The current weather front in the northern part of the U.S. may have many residents signing up for a mission to Mars.
The high temperature on the red planet on Thursday was 17.6 degrees, warmer than the high temperatures in 14 northern U.S. states.
Residents of northern states have been fighting bitter cold and wind chills that have caused major outbreaks of frostbite. Hospitals have been reporting people coming in for treatment who didn’t realize how bad the bitter cold would impact their bodies.
Winter Storm Gorgon is moving off the U.S. east coast this weekend and warmer temperatures are expected to cover the northern states. However, the resulting front could bring massive amounts of snow to the Great Lakes region with some models showing up to three feet of snow in some areas.
Wind chill readings of below zero were reported as far south as Alabama, Mississippi and North Carolina.
Many school districts around the nation cancelled their classes Thursday because of the dangerous cold. Detroit reported a high of 3 degrees. Green Bay, Wisconsin, where the Packers are to play a playoff football game this weekend, had a high of 6 degrees. International Falls, historically one of the coldest spots in the continental U.S., reached a high of -1.
A giant sunspot on the sun has erupted for the sixth time in a week.
The sunspot, which is 14 times larger than Earth, has erupted with three flares in the last 48 hours.
‘A giant active region on the sun erupted on Oct. 26, 2014, with its sixth substantial flare since Oct. 19,’ NASA said. ‘This flare was classified as an X2-class flare and it peaked at 6:56 a.m. EDT. This is the third X-class flare in 48 hours, erupting from the largest active region seen on the sun in 24 years.”
Christopher Balch of the Space Weather Prediction Center said that the flare had an impact on radio signals that used the upper atmosphere. A few radio communications systems were completely blacked out by the flare for a short time.
The sun has been in an aggressive time of activity after months of almost silence.
The sunspot, which continues to grow, has been described as “menacing” by astronomy experts.
Scientists are tracking an asteroid that is on a collision course with Earth and could end all life on the planet in 2880.
The asteroid apparently is continuing a collision course despite any gravitational factors that should be weighing on it as it passes other celestial objects. Researchers at the University of Tennessee are tracking the object called 1950 DA.
The scientists have already calculated that attempting to blow up the asteroid would not be effective because it would break into smaller pieces that would have the same trajectory and thus cause more significant impacts.
The scientists say that the asteroid’s impact would have the same force as 44,800 megatons of TNT. Tsunamis would swamp the globe and the climate change would be devastating to human life.
The University of Tennessee team found that the asteroid is rotating so rapidly that it “defies gravity”. The forces holding the asteroid together have never been previously detected by scientists.
The findings were published in the journal Nature.
Scientists tracking the sun’s activity say the star has gone quiet and the solar maximum for Solar Cycle 24 has likely ended as one of the weakest in over a century.
The weaker than normal solar cycle means that “space weather” has been relatively benign with geomagnetic storms that were much less than feared in early predictions of the solar maximum.
Scientists are warning, however, that in the downturn of weak solar cycles there is a significant possibility of serious solar storms. Strong solar flares are still possible as the sun begins to wind down over the next few years to the solar minimum.
History also shows that a weaker solar cycle means that temperatures on the Earth will be lower than average.
In the last two major periods of low solar activity, 1645 to 1715 and 1790 to 1830, the Earth recorded below-normal temperatures with the latter era being called a “Little Ice Age.” The weaker solar winds can lead to more clouds that keep the Earth cooler by blocking more solar rays.
Some solar scientists say the next cycle, Cycle #25, could be weaker than this one.
A bright blue and orange object that plunged from the sky and struck the ground with the force of a bomb startled residents of Queensland, Australia.
A resident of Mount Isa, Australia old ABC News that the object was a “blazing light” that was “falling straight down.”
“I am actually flabbergasted at the attention at the moment because it was just a complete fluke,” Virginia Hills said.
Residents of the area say the moment of impact was unusual in that despite looking like a bomb there was no audible sound.
“It was like an explosion but without a sound,” Kim Vega said. “It was like an atomic bomb effect when it would have hit the ground and all the trees and the skies lit up.”
Astronomers suggest the object was not an asteroid but rather a satellite that fell out of orbit. The colors of the object seemed to indicate a metallic object rather than a space rock.
A new report from three former NASA astronauts shows that asteroid impacts on Earth are up to ten times more common than previously believed by scientists.
The report, scheduled to be issued to the public on Earth Day April 22nd, presents evidence that it’s been a miracle no major city has been decimated by a major asteroid strike.
“This network has detected 26 multi-kiloton explosions since 2001, all of which are due to asteroid impacts,” Ed Lu of the B612 Foundation said. “It shows that asteroid impacts are NOT rare—but actually 3-10 times more common than we previously thought. The fact that none of these asteroid impacts shown in the video was detected in advance is proof that the only thing preventing a catastrophe from a ‘city-killer’ sized asteroid is blind luck. The goal of the B612 Sentinel mission is to find and track asteroids decades before they hit Earth, allowing us to easily deflect them.”
The B612 Foundation is building a special infrared satellite that once launched in 2017 will allow scientists to detect hundreds of near-Earth objects that cannot be currently seen by telescope and satellite systems.
A new study shows that Earth was nine days away from suffering the effects from a massive solar burst.
Scientists say the burst from the sun would have at least matched the severity of the 1859 Carrington Event which blew out the telegraph system across the entire United States.
Berkeley research physicist Janet Luhmann, who led the study, said that the burst would have had more impact than the 1859 event.
“Had it hit Earth, it probably would have been like the big one in 1859, but the effect today, with our modern technologies, would have been tremendous,” Luhmann said.
The coronal mass ejection that burst from the sun on July 23, 2012 would have been aimed directly at Earth if the event happened nine days earlier. The blast of southward magnetic fields would clash with the Earth’s northward field, causing electrical transformers to burst into flames, disabling many older satellites, damaging electronic devices on Earth and causing problems for the GPS system.
The scientists hope by being able to study the results of the 2012 burst they can better predict future events.
An asteroid is going to blow past Earth tomorrow closer than the moon’s orbit.
The asteroid, named 2014 DX110, will pass within about 9/10th of the moon’s orbit at around 33,000 miles per hour. The Virtual Telescope Project is planning to provide live online coverage of the asteroid’s passing starting around 3:30 p.m. eastern time tomorrow.
The asteroid is believed to be the size of three double decker busses.
The asteroid is classified as a “Apollo class” asteroid, meaning that it passes through the Earth’s orbit. If the asteroid were to strike Earth, it would leave a crater up to 20 times its size.
If that were to happen, it would throw enough dust into the sky that it would darken the planets for years.
NASA said that man’s concept of the galaxy was made woefully obsolete yesterday with the discovery of 715 newly discovered planets outside our solar system.
The Kepler telescope almost doubled the number of known planets in the universe. NASA scientist Jack Lissauer said that many of the planets are in multiple grouping around stars making them similar to our galaxy.
Four of those planets orbit in what NASA scientists call a “habitable zone” and believe it’s a major step toward their desire to find “Earth 2.0.” However, the scientists admitted because the planets are twice the size of Earth, they’re likely gas giants that cannot harbor life.
The Kepler telescope has suffered damage and NASA officials say it’s unlikely they will discover more planets in the same time frame.
