Solar tsunami from Sun may hit Earth on Tuesday

[Vikas Kapoor]

http://in.news.yahoo.com/139/20100803/981/tsc-solar-tsunami-from-sun-may-hit-earth_1.html

How much truth does it contain? Is this joke?

(Remove this if this sounds fishy)

[fred rosenberger]

Nope - but this sort of thing happens all the time. Nothing really to worry about, although cell phones may be spotty for a while.

[W. Joe Smith]

When big ones hit, the Northern and Southern lights can be seen way further than normal. One of these hit when I was in college, and we saw the Northern Lights halfway down in Iowa, which is not a normal occurance (for perspective, I have lived in central Iowa for 23 years, and that is the only time we have seen them). It was pretty cool actually.

[Vikas Kapoor]

I interpreted the news as "a HUGE fireball going hit the earth and today is doomsday".

[Gregg Bolinger]

Vikas Kapoor wrote:I interpreted the news as "a HUGE fireball going hit the earth and today is doomsday".

The Earth is in the path to be hit by a wave of violent space weather

Not sure where you got HUGE fireball and doomsday from that. The article even says:

"This means we have a very good chance of seeing major and prolonged effects, such as the northern lights at low latitudes,"

I'd guess that if it were a HUGE doomsday fireball, the prolonged effects would be quite different.

[Aakash Goel]

fred rosenberger wrote:Nope - but this sort of thing happens all the time. Nothing really to worry about, although cell phones may be spotty for a while.

Why do solar waves affect radio wave communications?

[W. Joe Smith]

Aakash Goel wrote:

fred rosenberger wrote:Nope - but this sort of thing happens all the time. Nothing really to worry about, although cell phones may be spotty for a while.

Why do solar waves affect radio wave communications?

I think it can range from the waves disrupting the radio waves themselves to the solar waves physically damaging the satelites.

[Aakash Goel]

W. Joe Smith wrote:
I think it can range from the waves disrupting the radio waves...

How can those waves disrupt the radio waves?

[W. Joe Smith]

Aakash Goel wrote:

W. Joe Smith wrote:
I think it can range from the waves disrupting the radio waves...

How can those waves disrupt the radio waves?

I'm no expert, but I'd imagine it would be similar to most other types of interference with radio waves, like when there is a bad storm and TV or radio signals get spotty/cut out completely.

[Jesper de Jong]

Aakash Goel wrote:How can those waves disrupt the radio waves?

There is a diffuse cloud of electrically charged particles coming from the Sun. Radio waves are electromagnetic waves. Those electromagnetic waves get distorted by the electically charged particles (which have electromagnetic fields themselves).

Solar storms like this can have other effects, they can damage satellites, or if they are really bad they can induce electrical currents in the electicity grid on Earth. I think that sometime in the 1980's there was such a storm that disabled a large part of the Canadian electricity grid.

Look at: http://spaceweather.com