Krissy Marrinan
Earth Science C Even
March 18th 2013
Ms. Davies
Chang , Kenneth.
"On the Watch for a Solar Storm - NYTimes.com." The New York Times
- Breaking News, World News & Multimedia. N.p., 18 Mar. 2013. Web. 18
Mar. 2013.
<http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/19/science/space/on-the-watch-for-a-solar-storm.html?pagewanted=all>.
Sun Storm Forecast: Tiny Chance of Havoc
A solar flare occurred in the 1800s
wiping out many power lines and disrupting the electricity on whole continents.
The event occurred in 1859, and is recorded to be the largest geomagnetic storm
ever. In this article, the author states that the eruption caused aurous in
many different colours such as red, green and purple. An expert commented on
the event and if it happened today, during this modern age. The expert didn’t
believe that a solar flare would damage the world as much as might be expected,
but that the power would be on within a week of the flare. Though this expert
seems confident that the flare would not cause much damage, but scientists say
that is impossible to predict when the next flare could occur, meaning that the
range of destruction could be more sever. Solar flares originate near sunspots,
areas of stormy magnetic fields; they have cycles where their solar flares
could be less forceful and others where they are very powerful. Events that
have affected the earths power girds all are related to Solar flares or other
incidents dealing with the sun. These occurrences have happened all over the
world including Canada. Some scientist have discovered that when the sun’s
sunspots generate enough energy to produce a solar flare, the effect of the
flare could reach earth in 8.5 minutes, but the likeliness of that actually
happening is rare.
Solar flares are powerful and
potentially very destructive to earth. If one was to directly affect earth
today, many people could e out of power for weeks, or even months, whole
continents of people would be affected. As recorded in the 1859 solar flare,
many telegram and other electronics at that time were destroyed and caught on
fire because of the blast. Today, if this occurred, fires would affect almost
every home, based on the fact that the blast would cause explosions of fuse
boxes and transformers. The article explains what happened in older solar
flares and possibly what to expect of an upcoming one. Explaining previous
flares could allow for us to prepare for another, but scientists have not found
a way to know if a solar flare is coming or not.
Furthermore, I think that the article was very interesting and
explained the danger of solar flares. Though at some points I found it very
repetitive, and also more of historical article rather than a scientific, but
there were some facts that I found interesting. I didn’t know that it only took
8.5 minutes for a solar flare to reach the earth, but it’s also very scary.
Fallon Raviol March 30, 2013
ReplyDeleteCore Earth Science Block C Ms. Davies
Krissy, I thought your article on solar flares was extremely fascinating and well presented. Your description of how dangerous some of the solar flares could be, caught my attention. In Core Earth Science, we talked about solar flares and what has caused them, the sun’s twisting of its magnetic field because of the different rotations between it’s poles and the equator, which then causes sun spots as well as solar flares. I had no idea that solar flares could wipe out electricity on many continents. I also thought that you did a good job explaining the effects it had on society when it last happened in 1859. A solar flare had affected the earth’s power grids. Not only that, but it wiped out electronics throughout many continents. You explained quite clearly that scientists do not know how severe the solar flare can be, since there are ones that can be smaller than others and some larger than others. You also described that we cannot tell when one is going to occur, since they are very rare. What I found interesting is that these solar flares, even though they are very dangerous, cause beautiful phenomenons, auroras. These specific auroras were green, purple, and red. I also was fascinated by the fact that even though these solar flares are very rare, one has struck Earth less than two hundred years ago, and had a significant impact. Since we cannot track these flares, it is scary to think that one could happen any day, and that there is nothing we can do about it. Also, today there are more electronics everywhere and therefore more fires would erupt. Even though your article had taught me new information that has scared me, I think your grammatical structure could use some work. For example, in this specific quote, “Though this expert seems confident that the flare would not cause much damage, but scientists say that is impossible to predict...” you do not need the “but” before the scientists because you have already stated that there is going to be a contrast in this sentence by saying “though.” “An expert commented on the event and if it happened today, during this modern age.” This previous sentence does not make sense to me. It seems as if there is you wanted something to say, but ended the sentence. Your analysis of an article taught me a lot of information that was easy to read, and it was enjoyable because it contained information about the past and how it is relevant today.
Abigail Roesser
ReplyDeleteMs. Davies
Core Earth Science
I think Krissy did a really good job on her current event. The article about solar flares seems very interesting. What I found interesting about this current event was that I never knew a Solar flare occurred so recently. I also found it interesting that a solar flare would not affect us poorly as much as we would think. I think that is interesting because our whole lives are built around electricity and technology. I thought that Krissy included a great amount of facts and information that the reader wouldn’t know. I also thought that Krissy’s analysis of how these solar flares effect our society today was very interesting. It is interesting that it would cause a fire in almost every household. One thing that I heard at the doomsday science seminar was that we can sometimes detect these solar flared and turn off all of our electricity for a cetain amount of time and then we would be able to turn it back on. I think that the idea of solar flares ties into what we have learned in Earth Science. For example, we know that these solar flares are caused by a change in the magnetic field. We know that this could also cause sunspots. Another thing that I thought you did well was I thought that you current event was clear and very well written. It taught me a lot of things about the past of solar flares. However, I agree with you criticism of the article it did not give a lot of facts about the effects of a solar flare would do to us today because they are so rare and the side effects are unknown. Overall, your current event was very well done.
Steven Ircha 4/7/2013
ReplyDeleteMs. Davies Core Earth Science C Even
This is a very interesting article, and I have been curious to learn more about this topic ever since the assembly that talked about the end of the world, and why this was a possible threat. This topic is very relevant and many people are worried about solar flares especially once they have heard about the history of these and what effects they have had in the past. Also as the world is becoming more connected this problem is growing as well. So the first thing you did well was picking an extremely relevant topic that many people want to learn more about. I picked your article to comment on because of how interesting it looked. The second aspect you did well was presenting and summarizing the information in a detailed, but not overly cumbersome manner. When you describe the different auras and their colors I was very interested and drawn in. Also when a bold statement is made you back it up with the author’s words as to not mislead the reader, which is always a plus. The third thing you did well was explaining the scientist’s knowledge of the phenomenon. You explained how scientists are researching using past occurrences of solar flares which was very well presented. Also you made a point to not sugar coat anything, explaining to us the threats of a solar flare, and also explaining the facts that scientists cannot fully understand them yet, but working to find a solution to the problem in the future. One thing I was very interested in was the expert opinions of scientists. They are studying the past solar flares to gauge its level of destructiveness but they simply are having a tough time doing so due to a limited amount of information at their disposal. This is a problem but they are working through this and will soon have a better understanding of the solar flare. The second thing that interested me was your analysis of the damage. You not only wrote what the author believed would happen but you looked at the results yourself. With this information you diagnosed the problem and what would happen. You made it a point to touch on things that would personally affect all of the lives of your reader. This was a powerful and interesting part of your article that kept me wanting to read on! Finally the only thing you could have done better was talk a little more about the phenomenon itself I was curious was a flare would look like coming to Earth. Would we even be able to see it? Also what are some things we can do to prevent harm from the flares. Other than that the article was well written as well as informative and entertaining!
The article you chose was very interesting. I never before knew that solar flares were so powerful that they could effect earth. Also i found it interesting that solar flares effect electricity and electronics. I thought that you summarized the article very well, and i very much agree with all of your edits to the article. I also thought you did a good job describing the solar flares and exactly how they effect the earth and just how dangerous they are. Lastly, your review was really good, i enjoyed reading it. the only critic i have is that you made a few grammatical errors, but besides that it was good.
ReplyDeleteKrissy, you did an amazing job on this article summary. One thing you did really well was to summarize this article in a way that made all of the events easy to understand. In addition, you presented every side of the article, saying that some scientists did not think a solar flare would cause much damage, while others believed that power lines could be down for weeks. I also found this summary very interesting to read because I actually read the same article, but interpreted some of the facts in different ways. This made it really cool to see what you thought of the article as well as to compare and contrast what we both wrote. Another thing that you did well was to add statistics. In each paragraph, you included dates, or facts that really added to the article. And finally, you did a very thorough and interesting analysis of the article. I found it very interesting that you noticed that fires could occur in every home if a severe solar flare were to hit Earth today. Although there was some information in the article implying this, I did not realize that that was in fact true. Although I did read the same article as you, I also learned a lot from your summary. I learned that solar flares could cause explosions of fuse boxes and transformers as well as the fact that it could take a minimum of eight and a half minutes for a particularly powerful flare to reach Earth. Besides the fact that there were some grammatical errors that made the sentences more difficult to understand, I thought your review was done very well.
ReplyDelete