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Planet Earth is in for some amazing geomagnetic storms in the next year or so. That’s because it’s in a period of peak activity called “solar maximum” (solar max, for short). But, what happens at other planets, especially Mars, during this time? Mars mission scientists got a sneak peek at the effect of a major solar storm thanks to one hitting the Red Planet on May 20th, 2024.

During that event, the Curiosity Mars rover’s Radiation Assessment Detector (RAD) measured a very sharp increase in radiation during the solar storm. At the same time, the navigation camera captured views of a wind gust stirring up surface dust. The radiation count was the highest the instrument has seen since the rover landed on Mars. In space, the Mars Odyssey orbiter’s star camera also experienced a shower of solar particles. The bombardment knocked the camera out for a short time. During its recovery time, the spacecraft continued collecting data. That included information about the x-rays, gamma rays, and other charged particles streaming from the Sun.

NASA’s MAVEN spacecraft also collected data about the bombardment from the May 20th event. “This was the largest solar energetic particle event that MAVEN has ever seen,” said MAVEN Space Weather Lead, Christina Lee of the University of California, Berkeley’s Space Sciences Laboratory. “There have been several solar events in past weeks, so we were seeing wave after wave of particles hitting Mars.”

The purple color in this video shows auroras on Mars’ nightside. The ultraviolet instrument aboard NASA’s MAVEN orbiter detected them between May 14 and 20, 2024. The brighter the purple, the more auroras that were present.  Credit: NASA/University of Colorado/LASP What Protects Planets from the Solar Storm?

There’s not much we as a species can do to protect our planet from a solar storm. However, we’re lucky—we have a strong magnetic field to ward off the worst solar outbursts. Mars is not so lucky. It doesn’t have as much of a magnetic field to ward off the deadly radiation. Space weather experts estimated that if someone had been standing on the Martian surface during that storm, they would have been irradiated with the equivalent of 30 chest X-rays in just a short time.

That storm, and others have sparked auroras on Mars (as well as on Earth). A storm earlier in May sparked off major auroral displays on Earth on May 10-11, but otherwise didn’t severely damage any vital systems. Solar storms, however, do offer a good chance for scientists to track the Sun’s outbursts as they rampage across the Solar System. The data they get gives more insight into solar activity. However, the data from the Mars missions also provides a chilling look at just what kind of risky environment Mars is for future explorers.

Sheltering from the Solar Storm on Mars

Here on Earth, if we have plenty of notice of a solar outburst, people can get ready for the inevitable damage a solar storm can cause. For example, satellite operators can prepare their assets to protect them. NASA can advise astronauts in space to take shelter and other precautions. Ground-based power and telecommunications operators have plans in place to protect their systems from the tremendously strong ground currents that get stirred up by solar storms.

But, what if you’re on your way to Mars when a storm hits? Or, you’re actually ON Mars? Those questions occupy a lot of study time at NASA and other space agencies. People in space, whether orbiting Earth or en route to the Moon or Mars can take shelter inside their craft. In those cases, they have to depend on hardened shelters to keep them safe. But, on Mars, things are different. There’s no strong magnetic field to ward off the strong particles from the Sun. Inhabitants will have to take shelter, according to Don Hassler of Southwest Research Institute’s Solar System Science and Exploration Division.

“Cliffsides or lava tubes would provide additional shielding for an astronaut from such an event. In Mars orbit or deep space, the dose rate would be significantly more,” Hassler said.“I wouldn’t be surprised if this active region on the Sun continues to erupt, meaning even more solar storms at both Earth and Mars over the coming weeks.”

What Happened on May 20th?

The storm that Curiosity recorded began with an X12-class solar flare. That’s one of the strongest solar flares recorded and, if it had been aimed at Earth, could have caused some major damage. As it turns out, Mars was in the pathway of that flare and a subsequent coronal mass ejection. It launched a cloud of charged particles through space. When the outburst from the flare and the CME arrived at Mars, it triggered auroral displays on the Martian night side. At the same time, the outbursts showered the surface with charged particles. If someone had been on Mars and working outside a shelter, they would have been dosed with the equivalent of 30 chest X-rays. That’s not a deadly exposure, but over time if someone experienced many such events, the damage to their body would add up.

Luckily, the storm did no damage to Curiosity or any of the spacecraft at Mars. But, that won’t always be the case, and mission planners can use the data from this storm and others to figure out how best to protect future explorers.

A NASA video about how a solar storm affected Mars. For More Information

NASA Watches Mars Light Up During Epic Solar Storm
NASA Curiosity Mars Mission

The post A Recent Solar Storm Even Had an Impact on Mars appeared first on Universe Today.

Scientists scour the Earth and the sky for clues to our planet’s climate history. Powerful and sustained volcanic eruptions can alter the climate for long periods of time, and the Sun’s output can shift Earth’s climate over millions of years.

But what about interstellar hydrogen clouds? Can these regions of gas and dust change Earth’s climate when the planet encounters them?

Interstellar clouds aren’t all the same. Some are diffuse, while some are much denser. New research in Nature Astronomy says that our Solar System may have passed through one of the dense clouds two or three million years ago. The effect could’ve altered the chemistry of Earth’s atmosphere, affecting cloud formation and the climate.

The research is “A possible direct exposure of the Earth to the cold dense interstellar medium 2–3 Myr ago.” The lead author is Merav Opher from the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University and the Astronomy Department at Boston University.

“Our results open a new window into the relationship between the evolution of life on Earth and our cosmic neighborhood.”

Avi Loeb, co-author, Harvard University’s Institute for Theory and Computation

The Sun is moving through a large cavity in the interstellar medium (ISM) called the Local Bubble. Inside the LB, the Sun’s solar output creates a cocoon called the heliosphere. It shields the Solar System from cosmic radiation.

Inside the LB, there’s more than just the Sun. It also contains other stars, and the Local Interstellar Cloud (LIC). The Sun has been moving through the LIC and will leave it in a few thousand years. The LIC is not very dense.

But in the last few million years, as the Sun has traversed the Local Bubble, it’s encountered clouds that are much denser than the LIC. The researchers examined the effect these encounters had on the Sun’s ability to carve out a cocoon for the Solar System and what effect this had on Earth.

“Stars move, and now this paper is showing not only that they move, but they encounter drastic changes.”

Merav Opher, Professor of Astronomy, BU College of Arts & Sciences

“Here we show that in the ISM that the Sun has traversed for the last couple of million years, there are cold, compact clouds that could have drastically affected the heliosphere. We explore a scenario whereby the Solar System went through a cold gas cloud a few million years ago,” Opher and her colleagues write.

Most of what the Sun travels through is thin ISM. The Sun constantly moves through the thin ISM with no effect. “These clouds are plentiful around the Sun but have too low a density to contract the heliosphere to distances <130au,” the authors explain. For comparison, the Kuiper Belt spans from 30 to 55 AU away from the Sun.

However, the denser clouds in the ISM are dense enough to dramatically affect the protective heliosphere. “The ISM in the vicinity of the Solar System also harbours a few, rare, dense, cold clouds that are called the Local Ribbon of Cold Clouds,” they write.

One of the clouds in that ribbon is called the Local Leo Cold Cloud (LLCC). It’s one of the largest clouds in the ribbon, and astronomers have studied it extensively. They know its density and its temperature. Researchers haven’t paid as much attention to the other clouds in the ribbon, but they expect them to be similar.

The authors of this paper say that there’s a small chance, about 1.3%, that the Sun passed through the tail of the LLCC. “We name that portion the Local Lynx of Cold Clouds (LxCCs). The LxCCs represent nearly half of all the mass of the LRCC and are more massive than the more well-studied LLCC,” they write.

This diagram from the research shows how the Sun may have passed through the tail of the LRCC about 2 to 3 million years ago. Image Credit: Opher et al. 2024.

There are questions about the nature of these clouds in the past. “Note that these clouds are anomalous and unexplained structures in the ISM, and their origin and physics are not well understood,” the authors write. Their work is based on the assumption that they haven’t changed substantially in the 2 million years since the purported encounter. “We have assumed here that these clouds have not undergone any substantial change over the last 2~Myr, though future work may provide more insight into their evolution.”

The researchers used simulations to study the dense cloud’s effect on the heliosphere and, by extension, our planet. They say that the cloud’s hydrogen density pushed back on the Sun, shrinking the heliosphere smaller than the Earth’s orbit around the Sun. It brought both the Sun and the Moon into contact with the dense, cold ISM. “Such an event may have had a dramatic impact on the Earth’s climate,” they explain.

These images from the simulations show the heliosphere being distorted by passage through the tail of the Local Lynx of Cold Clouds. a is a side view, and b is a top view. The red circle shows Earth’s orbit around the Sun. The simulations show that for a period of time, Earth was outside of the Sun’s protective heliosphere. Image Credit: Opher et al. 2024.

The encounter is supported by the presence of the radioisotope 60Fe on Earth. 60Fe is predominantly produced in supernovae and has a half-life of 2.6 million years. Previous research linked the 60Fe to a supernova explosion, where it became entrenched in dust grains and then delivered to Earth. It’s also present on the Moon. 244Pu was delivered at the same time, also in supernovae ejecta.

While there’s a lot of uncertainty, the researchers say the deposition of 60Fe on Earth lines up with our Solar System’s hypothetical passage through a dense cloud that compressed the protective heliosphere, allowing the isotopes to reach Earth. “Our proposed scenario agrees with the geological evidence from 60Fe and 244Pu isotopes that Earth was in direct contact with the ISM during that period,” they write.

But if a supernova delivered the radioisotopes, it would have to have been pretty close, and other evidence discounts the supernova source. “A close supernova explosion contradicts the recent model of the Local Bubble formation,” the authors explain. “The scenario does not require the absorption of 60Fe and 244Pu into dust particles that deliver them specifically to Earth, like the scenario with nearby supernova explosions.”

The question at the heart of this issue is, how did this affect Earth?

An in-depth study of the consequences is outside the scope of this research. The team did comment on some possibilities, while also cautioning that very little research has been done on this matter.

“Very few works have investigated the climatic effects of such encounters quantitatively in the context of encounters with dense giant molecular clouds. Some argue that such high densities would deplete the ozone in the mid-atmosphere (50–100?km) and eventually cool the Earth,” they write.

It’s a leap, but some research suggests that this cooling could have contributed to the rise of our species. “The hypothesis is that the emergence of our species, Homo sapiens, was shaped by the need to adapt to climate change. With the shrinkage of the heliosphere, the Earth was exposed directly to the ISM,” they write.

In their conclusion, they remind us that the probability that this encounter took place is low. But not zero.

“Stars move, and now this paper is showing not only that they move, but they encounter drastic changes,” said Opher, a BU College of Arts & Sciences professor of astronomy and member of the University’s Center for Space Physics.

“Although the coincidence of the Sun’s past motion with these rare clouds is truly remarkable, the turbulent nature of the ISM and the small current angular size of these clouds mean that the past location error ellipse is much larger than the clouds and, absent any other information, the probability of their encounter is measured to be low,” they write in their conclusion. It’s up to future work to dig more deeply into the matter.

Even if this particular encounter may not have happened, the research is still fascinating. There appear to be a bewildering number of variables that led to us, and it’s not a stretch to imagine that passing through dense clouds in the ISM played some role at some point.

“Only rarely does our cosmic neighborhood beyond the solar system affect life on Earth,” said Avi Loeb, director of Harvard University’s Institute for Theory and Computation and coauthor on the paper. “It is exciting to discover that our passage through dense clouds a few million years ago could have exposed the Earth to a much larger flux of cosmic rays and hydrogen atoms. Our results open a new window into the relationship between the evolution of life on Earth and our cosmic neighborhood.”

“We hope that our present work will incentivize future works detailing the climate effects due to an encounter of the heliosphere with the LRCC and possible consequences for evolution on Earth,” the authors conclude.

The post Was Earth’s Climate Affected by Interstellar Clouds? appeared first on Universe Today.

The exhaust heat generated by a fusing plasma in a commercial-scale reactor may not be as damaging to the vessel's innards as once thought, according to new research about escaping plasma particles.

Today, researchers are developing ways to accelerate discovery by combining automated experiments, artificial intelligence and high-performance computing. A novel tool that leverages those technologies has demonstrated that AI can influence materials synthesis and conduct associated experiments without human supervision.

What scientists previously thought about where Fast Radio Bursts (FRBs) come from is just the tip of the iceberg. A new study details the properties of polarized light from 128 non-repeating FRBs and reveals mysterious cosmic explosions that originated in far-away galaxies, similar to our own Milky Way.

The need to transition away from fossil fuels to more sustainable energy production is critical. That's why a team of researchers is looking at a potential power source that not only produces no carbon emissions but removes carbon as it works: algae.

The need to transition away from fossil fuels to more sustainable energy production is critical. That's why a team of researchers is looking at a potential power source that not only produces no carbon emissions but removes carbon as it works: algae.

Researching the immune system in space could have payoffs for human aging on earth. Scientists have revealed how the lack of gravity affects the cells of the immune system at single cell resolution.

To help probe the mystery of how brains control movement, scientists have created a virtual rat with an artificial brain that can move around just like a real rodent. The researchers found that activations in the virtual control network accurately predicted neural activity measured from the brains of real rats producing the same behaviors.

To help probe the mystery of how brains control movement, scientists have created a virtual rat with an artificial brain that can move around just like a real rodent. The researchers found that activations in the virtual control network accurately predicted neural activity measured from the brains of real rats producing the same behaviors.

The structure and function of the kidneys is altered by space flight, with galactic radiation causing permanent damage that would jeopardise any mission to Mars, according to a new study led by researchers from UCL.

Researchers have demonstrated a new method that could enable the large-scale manufacturing of optical qubits. The advance could bring us closer to a scalable quantum computer.

Researchers have demonstrated a new method that could enable the large-scale manufacturing of optical qubits. The advance could bring us closer to a scalable quantum computer.

Researchers are breaking through the difficulties of robotic recognition of various common, yet complex, items. Their layered sensor is equipped with material detection at the surface and pressure sensitivity at the bottom, with a porous middle layer sensitive to thermal changes. An efficient cascade classification algorithm rules out object types in order, from easy to hard, starting with simple categories like empty cartons before moving on to orange peels or scraps of cloth.

Researchers are breaking through the difficulties of robotic recognition of various common, yet complex, items. Their layered sensor is equipped with material detection at the surface and pressure sensitivity at the bottom, with a porous middle layer sensitive to thermal changes. An efficient cascade classification algorithm rules out object types in order, from easy to hard, starting with simple categories like empty cartons before moving on to orange peels or scraps of cloth.

A study revealed that a simple thermal reaction of gallium nitride with metallic magnesium results in the formation of a distinctive superlattice structure. This represents the first time researchers have identified the insertion of 2D metal layers into a bulk semiconductor. By carefully observing materials through various cutting-edge characterization techniques, the researchers uncovered new insights into the process of semiconductor doping and elastic strain engineering.

A study revealed that a simple thermal reaction of gallium nitride with metallic magnesium results in the formation of a distinctive superlattice structure. This represents the first time researchers have identified the insertion of 2D metal layers into a bulk semiconductor. By carefully observing materials through various cutting-edge characterization techniques, the researchers uncovered new insights into the process of semiconductor doping and elastic strain engineering.

Crater 2, located approximately 380,000 light years from Earth, is one of the largest satellite galaxies of the Milky Way. Extremely cold and with slow-moving stars, Crater 2 has low surface brightness. How this galaxy originated remains unclear. A team of physicists now offers an explanation.

In facing life's many challenges, we often opt for complex approaches to finding solutions. Yet, upon closer examination, the answers are often simpler than we expect, rooted in the core "essence" of the issue. This approach was demonstrated by a research team in their publication on addressing the inherent issues of solid-state batteries.

Physicists have calculated how suitable molecules can be stimulated by infrared light pulses to form tiny magnetic fields. If this is also successful in experiments, the principle could be used in quantum computer circuits.