What about  solar flares disrupt earth telecommunications?
548179
We've usually got about 36 hours warning of solar flare problems.   The light only takes about 8 minutes to reach us, but the charged particles that disrupt the ionosphere take around 36 hours, and both are produced simultaneously.   It's short wave radio that is affected.   For long distance communication around the curve of the Earth you use short waves in the frequency range 3 to 30 MHz. These are bounced around the world between the ground and layers of charged particles in the ionosphere about 100 km up.   The solar storm particles damage this reflective layer temporarily, sothe short waves shoot out into space.
1182824
I don't think so. The Earths magnetic field is generated by the dynamo effect of the solid Ni-Fe core spinning at a different rate to the liquid Ni-Fe core around it. I can't see how humans can effect that process.\n\nI guess it might be possible to modify the magnetic field locally be producing another field that interferes with it....but I doubt we're doing anything strong enough to do that. The polar shift of the magnetic field is a natural process that has occurred thousands of times.\n\nTo answer 'my girls' question...the earths magnetic field protects us rather than harms us. If it didn't exist, we'd have little protection against the harmful radiation produced by our sun.
100058
How's the space weather today? Quiet enough for a safe trip to the moon? Quiet enough to operate your GPS navigation system accurately? So active that it would crash your power grid? Like our everyday weather, space weather can change suddenly, become violent, and interfere with our lives.\n\nSpace weather is driven by the sun. The solar wind, a plasma of protons and electrons, streams out of the sun and changes the shape of Earth's magnetic field.\n\nNear Earth's surface, this field is like the field of a giant bar magnet, as shown. \n\nFurther out in space, the streaming solar wind flattens the field towards the sun and forms a long tail pointing away from the sun, as shown. This region where the solar wind and magnetic field interact is called the magnetosphere.\n\nThe magnetosphere traps particles from the solar wind. This complex system responds strongly to changes in the sun's surface, especially to sunspots, which follow an eleven-year cycle. Sunspots can produce large solar flares, bursts of electromagnetic radiation, and outpourings of charged particles called "coronal mass ejections." Changes in space weather result, sometimes with devastating effect.\n\n    August, 1972: During the time of preparation for Apollo 17, a violent solar flare produced intense radiation that would have killed the astronauts had they been in space at that time\n\n    March, 1989:\n\n        * Vivid auroral displays extended as far south as Arizona\n        * Electric power was knocked out in the province of Quebec for nine hours\n\n    January, 1997: A communications satellite failed a few hours after a coronal mass ejection smashed into the magnetosphere.\n\nJust as with our ordinary weather here on Earth, physicists make measurements and build models to understand and predict space weather. Accurate predictions can help protect power and communications systems and enable astronauts to avoid dangerous conditions in space.\n\nNote: 1989, the year of the Quebec blackout, was a maximum in the eleven-year sunspot cycle. On the other hand, 1972, the year of the solar flare mentioned above, was near the sunspot minimum, but in fact flares can in fact occur at any time during the solar cycle.
804308
Yes and it can even be damaged by the fluctuations that are normally on the phone line itself. A computer, and a modem especially, is always subject to electrical damage from many sources, storms, normal spikes and outages and even from a spike in the amount of current on a phone line plugged into it. Surge strips for power and phone lines are a poor defense for these spikes but better than nothing. The cheapest protection is unplugging it. If you don't, you take your chances. Personally I don't worry that much about it, but it can and does happen. Your call Man!
260515
Apparently, lesser sunlight will get in. That will cause some imbalance on earth.
746511
Dear Sir:\n\nWhile there have been some actual transmissions from Earth to the Solar System seeking echos, and some of this might still be going on in a coordinated fashion, as I understand it, the primary mission of the existing radio telescopes is to "Listen" to upper wavelength radio emissions from gas clouds, and other phenomina in the universe. Of course, once some interesting\nradio emissions are detected, a full spectrum scan of the target is most likely conducted to determine the full extent of radio\nsignals from that source.\n\nOther radio transmissions are made from Earth to our traveling Space Probes and Robotic Explorers at various locations in the Universe. A continual litany of telemetry, television and voice signals also flows between the Space Station and Ground Control Center to keep a constant watch on the health, status, and activities of the space crew, mission, and the station itself.\n\nI will defer to someone from one of those positions for an\nanswer as to the power and frequency of transmissions from Earth to the Space Station, Earth to the Robot Explorers, and Earth to the existing Space Probes way out in deep space.\nMy guess is that these various transmissions take place on frequencies between 2,500 Mhz and 40,000 Mhz. That is a \nvery large radio spectrum. \n\nSince my response turns around your question, in that I am telling you that the biggest radio telescopes listen rather than\ntransmit, let me also tell you that the biggest radio telescopes are not simply single structures at a given location. In recent years a scheme for the linkage of two or more radio telescopes was developed. Therefor, the biggest radio telescope would be an electronic combination of the signals from most of the largest installations on Earth. A lot of work has been done in that vein in recent years. Using more than one receiving antenna provides an easy means for researchers to filter out local ground (earthbound) noise generators and radio disturbances. Signals heard at the same time by widely separated receiving antennas (and equipment) are most probably from the sighted target source (assuming both antennas are aimed at the same target). It is also interesting to know that the radio signals that are received require a vast amount of processing to be identified and detected. The processing of the radio telescope incoming signals takes a huge array of computers and some very complex software programs to yield useable data.\n\nYes, radio waves do go on forever. However, their strength at the point of interception decreases by the square of the distance from the source. So, the strength of radio waves become very, very weak as you move into distances like 100,000,000 miles.\nThe wave front would continue out like rings of water in a pond until they hit something and bounced back off of it. In that sense,\na portion of the radio wave would not go on forever, but would become a new wave moving in the oposite direction from the new source (which was the object that the wave struck). The\nrest of the wave front would continue on until it struck something, and we repeated the above scenario. The exact same thing happens to signals transmitted from a sonar transducer in the water. Those devices are used to detect the depth of the bottom of rivers/oceans (depth finder), fish in the water (fish finder), or even other vessels (sub hunting). Sonar, uses sound waves and not radio waves, but the principle is almost the same.  Sound waves radiate out. Nearby echos are strong enough to be detected with existing equipment and are plotted and displayed on information screens. Some echos are so weak coming back that the existing equipment cannot detect/plot/or display  them.\n\nRegards,\nZah
289063
Solar Storms\n\nBy Sten Odenwald\nSpecial to The Washington Post\nWednesday, March 10, 1999; Page H01\n\nFor thousands of years, the aurora borealis or "northern lights" have lit the skies and human imagination with ghostly incandescence. Most often seen in Arctic regions but occasionally visible as far south as the Mediterranean, they have inspired awe, fright and a fair measure of misunderstanding.\n\nTiberius Caesar mistook their red glows for a fire in progress and dispatched an army to Ostia in 34 A.D. to inspect damage. But until the 19th century, no one seriously thought that they could hurt anybody -- unless, as an Old Norse legend warned, you happened to whistle at one!\n\nNow we know better. Technological advances have made it possible for auroras and other "storms" in space to make themselves felt in the form of power blackouts, satellite failures and even pipeline explosions.\n\nSpace weather generally varies with the 11-year sunspot cycle: the more sunspots, the more storms and the more voluminous the "solar wind," as scientists call the stream of charged particles that incessantly blows off the face of the sun. Already, we are well on the way to the next solar maximum, expected to peak next year.\n\nThe maximum usually coincides with an increase in two other kinds of extremely bad "space weather." In one, powerful solar flares hurl protons and electrons almost to the speed of light. That acceleration produces blasts of X-rays that radiate into space. Both the particles and radiation can disrupt short-wave communication on Earth.\n\nWere that not enough, the sun also can spawn billion-ton clouds of plasma and their associated magnetic fields. Traveling at more than 1 million mph, some of these "coronal mass ejections" (CMEs) may arrive at the Earth in only a few days.\n\nIn many ways, they actually are more noxious than the more familiar solar flares. CMEs pummel Earth's magnetic field like a sledgehammer 1 million miles wide and upset the delicate balances of trapped particles in the Van Allen radiation belts and elsewhere within the boundaries of Earth's magnetic field. [See illustration below].\n\nThe first indication that space weather has worsened usually is a spectacular auroral display in Arctic regions. When the solar wind hits the Earth's magnetic field, electrons and protons inside the field are accelerated into currents that flow along the gossamer-thin magnetic field lines and converge on the polar regions.\n\nAs they enter the thickening atmosphere about 500 miles above our heads, the particles collide with atoms and molecules of oxygen and nitrogen, which shed their added energy as light, producing ethereal shapes and colors.\n\nBut that's not all. The motion of other populations of charged particles within Earth's magnetic field causes great currents of charged particles to circulate in space like a 10,000-mile-wide river. These invisible stratospheric rivers can alter the geomagnetic field temporarily and produce "magnetic storms."\n\nHumanity began feeling the effects of the solar maximum as soon as technology became sophisticated enough to respond. During the late 1800s, vast networks of wires were strung to carry telegraph and telephone traffic, setting the stage for a giant-scale reenactment of one of history's most famous physics experiments.\n\nEnglish physicist Michael Faraday discovered in his lab that, if you take a magnet and move it near a loop of wire, electrical current flows in the wire. The moving field induced a corresponding motion of charge in the wire. Faraday's "magnetic induction" soon was put to use in the first electric generator.\n\nExactly the same thing happened when solar storms triggered changes in Earth's magnetism, affecting thousands of miles of telegraph wires. Electrical currents induced by the changing fields often were so powerful that telegraphers didn't need
222779
The Sun sudden bursts of energy contains Gamma rays and X-rays, plus energized particles (protons and electrons). This forms the Solar wind. Flare activity picks up as sunspots increase.\n\nhttp://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/solarsystem/sun-ez.html
617519
I worry more about mass extinction events like an asteroid impact or finding out that giant aliens have just been raising humanity as a food source to harvest en masse. Bird flu might do a job on us or some alien organism brought back by space exploration which our bodies are unable to manufacture antibodies. Maybe global nuclear conflict will leave the earth a smoking glow-in-the-dark beacon rotating and wobbling in the solar system. Excuse me I have to go find my aluminum foil hat to block the gamma rays. Wait what if planet Jupiter is a brown dwarf star and decides to go nova? What if the sun flames out? What if the magma in the earth's crust makes the poles flip positions? .........
47440
I don't think so.  A signal having to fight through a mile of earth would get deflected/weakened unless you had relay nodes already burried.  Without those, communication would be spotty at best even with high grade equipment.
925755
Microwave is the back bone of many of the distant multiple telephone svc. the wide band satellite service is the link to tie the world together. Tv & telephone service. The radiation doecnt cause any real health problems as the beams are very direct as a beam of light. It is a lot of our world communications.
328902
Satellites are always in danger of dust and micrometeorites. Since they are above much of the atmosphere, they are not shielded. Cosmic radiation also degrades the circuitry and even the collectors.  As far as insurance, my guess (and it is only one) is that someone is willing to bet on that. Insurance, after all, is betting that something will or will not happen.
1033042
The earth IS protected from solar flares.  Unlike most other planets we have analyzed, the earth has an EMF field around it.  Its like a magnet.  Magnets have a North (positive) pole and a South (Negative) Pole.  Electro-Motive Force (EMF) is a flow of electrons from the negative pole to the positive pole.  This flow of electrons acts like a shield and deflects solar flares from reaching the earth.  Now, its not absolute!  There are actually some solar flares that do indeed reach us, but I think this is a bit much for this forum.  I hope this helps!
157132
A solar flare is a violent explosion in the Sun's atmosphere with an energy equivalent to tens of millions of hydrogen bombs. Solar flares take place in the solar corona and chromosphere, heating plasma to tens of millions of kelvins and accelerating the resulting electrons, protons and heavier ions to near the speed of light. They produce electromagnetic radiation across the electromagnetic spectrum at all wavelengths from long-wave radio to the shortest wavelength gamma rays. It is generally accepted that flares represent conversion of magnetic energy into kinetic energy of particles and radiation, via a process called magnetic reconnection. Most flares occur around sunspots, where intense magnetic fields emerge from the Sun's surface into the corona. The energy associated with solar flares may take several hours or even days to build up, but most flares take only a matter of minutes to release their energy.\n\nSolar flares release a cascade of high energy particles known as a proton storm. Protons can pass through the human body, doing biochemical damage. Most proton storms take two or more hours from the time of visual detection to reach Earth. A solar flare on January 20, 2005 released the highest concentration of protons ever directly measured, taking only 15 minutes after observation to reach Earth.\n\nThe number of sunspots correlates with the intensity of solar radiation.
422733
yes it would affect the earth because it would disrupt our tides and all of our weather would either become very extreme or nonexistent also we wouldn't have a moon for any one else to visit and then we wouldn't be able to go to anywhere but the earth .
827432
Space is a unique environment. Orbital velocities alone provide risks of collisions with dust as well as many kinds of Solar radiation.\n\nAn astronaut would probably not encounter a solar flare directly. However the radiation and ionic streams that are streaming out from these storms often pass by Earth.\n\nWe, on Earth, are protected from most Solar radiation. We experience it as the Aurora or Northern Lights. On Earth we experience the harmful effects of ultraviolet radiation. Most radiation, however, is screened out by the magnetosphere or atmosphere before it can reach the Earth's surface, and the life thereon.\n\nAn astronaut is only protected by his vehicle and his clothing or space suit. These are good at protecting astronauts, but astronauts are still in far more danger than his fellow humans on Earth.\n\n;-D We should all be thankful that courageous men and women do brave deeds that benefit all mankind.
343620
Yes. A satellite signal will go through glass and plastic but not solid objects and it will bounce of metal objects. It is possible you might recieve a slight loss in signal strength