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Better Horror 15 Years Ago

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Feeling excited, I wait for my PlayStation 5 to flicker on so I can go somewhere I haven’t before, the USG Ishimura, splattered with fresh blood by Motive Studio for its Dead Space remake, released January 27. The mining ship has always been the gray spinal cord to trigger-happy horror Dead Space, originally released in 2008 and made by the since-shuttered Visceral Games, and I’ve gleaned as a newbie (I was 10 in 2008) that it’s one of the best horror games of all time. But after I see the ship—and the atrocities that populate it, indicated by graffiti (“Fuck this ship, it’s a shitty capitalist organization,” one on-the-nose scrawl says) and hallways sticky with organic goo—I wonder if that’s still the case.

The USG Ishimura itself, at least, lives up to my expectations. As engineer Isaac Clarke, a formerly non-speaking character now imbued with Dead Space 2 and 3 actor Gunner Wright’s cool voice of reason, I crash-land onto it along with my bickering crewmates, including Chief Security Officer Hammond and computer specialist Kendra Daniels. I’m immediately impressed by the ship’s engulfing shadows, the only extra dimension, really, to the lightless spine I spend around 16 hours running across and around.

It’s glued together by a speedy tram system, which was cut up by loading screens in the original game, but, in this Dead Space, travels smoothly without interruption. Though I often press my controller’s right stick to prompt a glowing blue line to guide me to my next location, the tram system makes Ishimura’s smallness obvious and more suffocating. This feeling doubles when I re-enter an area I was recently in, not thinking about the bodies I already wasted until noticing, there they are, still piled up.

Fuck this ship, it’s a shitty capitalist organization.
Screenshot: Motive Studio / Kotaku

Those bodies, with their taut, twisted skin, lumpy intestines poking through—like when you stick your thumb into an orange to break it open—belong to Isaac’s main opponent, the necromorphs.

The remake adds rooms you can access with an added security clearance system (you earn Level 1, 2, and 3 clearance naturally as you progress through the game), which sustains exploration even after Ishimura’s halls become familiar, and optional side quests for added context and background on characters. But, other than that, Dead Space 2023 doesn’t build on Dead Space 2008’s unconvincing story of crazed Unitologist cult members infecting people with their Red Marker in their quest for ascension, and so necromorphs continue to be yowling, sour victims of the Marker, and you need to hack their limbs off.

There are options for how you’d like to accomplish this. Maybe you prefer the Plasma Cutter, Pulse Rifle, or the Ripper, which shoots saw blades. I’ve become attached to the Force Gun, a Dead Space 2 acquisition, which uses the game’s gravity manipulation module, Kinesis, to blast away necromorphs until they become piles of rattled bones.

I do that a lot. I blast away babies with tendrils unfurling from their back while they spit some green acid at my Isaac, who ejects a low groan or a gravelly scream in response. I can hear his pulse racing when he’s quiet.

I blast away necromorphs that look like overgrown bats and necromorphs that look like praying mantises while a “boss” necromorph lumbers toward me like an intimidating, headless bear. I pause it with Stasis, another gravity manipulation that you can recharge to put enemies in slow-mo—it goes down disappointingly easily with a few hits to the yellow pustules around its joints.

I start associating my disappointment with these fluid-filled bulbs. I’m confused by what the Dead Space remake chooses to keep and what it changes.

Its light and graphics get an objective improvement, the type that 15 years allow.

And this isn’t a change, but it’s also worth noting that Dead Space’s gameplay on PS5 is clean—aside from a minor irritation where starting the game back up after saving at a checkpoint immobilized Issac, so I had to close and restart the game on a few occasions— which annoyingly feels like a rarity for new releases.

I’m happy that a game runs like it’s supposed to. But Dead Space’s visual improvement isn’t as noticeable as Demon’s Souls in 2020, and whether or not you like its tweaks and additions will come down to preference.

I might have preferred if Isaac never spoke. He was, before, an empty bowl for players to place their own fears, their anxieties—mine grew insistently the longer I spent hearing muffled moans reverberating throughout Ishimura.

In the remake, Isaac speaks, but he never gives me anything to identify with or root for. He’s following orders, and he wants to go home. Great, the same was true for nearly everyone else on Ishimura, and I’ve been mindlessly chopping them into pieces. Why should I care if Isaac, in particular, lives or dies? When he takes off his mask, I don’t even feel like I recognize him.

Hi, Isaac, who are you?
Screenshot: Motive Studio / Kotaku

The game’s boss fights, as I mentioned, retain the boring, methodical process of the original. Hit the yellow boils until they pop. Move to the left if a tendril is about to hit you. Then to the right.

When I fight a boss in one of the game’s “zero gravity” environments, I use my jetpack (on loan from Dead Space 2), to help me execute a similar strategy, zooming away from tendrils and floating versions of those exploding yellow sacs while I awkwardly try to steer an Asteroid Defense System cannon into a weak point. I win. Yay. What am I fighting for again?

For love, maybe. Isaac wants to reunite with his girlfriend Nicole, a medical officer aboard the Ishimura who barely exists unless you pursue her optional side quest. But no, just as in 2008’s Dead Space, the first letters of the game’s chapter titles spell out N I C O L E I S D E A D, and love was never an option. In the game, it’s a token, something developers put in just so you’d be scared when you realized it wasn’t actually there.

It is, however, effective. I’m scared while playing Dead Space, though that feeling alternates with a droopy sense that I’m missing something, most likely the magic of 2008. I’m missing out on a PC to run those sooty, grainy graphics in someone’s dark dorm room.

15 years later, we have more compelling protagonists to choose from, and even more interesting space zombies, like those in Dead Space creator Glen Schofield’s The Callisto Protocol, which is also mired by repetitive bosses, but at least looks and sounds incredible. The Dead Space remake accomplishes what it set out to do, it makes an old game compatible for modern consoles. But that’s all it does. 2008’s lightning stays in its bottle.

 

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Science

Plasma thrusters used on satellites could be much more powerful than previously believed

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The glow of the plasma from the H9 MUSCLE Hall thruster during a test with krypton propellant. Credit: Plasmadynamic and Electric Propulsion Laboratory

It has been believed that Hall thrusters, an efficient kind of electric propulsion widely used in orbit, must be large to produce a lot of thrust. Now, a new study from the University of Michigan suggests that smaller Hall thrusters can generate much more thrust—potentially making them candidates for interplanetary missions.

“People had previously thought that you could only push a certain amount of current through a thruster area, which in turn translates directly into how much force or thrust you can generate per unit area,” said Benjamin Jorns, U-M associate professor of aerospace engineering who led the new Hall thruster study to be presented at the AIAA SciTech Forum in National Harbor, Maryland, today.

His team challenged this limit by running a 9 kilowatt Hall thruster up to 45 kilowatts, maintaining roughly 80% of its nominal efficiency. This increased the amount of force generated per unit area by almost a factor of 10.

Whether we call it a plasma thruster or an ion drive, electric propulsion is our best bet for interplanetary travel—but science is at a crossroads. While Hall thrusters are a well-proven technology, an alternative concept, known as a magnetoplasmadynamic thruster, promises to pack much more power into smaller engines. However, they are yet unproven in many ways, including lifetime.

Hall thrusters were believed to be unable to compete because of the way they operate. The propellant, typically a noble gas like xenon, moves through a cylindrical channel where it is accelerated by a powerful electric field. It generates thrust in the forward direction as it departs out the back. But before the propellant can be accelerated, it needs to lose some electrons to give it a positive charge.






Electrons accelerated by a magnetic field to run in a ring around that channel—described as a “buzz saw” by Jorns—knock electrons off the propellant atoms and turn them into positively charged ions. However, calculations suggested that if a Hall thruster tried to drive more propellant through the engine, the electrons whizzing in a ring would get knocked out of the formation, breaking down that “buzz saw” function.

“It’s like trying to bite off more than you can chew,” Jorns said. “The buzz saw can’t work its way through that much material.”

In addition, the engine would become extremely hot. Jorns’ team put these beliefs to the test.

“We named our thruster the H9 MUSCLE because essentially, we took the H9 thruster and made a muscle car out of it by turning it up to ’11’—really up to a hundred, if we’re going by accurate scaling,” said Leanne Su, a doctoral student in aerospace engineering who will present the study.

They tackled the heat problem by cooling it with water, which let them see how big a problem the buzz saw breakdown was going to be. Turns out, it wasn’t much trouble. Running with xenon, the conventional propellant, the H9 MUSCLE ran up to 37.5 kilowatts, with an overall efficiency of about 49%, not far off the 62% efficiency at its design power of 9 kilowatts.

Running with krypton, a lighter gas, they maxed out their power supply at 45 kilowatts. At an overall efficiency of 51%, they achieved their maximum thrust of about 1.8 Newtons, on par with the much larger 100-kilowatt-class X3 Hall thruster.

Ph.D student Will Hurley leaves the chamber where the new Hall plasma thruster is tested at the PEPL lab. Credit: Marcin Szczepanski/Michigan Engineering

“This is kind of a crazy result because typically, krypton performs a lot worse than xenon on Hall thrusters. So it’s very cool and an interesting path forward to see that we can actually improve krypton’s performance relative to xenon by increasing the thruster current density,” Su said.

Nested Hall thrusters like the X3—also developed in part by U-M—have been explored for interplanetary cargo transport, but they are much larger and heavier, making it difficult for them to transport humans. Now, ordinary Hall thrusters are back on the table for crewed journeys.

Jorns says that the cooling problem would need a space-worthy solution if Hall thrusters are to run at these high powers. Still, he is optimistic that individual thrusters could run at 100 to 200 kilowatts, arranged into arrays that provide a megawatt’s worth of thrust. This could enable crewed missions to reach Mars even on the far side of the sun, traveling a distance of 250 million miles.

The team hopes to pursue the cooling problem as well as challenges in developing both Hall thrusters and magnetoplasmadynamic thrusters on Earth, where few facilities can test Mars-mission-level thrusters. The amount of propellant exhausting from the thruster comes too fast for the vacuum pumps to keep the conditions inside the testing chamber space-like.

More information:
Leanne L. Su et al, Operation and Performance of a Magnetically Shielded Hall Thruster at Ultrahigh Current Densities, AIAA SCITECH 2023 Forum (2023). DOI: 10.2514/6.2023-0842

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University of Michigan

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A giant plasma cloud bursts from the sun, but it won’t hit Earth

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A giant cloud of magnetized plasma exploded from a sunspot hidden on the far side of the sun that might turn to face Earth only two days from now, so get ready for some solar fireworks. 

The explosion that erupted from behind the sun‘s eastern edge in the early morning of Tuesday (Jan. 3) was a so-called coronal mass ejection (CME), a burst of particles from the sun’s upper atmosphere, or corona. The CME was accompanied by a powerful solar flare that lasted an overwhelming six hours, solar scientist Keith Strong said on Twitter (opens in new tab). 

Neither the flare nor the CME were directed at Earth, but experts warn that the hidden sunspot that produced them will soon be facing the planet as the sun rotates. 

Related: Extreme solar storms can strike out of the blue. Are we really prepared?

A powerful coronal mass ejection erupting from the sun pictured by the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO). (Image credit: NASA/ESA)

Sunspots are darker regions in the sun’s lower atmosphere that are cooler than the rest of the sun’s disk and feature dense and convoluted magnetic field lines. When these magnetic field lines break, the sunspots release solar flares in the form of bright flashes of light and CMEs. Solar flares travel at the speed of light, reaching our planet within eight minutes if directed toward it. CMEs, on the other hand, move through space more slowly, arriving within two to three days. Solar flares can disrupt radio communications on our planet without a warning, but it’s the CMEs that experts fear the most. The magnetized plasma from CMEs interacts with Earth’s magnetic field causing all sorts of unwanted effects on technology including power blackouts, GPS disruption and satellite malfunctions. These interactions, however, are also the cause of mesmerizing polar lights displays, or auroras.

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Yesterday’s flare and CME were detected by multiple sun-observing spacecraft including the joint NASA/European Space Agency Solar and Heliospheric Observatory mission (SOHO) and NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory. 

The measurements helped scientists to determine that the sunspot, or active region, that produced the bursts, will move to the Earth-facing portion of the sun’s disk within two days, according to Space Weather (opens in new tab). The active region may, in fact, be one already known to solar scientists. In December, a sunspot named AR3163, at that time larger than our planet, crossed the sun’s disk before disappearing from view about two weeks ago. This sunspot is now expected to re-emerge and scientists think it may have grown even more powerful since we have last seen it. 

In the meantime, plasma from a CME that erupted from the sun on Dec. 30 has reached Earth today (Jan.4), triggering a minor geomagnetic storm that could make auroras visible a bit further away from their usual location around the poles.

The British space weather forecaster Met Office predicts low solar activity in the next couple of days with a potential increase expected toward the end of this week as the mysterious sunspot emerges at the sun’s eastern edge. 

Follow Tereza Pultarova on Twitter @TerezaPultarova. Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom and on Facebook. 



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Science

1 million-mile-long plasma plume shoots out of the sun in stunning photo

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A false-color composite image of a coronal mass ejection, measuring around 1 million miles in length, firing away from the sun on Sept. 24. (Image credit: Andrew McCarthy/@cosmic_background)

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An astrophotographer has captured a hauntingly beautiful image of a massive plume of plasma shooting out of the sun. The fiery filament, known as a coronal mass ejection (CME), extended into space to a distance of more than 1 million miles (1.6 million kilometers) from the solar surface, according to the photographer.

The image was captured Sept. 24 by professional astrophotographer and Arizona resident Andrew McCarthy (opens in new tab), and he shared the stunning view on Reddit on Sept. 25 in the subreddit r/space (opens in new tab). The CME was part of a minor solar storm — G-1 class, the lowest category on the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) Geomagnetic Storm Scale — and was pointed away from Earth, according to SpaceWeather.com (opens in new tab). 

The ethereal ejection was “the largest CME I’ve ever witnessed,” McCarthy wrote on Reddit. The plasma was initially contained in a large loop connected to the sun‘s surface, known as a prominence, and then broke off and streamed into space at around 100,000 mph (161,000 km/h), McCarthy added.  

Related: Could a solar storm ever destroy Earth? 

The photo is a false-color composite time-lapse image that stacks hundreds of thousands of images captured over a six-hour period, McCarthy wrote. Between 30 and 80 individual images were captured every second and then were stored in a file that ultimately peaked at around 800 gigabytes. The images were then combined to show the CME in glorious detail.

In the photo, the sun’s surface and CME appear orange — but in reality, they are not. The chromosphere (the lowest region of the sun’s atmosphere) and CMEs naturally give off a type of light that looks pinkish-red to us and is known as hydrogen-alpha, or H-alpha, light. But because the exposure time of each image was so short, the original images were almost completely white. McCarthy digitally added the orange while compositing the final image, to provide contrast between individual structures on the solar surface and to highlight the CME.

However, as the rest of the image was not filtered with orange, the sun retains an eerie white halo that stands out against the dark backdrop of space.

A close-up of the CME shooting out into space. (Image credit: Andrew McCarthy/@cosmic_background)

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CMEs have become more frequent in recent months as the sun has entered a period of increased solar activity known as the solar maximum, which lasts around seven years. This will provide many more opportunities for people to capture similar images.

“We’ll see more of these as we head further into solar maximum,” McCarthy wrote. The plasma plumes are also likely to get “progressively larger,” he added.

The photographer warned people against trying to observe the sun without the proper equipment.

“Do not point a telescope at the sun,” McCarthy wrote on Reddit. “You’ll fry your camera or worse, your eyes.” The telescope he used to photograph the CME was “specially modified with multiple filters” in order to safely observe the CME and capture the images, he added. 

If this amazing image inspires you to try your hand at astrophotography or astronomy in general, then be sure to check out our new best telescopes guide. 

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Science

Incredible footage shows 12,000-mile plasma TORNADO erupting from the surface of the sun

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Solar twister! Incredible footage shows 12,000-mile plasma TORNADO erupting from the surface of the sun

  • A 12,000-mile-tall solar twister has been spotted by an astrophotographer
  • Space weather experts say it was ‘big enough to swallow Earth’ if it was closer
  • It is formed from a mass of plasma erupting up a helical magnetic structure 
  • The video of the vortex was captured on Tuesday in Naperville, Illinois

By Fiona Jackson For Mailonline

Published: | Updated:

An incredible 12,000-mile tall twister of plasma has been captured erupting from the surface of the sun.

The phenomenon is known as a solar tornado and was spotted by astrophotographer Apollo Lasky from Naperville, Illinois, USA, on Tuesday.

Solar tornadoes occur due to spiral-shaped magnetic structures that rise from the sun and are rooted to the solar surface at both ends.

When a column of plasma, known as a prominence, shoots up inside this structure, it is guided along the structure’s helical magnetic field, causing the plasma to rotate and form a twister.

Lasky used a backyard solar telescope to capture the solar twister, according to SpaceWeather.com.

The space weather experts commented that the vortex was large enough to ‘swallow Earth’ if our planet was closer to the sun.

They wrote: ‘This solar storm system did not hurl material toward Earth,

‘Instead, most of the tornado fell back to the sun after an exhausting spin.’ 

Lasky states on their Astrobin profile that they have invented their own solar telescope building system and filters, which have got them ‘banned from astronomy forums’.

However they state in their bio that ‘Safety is my #1 priority and Nothing I do is Unsafe.’

The caption to the video states that ‘twisting and turbulent threads and ribbons of calcium plasma can be seen white hot moving with incredible speeds’

Most of the plasma ejection fell back to the solar surface, and the rest of the material was hurled into space, according to experts at SpaceWeather.com

HOW IS A SOLAR TWISTER FORMED? 

Solar twisters are formed from ‘prominences’ – masses of superheated charged particles, or plasma, suspended in the solar atmosphere by the sun’s magnetic field.

Similar to Earth, the sun is like a huge bar magnet with a north and a south pole producing a magnetic field. 

But the sun’s magnetic field is about twice as strong as Earth’s and is much larger, extending well beyond the farthest planet in the solar system.

A prominence will form a solar twister when it encounters a spiral-shaped magnetic structure that rises up from the sun.

If the huge injection of plasma happens to shoot up within the structure, it is guided along its helical magnetic field.

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The sun has been experiencing heightened activity for some months as a result of it coming towards the most active phase in its 11-year solar cycle – which began in 2019 and is expected to peak in 2025.

The sun’s magnetic poles flip at the peak of the solar activity cycle, and a solar wind composed of charged particles carries the magnetic field away from the sun’s surface and through the solar system. 

This accompanies an increase in solar flares and coronal mass ejections (CMEs) from the sun’s surface.

A CME is a significant release of plasma and accompanying magnetic field from the sun’s corona – the outermost part of the sun’s atmosphere – into the solar wind.

It was reported yesterday that a dark sunspot that is facing directly toward Earth doubled in size in just a 24-hour period.

Sunspots are dark regions of the sun where it is cooler than other parts of the surface. 

Solar flares and CMEs originate close to these dark areas of the star.

When they explode in the direction of Earth, they can result in geomagnetic storms that produce beautiful auroras, as well as pose a danger to power grids and satellites.

The sunspot AR3038 is now said to measure three times the size of Earth, and has an unstable magnetic field that is harbouring enough energy to cause brief radio blackouts.

A dark sunspot that is facing directly toward Earth doubled in size in just a 24-hour period and could possibly send out medium-class flares in the near future

THE SUN: A STAR AT THE CENTRE OF THE SOLAR SYSTEM 

The sun is a G-type main sequence star at the heart of the solar system, whose radiation makes life possible on the Earth.

It is sometimes called a yellow dwarf star but this isn’t entirely accurate as its light is closer to white than orange.

The star formed about 4.6 billion years ago after the gravitational collapse of matter in a large molecular cloud.

Most of this matter led to the formation of the star itself, with the rest forming as a disc, orbiting the star and eventually coalescing into the planets, moons, asteroids and comets that make up the rest of the solar system.

The sun is 109 times larger than the Earth with a mass that is 330,000 times that of our host planet – in fact it accounts for 99.86% of the mass of the entire solar system including all the objects orbiting it.

The star will reach its red giant phase in about 7 billion years when the hydrogen in the core is no longer enough for fusion to happen.

In the red giant phase it will expand  to engulf the orbits of Mercury and Venus and leave the Earth uninhabitable.  

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Science

Astrophotographer captures swirling plasma on the surface of the SUN in amazing high-res image

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An astrophotographer has captured a 286-megapixel image of the sun during the most intense period of solar activity in decades.

The picture shows huge fireballs circling on the surface of the sun, and can be zoomed in to see the full fiery mass in extreme detail.

Andrew McCarthy, known to his online followers as @cosmic-background, took the pictures through a telescope last week, being careful not to be blinded by the harsh rays.

The high-definition image is a mosaic of about 50 tiles, each made up of 600 layered photos.

The photographer has been pointing his telescope at the sun for three years, and says it’s currently the ‘most active I’ve ever seen it’.

The sun appears to be moving into a particularly active period of its 11-year cycle of activity, which began in 2019 and is expected to peak in 2025.

It is producing solar flares and coronal mass ejections (CMEs) – powerful bursts of energy that can direct dangerous blasts towards the Earth.

US astrophotographer, Andrew McCarthy, chose 30,000 photos to create a mosaic image that captured the sun in high definition from Florence, Arizona, USA 

The image captures the dark spots, known as active regions, on the sun’s surface as well as bright sunspots that burst from the fireball

The ‘fluffy’ areas on the outer limb are pockets of plasma caught in the magnetic field, with lighter areas, known as ‘filaments’ spread across the rest of the sun

Andrew said: ‘Seeing the full sun at this level of detail is probably not something many people have ever seen in their lives.

‘During a period of heightened solar activity, the sun will look like this all the time. This image is more a sign that the 11-year cycle is nearing the maximum portion of its activity.

‘Going through 100,000 photos by hand was the most tedious part of the final image.

‘Throughout most of the process, I didn’t even know I would have a decent image at the end. I was thankful when it turned out as well as it did.’

Andrew individually selected the 30,000 photos that make up the final image out of a stack of 100,000. 

The image captures the dark spots, known as active regions, on the sun’s surface as well as bright sunspots that burst from the fireball.

WHAT ARE CORONAL MASS EJECTIONS?

Coronal mass ejections (CMEs) are large clouds of plasma and magnetic field that erupt from the sun. 

These clouds can erupt in any direction, and then continue on in that direction, plowing through solar wind. 

These clouds only cause impacts to Earth when they’re aimed at Earth. 

They tend to be much slower than solar flares, as they move a greater amount of matter. 

CMEs can be triggered when a storm on the surface of the sun causes a whirlwind to form at the base of plasma loops that project from the surface. 

These loops are called prominences and when they become unstable they can break, releasing the CME into space.

The solar chromosphere, a layer in the sun’s atmosphere, can be seen as a very slim layer of hydrogen alpha light due to Andrew’s telescope being precisely tuned with a 5-inch refractor.

More ‘fluffy’ areas on the outer limb are pockets of plasma caught in the magnetic field, known as prominences, with lighter areas, known as filaments, spread across the rest of the sun.

From these, sunspots, flares and coronal mass ejections erupt, capable of frying the Earth’s surface if they came close enough.

It was processed in false colour due to the filters Andrew had to use to photograph such a bright subject.

The two filters he used with his specialist telescope, in order to prevent a fire, and the photographer going blind. 

The colours are also partially inverted – hence why the sunspots appear dark – in order to visualise the prominences. 

Andrew captured the masterpiece through a telescope in his backyard in Florence, Arizona, USA.

‘I spent about four hours capturing the sun this day, most of which was spent capturing the two-hour long timelapse of the sunspots,’ he said.

‘The full sun was captured over a period of about 45 minutes but took several days to process.

‘This day it was particularly windy, so I had to go in and manually remove bad images where the wind had knocked my scope around.’

The photographer photoshopped in a picture of the Earth next to the sun for scale

The sun is 864,400 miles (1,391,000 kilometers) across – about 109 times the diameter of Earth. The star is so large that about 1,300,000 planet Earths can fit inside of it. 

Andrew McCarthy required a specialist telescope with two filters, in order to prevent a fire, and going blind. The filters meant the colours in the photos are partially inverted

In December, Andrew captured what he described as the ‘clearest ever photo of the sun’.

He layered 150,000 individual pictures of the sun to convey the intricate stunning detail of the solar system’s largest star.

All can be seen within the huge final 300 megapixel image – 30 times bigger than a standard 10 megapixel camera image. 

Despite his actions, Andrew is keen to urge others not to look directly at the sun unless they have specialist equipment.

He said: ‘Do not point a telescope at the sun unless you know what you’re doing.

‘Seeing a lot of activity on the sun is always thrilling for me as an amateur solar astronomer, and it represents an opportunity to share something new with my audience on social media.

‘For that reason, I’m always very thrilled to see something new. These images were particularly challenging to get due to conditions, so having them turn out as well as they did was exciting.’

Andrew McCarthy layered 150,000 individual pictures of the sun to convey the intricate stunning detail of the solar system’s largest star in December 2021

The dark spots in the images are actually inverted by the photographic process and in reality are very bright high energy areas of the burning star 

According to a model from physicists at the University of Warwick and the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), the current solar cycle will be one of the top few ever observed.

The solar cycle is an approximately 11-year cycle of solar activity driven by the sun’s magnetic field, measured in terms of variations in the number of sunspots.

The scientists predicted we would observe a maximum sunspot number somewhere between 210 and 260 in Solar cycle 25, which started in December 2019.

It means the sun could be producing more electrons and protons than before, making solar flares and coronal mass ejections (CMEs) more frequent then in the last decade.

Our star has been experiencing heightened activity for some months and last month unleashed its most powerful solar flare seen in five years.

Scientists are concerned that the sun’s increased activity could lead to potentially dangerous solar weather which may damage electrical grids, knock out satellites, and harm astronauts and space equipment on the International Space Station.

THE SUN: THE BASICS 

The sun is the star at the heart of the Solar System, a nearly perfect sphere of hot plasma, radiating energy.

Three quarters of the star is made of hydrogen, followed by helium, oxygen, carbon, neon and iron.

It is a G-type main sequence star and is sometimes called a yellow dwarf.

The Sun formed from the gravitational collapse of matter in a large molecular cloud that gathered in the centre.

The rest flattened into an orbiting disc that formed everything else.

Facts and Figures

Name: Sun

Known planets: Eight

Spectral type: G2

Distance: 2.7×10^17 km

Mass: 1.9885×10^30 kg

Radius: 696,342 km

Luminosity: 3.828×10^26 W

Temperature: 9,929 F

Age: 4.6 billion years

 

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Science

The sun has blasted Mercury with a plasma wave

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A gigantic plasma wave that launched from the sun smashed into Mercury Tuesday (April 12), likely triggering a geomagnetic storm and scouring material from the planet’s surface.

The powerful eruption, known as a coronal mass ejection (CME), was seen emanating from the sun’s far side on the evening of April 11 and took less than a day to strike the closest planet to our star, where it may have created a temporary atmosphere and even added material to Mercury’s comet-like tail, according to SpaceWeather.com.

The plasma wave came from a sunspot — areas on the outside of the sun where powerful magnetic fields, created by the flow of electric charges, get knotted up before suddenly snapping. The energy from this snapping process is released in the form of radiation bursts called solar flares or as waves of plasma (CMEs). 

Related: ‘Cannibal’ coronal mass ejection will hit Earth at nearly 2 million mph, scientists say

On planets that have strong magnetic fields, like Earth, CMEs are absorbed and trigger powerful geomagnetic storms. During these storms, Earth’s magnetic field gets compressed slightly by the waves of highly energetic particles, which trickle down magnetic-field lines near the poles and agitate molecules in the atmosphere, releasing energy in the form of light to create colorful auroras in the night sky. The movements of these electrically charged particles can induce magnetic fields powerful enough to send satellites tumbling to Earth, Live Science previously reported, and scientists have warned that these geomagnetic storms could even cripple the internet.

Unlike Earth, however, Mercury doesn’t have a very strong magnetic field. This fact, coupled with its close proximity to our star’s plasma ejections, means it has long been stripped of any permanent atmosphere. The atoms that remain on Mercury are constantly being lost to space, forming a comet-like tail of ejected material behind the planet. 

But the solar wind — the constant stream of charged particles, nuclei of elements such as helium, carbon, nitrogen, neon and magnesium from the sun — and tidal waves of particles from CMEs constantly replenish Mercury’s tiny quantities of atoms, giving it a fluctuating, thin layer of atmosphere.

Previously, scientists were unsure if Mercury’s magnetic field was strong enough to induce geomagnetic storms. However, research published in two papers in the journals Nature Communications and Science China Technological Sciences in February has proved that the magnetic field is, indeed, strong enough. The first paper showed that Mercury has a ring current, a doughnut-shaped stream of charged particles flowing around a field line between the planet’s poles, and the second paper pointed to  this ring current being capable of triggering geomagnetic storms.

“The processes are quite similar to here on Earth,” Hui Zhang, a co-author of both studies and a space physics professor at the University of Alaska Fairbanks Geophysical Institute, said in a statement. “The main differences are the size of the planet and Mercury has a weak magnetic field and virtually no atmosphere.”

The sun’s activity has been increasing far faster than past official forecasts predicted, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Space Weather Prediction Center. The sun moves between highs and lows of activity across a rough 11-year cycle, but because the mechanism that drives this solar cycle isn’t well understood, it’s challenging for scientists to predict its exact length and strength.

Originally published on Live Science.

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Plasma ejections from the sun could impact Earth today

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You might not want to catch these rays.

An unusual magnetic storm emitting from the sun has the potential to impact Earth on Thursday and cause noticeable damage and disruptions.

Dubbed the “sun’s wrath,” the Center of Excellence in Space Sciences India (CESSI) tweeted this week about the detection of energy expulsions, hypothesizing a “very high probability of Earth impact” on April 14.

The solar activity is what scientists call a geomagnetic storm, which produces a “magnetic discharge” of Coronal Mass Ejections.

Basically, increased activity on the sun will eject this energy toward our planet, causing power blackouts and radio signal disruptions.

On the bright side, the solar flares create a beautiful show of lights — called auroras — like the northern lights.

“While the storms create beautiful aurora, they also can disrupt navigation systems such as the Global Navigation Satellite System and create harmful geomagnetic induced currents in the power grid and pipelines,” according to the National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).

The solar flares can cause auroras, such as the northern lights.
James Spann/NASA/GSFC/Flickr

Coronal Mass Ejections are plasma and magnetic fields emitted from the sun’s corona, the bright halo around the star, into space toward the inner planets.

NASA and NOAA have tracked these emissions from the sun before, including some from just two weeks ago that were near misses, but this storm is different. While significant damage from Coronal Mass Ejections is rare, this might just be the exception.

The NOAA says this kind of storm is a “major disturbance of Earth’s magnetosphere that occurs when there is a very efficient exchange of energy from the solar wind into space environment surrounding Earth.”

The plasma ejections from the sun have the power to noticeably disrupt our planet.
NASA

Higher elevations are more at risk, according to the NOAA, while mid-altitude areas won’t see as much damage but could still experience power disruptions.

NASA has also predicted that “rapid solar wind streams” could cause the geomagnetic storm to intensity once it impacts Earth.

While these emissions aren’t rare, they’re more common now that the sun is experiencing heightened activity.
NASA

“During storms, the currents in the ionosphere, as well as the energetic particles that precipitate into the ionosphere, add energy in the form of heat that can increase the density and distribution of density in the upper atmosphere, causing extra drag on satellites in low-earth orbit,” the NOAA says.

These energy emissions from the sun, according to CESSI, are due to the bright star approaching its Solar Maxima, the “period of greatest solar activity during the sun’s 11-year solar cycle.”



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Dead Sunspot Explosion Spits Plasma Toward Earth

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The Sun just hurled debris from a dead sunspot toward Earth, and the superheated material is supposed to arrive at our planet on Thursday (don’t worry—you won’t feel it).

On Monday, an old and dying sunspot dubbed AR2987 exploded, sending a mass ejection of material from the Sun into space, Space Weather reported. That material may cause a geomagnetic storm when it reaches Earth.

Sunspots are relatively cool spots on the Sun’s surface, created when its magnetic field inhibits the usual process of heat convection, and prevents hot fluid from rising. These dark spots can last anywhere from a couple of hours to a few months.

This particular sunspot’s explosion caused the release of huge amounts of energy in the form of radiation, as well as large expulsions of plasma and magnetic field from the outermost layer of the Sun’s atmosphere, which is known as a coronal mass ejection (CME). Think of it as a big bubble of gas, filled with up to a billion tons of charged particles, moving at speeds of several million miles per hour.

The CME is expected to reach Earth on April 14, according to predictions made by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. The impact with Earth’s atmosphere could trigger a G-2 geomagnetic storm. Storms are rated from G-1 to G-5, so a G-2 level storm is considered fairly moderate. The geomagnetic storm could potentially cause some minor disruptions to power grids or orbiting satellites, in addition to auroras that may be visible at lower latitudes than usual.

The charged particles within the CME interact with gases in the atmosphere along the North and South Poles, creating more intense displays of the Northern and Southern Lights. The Sun is currently experiencing increased activity as part of this solar cycle, which began in December 2019. Every 11 years, the Sun begins a new solar cycle, marked by periods of violent eruptions and flashes of intense radiation that shoot out into space. The current solar cycle is expected to peak by the year 2025. Scientists still haven’t fully figured out how to better predict these space weather events erupting from the Sun, especially the ones that are aimed in Earth’s direction.

Several satellites are currently keeping a close watch on our host star, namely the joint NASA and European Space Agency’s Solar and Heliospheric Observatory and the Parker Solar Probe, which is on a mission to “touch the Sun” or get as close as 9.86 solar radii from its center by the year 2025.

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‘Dead sunspot’ launches ball of plasma toward Earth

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The “corpse” of a sunspot exploded Monday (April 11), triggering a mass ejection of solar material that is headed in Earth’s direction.

The explosion comes courtesy of a dead sunspot called AR2987, according to SpaceWeather.com (opens in new tab).  The sunspot explosion released loads of energy in the form of radiation, which also led to a coronal mass ejection (CME) — explosive balls of solar material — both of which could spur more intense northern lights in Earth‘s upper atmosphere. The material in that CME is likely to impact Earth on April 14, according to SpaceWeather.

Sunspots are dark regions on the surface of the sun. They are caused by intense magnetic flux from the sun’s interior, according to the Space Weather Prediction Center (opens in new tab). These spots are temporary and can last anywhere from hours to months. The idea of a “dead” sunspot is more poetic than scientific, said Philip Judge, a solar physicist at the High Altitude Observatory at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), but the convection of the sun breaks these spots apart, leaving in their wake magnetically-disturbed bits of quiet solar surface. 

“Occasionally,” Judge wrote Live Science in an email, “sunspots can ‘restart,’ with more magnetism appearing later (days, weeks) at the same region, as if a weakness was made in the convection zone, or as if there is an unstable region under the surface that is particularly good at generating magnetic fields beneath.” 

Related: Strange new type of solar wave defies physics

Whatever the future of AR2987, the sunspot let out a C-class solar flare at 5:21 Universal Time Monday (April 11). Such flares happen when the plasma and magnetic fields above the sunspot give way under stress; they accelerate outward, Judge said, because they would run into dense material if they went downward toward the sun’s interior.

C-class flares are fairly common and rarely cause any impacts on Earth directly. Sometimes, as with today’s eruption, solar flares can trigger coronal mass ejections, which are huge eruptions of plasma and magnetic fields from the sun that travel outward into space at millions of miles per hour. C-class solar flares rarely trigger CMEs, according to SpaceWeatherLive (opens in new tab), and when they do, the CMEs are usually slow and weak.

When CMEs hit the magnetic field surrounding Earth, the charged particles within the ejection can travel down the magnetic field lines that emanate from the North and South Poles and interact with the gases in the atmosphere, releasing energy in the forms of photons and creating the shifting, dazzling curtains known as the aurora — the northern and southern lights.

During quiet times on the sun’s surface, a stream of particles known as the solar wind is enough to trigger the aurora in the polar regions. During a large CME, the greater disturbance to the planet’s magnetic field means that the aurora may appear over a much broader range. A so-called cannibal CME raced toward Earth at the end of March, triggering auroras in Canada, the northern U.S., and New Zealand, Space.com reported. 

The CME released Monday might yield a minor (G1) geomagnetic storm on April 14, meaning that there could be minor impacts on satellite operations and weak fluctuations in the power grid, according to SpaceWeather. The aurora may become visible at lower latitudes than usual, as far south as northern Michigan and Maine.

All of this activity is fairly par for the course for the sun, according to the Solar Influences Data Analysis Center, part of the Royal Observatory of Belgium. It’s a time of increased activity for our nearest star, which goes through periods of quiet and activity known as solar cycles. The sun is currently in Solar Cycle 25, the 25th since formal observations began in 1755. The number of sunspots during this cycle is on the upswing and is expected to peak in 2025, which means more opportunities for solar storms — and auroras.

Strong geomagnetic storms were also observed on Sunday (April 10). But according to the Solar Influences Data Analysis Center, there have been no other Earth-directed CMEs observed in the past 24 hours other than the one spit out by AR2987’s remnants. 

Originally published on Live Science.

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