For the first time, a spacecraft far from Earth has turned and watched a solar storm engulf our planet. The movie, released today during a NASA press conference, has galvanized solar physicists, who say it could lead to important advances in space weather forecasting.
"The movie sent chills down my spine," says Craig DeForest of the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado. "It shows a CME swelling into an enormous wall of plasma and then washing over the tiny blue speck of Earth where we live. I felt very small."
CMEs are billion-ton clouds of solar plasma launched by the same explosions that spark solar flares. When they sweep past our planet, they can cause auroras, radiation storms, and in extreme cases power outages. Tracking these clouds and predicting their arrival is an important part of space weather forecasting.
"We have seen CMEs before, but never quite like this," says Lika Guhathakurta, program scientist for the STEREO mission at NASA headquarters. "STEREO-A has given us a new view of solar storms."
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Comment: So on the one hand NASA publicises plans to blow up space rocks that may or may not be on a collision course with Earth, while on the other hand this US government agency ridicules the most outlandish claims about Comet Elenin. This 'speaking out of both sides of the mouth' is intended to reassure those waking up to the fact that Something Wicked This Way Comes that they have everything under control. They don't, of course. At most, they are planning their own escape while leaving us in the dark.