Sinister Security: Destroy Earth

Massive Solar Storm That Will Slam Earth TODAY Could Knockout Power Supplies, Damage Satellites And Trigger Stunning Auroras

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A huge solar storm is heading for Earth, and it's likely to hit tomorrow. The storm could knockout satellites, disrupt power supplies and spark stunning displays of the Northern Lights. It was created last week by an enormous explosion in the sun's atmosphere known as a solar flare, and charged particles from that flare are now on their way to our planet.

The arrival of the solar storm coincides with the formation of 'equinox cracks' in Earth's magnetic field, which form around the equinoxes on March 20 and September 23 each year. These cracks weaken our planet's natural protection against charged particles and could leave commercial flights and GPS systems exposed to the incoming storm. The cracks also mean stargazers are more likely to catch glimpses of the Northern lights this week.

This may include parts of Scotland and northern England, as well as the 'northern tier' of the US including parts of Michigan and Maine.

A huge solar storm is heading for Earth, and it's likely to hit tomorrow. It may trigger the Northern Lights in parts of Scotland and northern England. This animation shows the aurora forecast for Wednesday 14 and Thursday 15 March (time in GMT is shown top right)

The charged, magnetic particles from the solar storm can interfere with machinery in Earth's orbit as well as at the planet's surface, such as GPS systems and radio signals. They can also threaten airlines by disturbing Earth's magnetic field. Very large flares can even create currents within electricity grids and knock out energy supplies.

'A minor geomagnetic storm watch is now in effect for the 14 and 15 March, 2018. Aurora may be visible at high latitudes,' the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) wrote in a statement. The particles, which came from the sun after solar flares took place on March 6 and 7, could cause 'weak power grid fluctuations' and a 'minor impact on satellite operations,' according to the NOAA.

NASA said the first of the two flares - classified in the potent X class and facing directly at the Earth - was the biggest this year. It was one of the largest of this cycle known as the solar minimum, which began in early 2007. Geomagnetic storms are ranked on a severity scale, with G at the bottom, R in the middle and S at the top.

The charged particles, which came from the sun after solar flares took place on March 6 (pictured) and 7, could knockout satellites, disrupt power supplies and spark stunning displays of the Northern Lights

The US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration says that the forecast suggests the solar storm will be a G-1 or 'minor' storm. This could become a G-2 'moderate storm' depending on how the charged particles hit Earth. The event coincides with the formation of 'equinox cracks'.

On March 20 and September 23 each year, the Earth and sun line up so that day and night are of roughly equal length. But the equinoxes also cause cracks to open up in Earth's magnetic field which stay open for hours.

The US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration says that the forecast suggests the solar storm will be a G-1 or 'minor' storm. Pictured is the aurora forecast at 9:00pm GMT (5:00pm ET) tomorrow

NASA and the NOAA keep track of solar events using an array of telescopes and probes which help generate geomagnetic weather forecasts. Researchers also study the sun to learn more about its structure as well as obtain data to make predictions about different types of solar flares. These include solar flares and Coronal Mass Ejections, which are large clouds of plasma and magnetic field that erupt from the sun.

Solar flares and particles ejected via coronal mass ejections are associated with dark spots on the sun's surface. These are areas of intense magnetic activity, and when the magnetic fields in a sunspot cross each other, it can result in an energy explosion, known as a solar flare, which sends radiation into space.

Solar flares only impact Earth when they occur on the side of the sun facing the Earth. Sometimes, these explosions can send out coronal mass ejections - large clouds of plasma and magnetic field that erupt from the sun.

The event coincides with the formation of 'equinox cracks' in the sun, which form around the equinoxes on March 20 and September 23. On these dates the Earth and sun line up so that day and night are of equal length. Pictured is an equinox crack that formed in March 2012

Forecasters monitor these events, and when a storm looks likely to have a significant impact, engineers can shut down certain systems on satellites, or prepare for impacts on the power grid. The sun has an 11-year cycle of sunspot activity, with the last maximum having taken place in April 2014. This summer, NASA is set to launch a spacecraft called Parker Solar Probe, which will travel closer to the sun than any other previous mission.

It will fly by Venus and travel into the corona - the sun's upper atmosphere, with the aim of learning more about the particles that are ejected by the sun.

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NASA Plans To Nuke Incoming Asteroid To Avoid Deadly Impact With Earth

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If an asteroid the size of a small village were headed straight toward Earth, there isn't much we could do on short notice to prevent a major disaster – except blow it up, that is. Scientists are investigating the possibility of using a specially designed spacecraft to nuke approaching cosmic objects, in hopes that doing so could deflect the threat.

While it could be possible to divert a near-Earth object by slamming into it with a so-called impactor, experts say a nuclear explosion may be the best bet when time is running out. In a new paper, scientists from NASA and the National Nuclear Security Administration have laid out a plan for the Hypervelocity Asteroid Mitigation Mission for Emergency Response (HAMMER).

The 8.8-ton HAMMER spacecraft could be used to steer itself directly into a small asteroid, or blow the space rock up using a nuclear device, according to BuzzFeed News. The team has devised a proposal around a potential impact with the 1,600-foot-wide asteroid Bennu, which is currently the destination for NASA’s Osiris-Rex sample return mission.

While Earth isn’t at risk of a collision with Bennu any time soon, there’s a 1 in 2,700 chance it will slam into our planet sometime next century.

Bennu is also the best-studied asteroid of all the known NEOs, the researchers note. ‘The two realistic responses considered are the use of a spacecraft functioning as either a kinetic impactor or a nuclear explosive carrier to deflect the approaching NEO,’ the authors wrote in the study, published to the journal Acta Astronautica.

But, there are several factors that would determine the best approach. The asteroid’s size and mass must be taken into consideration, along with the amount of time available before it hits Earth. Plus, there are always ‘various uncertainties.’ ‘Whenever practical, the kinetic impactor is the preferred approach, but various factors, such as large uncertainties or short available response time, reduce the kinetic impactor’s suitability and, ultimately, eliminate its sufficiency,’ the authors wrote.

By driving multiple spacecraft into the asteroid’s path, it could be possible to slow the object down and throw it off course to avoid a collision with Earth.

If the conditions aren’t right to use the kinetic impactor, however, nuking it might be the only option.

‘If the asteroid is small enough, and we detect it early enough, we can do it with the impactor,’ physicist David Dearborn of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory told BuzzFeed News. ‘The impactor is not as flexible as the nuclear option when we really want to change the speed of the body in a hurry.’

Despite ongoing efforts to catalog potential hazards in Earth’s vicinity, scientists have increasingly warned that there are countless large objects that remain undetected. Given the risk of an inevitable impact sometime in the future, the experts say it’s necessary to plan for the worst. The researchers will present their proposal at a conference in Japan this coming May.

For now, however, whether or not the HAMMER plan will ever come to fruition remains up in the air.

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NASA Reveals Asteroid Passed So Close To Earth It Was INSIDE 'Satellite Ring'

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Elon Musk’s Tesla in Space Could Crash Into Earth

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On February 6, 2018, SpaceX launched a Tesla Roadster with a dummy driver named 'Starman' into orbit around the sun. Currently, its looping path will take it past Mars and into the asteroid belt—but millions of years from now; the car may collide with Earth, Venus, or the sun itself. Photograph by spacex/getty

Launched last week aboard SpaceX’s new Falcon Heavy rocket, Elon Musk’s interplanetary Tesla Roadster is currently on a lazy cruise around the sun. But the car’s journey may come to an end in the not-too-distant future when—in a twist of karmic fate—it collides with the planet nearest and dearest to all our hearts.

“The Tesla will likely impact the Earth within a few tens of millions of years,” says Hanno Rein of the University of Toronto.

At least, that’s Rein’s best guess, which is based on simulations probing the future wanderings of the 2008 Tesla Roadster. The car, hitched to the second stage of the Falcon Heavy and carrying a dummy named Starman, is already listed as a “solar system body” in a catalogue maintained by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. (Watch Musk react to the Falcon Heavy launch.)

Rein and his collaborators recently decided to spin that body’s orbit forward by several million years and see which paths the car might take as it loops around the sun on the solar system’s most epic road trip. Currently in an orbit that intersects the paths of both Earth and Mars, the Roadster will be kicked around a bit by close encounters with these planets early on.

While that makes it a bit tricky to determine the car’s far-future path with precision, if scientists run enough simulations, they can see which eventual outcomes are the most likely. Regardless of where its exact demise occurs, the Roadster only has a few tens of millions of years to live, the team says.

INCREASINGLY CLOSE ENCOUNTERS

The Roadster’s near future, however, is certain. The car’s next particularly close encounter with Earth will occur in 2091, when it will be within one lunar distance of our planet. It may even be easily visible with the right kind of telescope; though it’s not large enough to be readily distinguished from the myriad objects that routinely blow by us, the car’s reflectance—or spectrum—should set it apart.

“It will have a lot of close encounters with Earth initially,” Rein says. “A bit later, it will also have close encounters with Venus and Mars. During every close encounter, it will change its orbit a little.”

Rein and his colleagues calculated that there’s virtually no chance of the car accidentally crash-landing on Mars. But there is a six-percent chance the Tesla will collide with Earth in the next million years, and a 2.5-percent chance of it colliding with Venus. Both numbers, perhaps not surprisingly, are roughly in line with what scientists expect for the class of small bodies on Earth-crossing orbits termed Near-Earth Objects, or NEOs.

After that initial million-year timeframe passes, each time the car zooms by, its chance of colliding with one of the two sister planets goes up, Rein says, such that there’s an 11-percent chance of it smashing into Earth after three million years.

“The probability of a collision increases with time, because the collision rate is relatively constant,” Rein explains.

STAR-CROSSED SPACE CAR?

Renu Malhotra, an expert in planetary dynamics at the University of Arizona, says the work Rein and his colleagues have done is solid. Despite being a rather unique object out in deep space, the Roadster behaves about the same as a natural object of about the same mass and size.

“I did a quick estimate that Earth collides with several Roadster-size NEOs every year, and such collisions are usually unremarkable,” she says.

But Malhotra suspects the most likely demise for the Roadster will be a collision with none other than the biggest star in its vicinity, perhaps within a few million years, rather than tens of millions.

“I would think that the most probable end is collision with the sun,” she says. “And the second most probable end is collision with Earth, as is the case for NEOs."

Don’t fear, though. Even if the Roadster does eventually reunite with its home world, it will happen so far in the future that you won’t be around to care, and it won’t present any sort of threat to the planet anyway. The car is so small that most of it will likely burn up upon entry in Earth’s atmosphere—whatever that may be like at that far future point.

“It's possible that some debris could survive entry. It would get very hot but is also coming in so fast it might not have time to all melt,” says Jonathan McDowell of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. “I think bets are it would all melt, but definitely not a sure thing.

Article was re-printed on National Geographic.

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