduled to be launched on October 25 at Cape Canaveral (Florida state, USA). These devices are responsible for detecting energy waves and charged particles emitted by the sun from processes that can generate CMEs.

(Photo: futura-sciences) Physics professor Paul Kellogg, a member of the space physics group at the University of Minnesota, said: 'As our society becomes more and more electronic and more sophisticated, the present This explosive statue will have increasingly bad effects on us. Therefore, the STEREO observation system will tell us when a CME will come to earth. '

The $ 400 million STEREO project is the first project to use the moon's gravity to ' shoot ' spacecraft into orbit.

When the two spacecraft circled the moon, the moon would first ' throw ' an orbiter moving behind the earth and a month later, would ' launch ' the second one into orbit in front of the left. land. Because now, the distance between the spacecraft is larger, they will create a stereoscopic model on the sun, allowing cameras and other devices on the spacecraft to detect the direction of movement of any CME.

The University of Minnesota team worked closely with researchers at the Paris Observatory to design and manufacture equipment for their joint project, the project called S / WAVES (written off of STEREO WAVES). Devices at the University of Minnesota will track shock waves as they move through space because these waves will be emitted before a CME.

" It's all about understanding and predicting how the sun works, " said Keith Goetz, a physicist at the University of Minnesota, director of the S / WAVES project. ' We hope to capture the animation of CMEs and nuclear explosions on the surface of the sun. We want to see the surface of the sun and will know, for example, that there's going to be an explosion - right there, on the surface of the sun, for example '.