Solar Storm

An absolutely massive hole has formed in the upper atmosphere of the Sun, and our planet will align with that hole later this week.  Once the alignment happens, Earth will be bombarded by a solar storm, and nobody is quite sure yet how bad it will be.  If the…

A Van Allen radiation belt is a zone of energeticcharged particles, most of which originate from the solar wind, that are captured by and held around a planet by that planet's magnetic field. Earth has two such belts and sometimes others may be temporarily cr…

Many readers may find the plots of some SF novels deeply implausible. Who, they ask, would send astronauts off on an interstellar mission before verifying the Go Very Fast Now drive was faster than light and not merely as fast as light? Who would be silly eno…

When the dark acts of the trolls became particularly harmful the elves felt they had no choice but to get together and fight back, and the fierce battle which then began has since continued with no sign of ending.   Industrial scale spreading of disinformati…

In 2000, the Broward County Public Schools in Florida received an alarming report. Like many affluent school districts at the time, Broward was considering laptops and wireless networks for its classrooms and 250,000 students. Were there any health risks to …

Currently, the Deep Space Observatory (DSCOVR) has been placed in a "safehold" position as engineers are working to fix an issue in the system. During this time, it won't be able to send any measurement data which helps us to monitor trends or events in space…

A dense layer of molecules and electrically charged particles, called the ionosphere, hangs in the Earth's upper atmosphere starting at about 35 miles (60 kilometers) above the planet's surface and stretching out beyond 620 miles (1,000 km). Solar radiation c…

Solar Minimum has Arrived Where have all the sunspots gone? Solar minimum has arrived. Every year in February, the students of Mrs. Phillips's 5th grade class in Bishop, California, celebrate Galileo's birthday (Feb. 15th) by repeating one of his discoverie…

Imagine the apocalypse is coming: the Earth is about to experience a massive solar storm; an asteroid is about to slam into our home planet; or a supervolcano is erupting, sending massive amounts of ash into the atmosphere. How will you react? KEY POINTS C…

America is celebrating its independence this week, but there's nothing revolutionary about the way 4th of July fireworks are made. Fireworks have been built from a mix of explosive powder, chemicals, and glue for hundreds of years; the earliest fireworks s…