The sun is a violent place, one that seethes with solar flares that blast radiation, heat and charged particles out into space.
A whopper of a flare occurred Jan. 23, unleashing a gigantic burst of material that caused the strongest radiation storm since 2005. But while powerful, the flare wasn't the biggest solar storm the sun can unleash.
Astronomers rank solar flares in a classification system of five categories: A, B, C, M, and X. Class A flares are the weakest, while class X solar flares are the biggest, and can wallop the Earth with radiation that interferes with radio, GPS systems, and power grids.
The classification system, designed by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), is similar to the Richter scale for earthquakes, in that each category is 10 times stronger than the one before it.
Thus, a B-class solar flare releases 10 times more energy than an A-class flare, while a C-class eruption releases 10 times more than a class B flare (and 100 times more than class A).
The scales are further divided into subcategories ranked from 1 to 9. The flare of Jan. 23 registered as an M8.7 on solar flare classification system.
While class A flares are pretty puny, stronger solar flares can pack a punch.
"The biggest X-class flares are by far the largest explosions in the solar system and are awesome to watch," NASA officials wrote in a statement. "Loops tens of times the size of Earth leap up off the sun's surface when the sun's magnetic fields cross over each other and reconnect. In the biggest events, this reconnection process can produce as much energy as a billion hydrogen bombs."
When aimed at Earth, powerful X-class solar flares can pose a threat to astronauts and satellites in space, disrupt satellites in orbit and even damage power grids on the planet's surface.
The strongest solar flare ever recorded occurred in 2003, and was so powerful it maxed out the sensors measuring it, which topped out at class X15. Scientists think this flare was probably closer to class X28, in reality.
Solar activity varies on an 11-year cycle, with the sun going through quiet and rowdy times periodically. The current solar cycle is known as Solar Cycle 24. Feb. 15, 2011 saw the first X-class flare of the current solar cycle, with more following over the summer.
With the sun recently coming out of a lull and gearing up for a solar maximum expected in 2013, this should bring many more strong solar flares, NASA scientists have said.
This story was provided by?Life's Little Mysteries, a sister site to SPACE.com. Follow Life's Little Mysteries on Twitter @llmysteries, then join us on?Facebook.
WASHINGTON ? Photographer Annie Leibovitz says she has come back from some dark days and revived her creativity with a new photography project now on view at the Smithsonian American Art Museum that is a departure from her popular celebrity portraits.
Two years ago, Leibovitz was facing millions in debt and a mismanaged fortune that nearly cost her legal rights to some of the most memorable images she created.
On Tuesday, she led a tour through the photos she says renewed her inspiration. The images in "Annie Leibovitz: Pilgrimage" include depictions of landscapes and people, but no faces. Instead, Leibovitz photographed historic objects and scenes, including the homes of "Little Women" author Louisa May Alcott, essayist Ralph Waldo Emerson, entertainer Elvis Presley and others.
Posted: 3:26 pm Mon, January 23, 2012 By Dan?Emerson Tags: Chuck Palm, Cuningham Group, David Williams, Eric Dueholm, Greiner Construction, Johnson Lewis, Kim Ess, LEED
A glass-walled conference room at Nilan Johnson Lewis, a Minneapolis law firm that developed an ecology-conscious space on two floors of the One Financial Plaza building. (Staff photo: Bill Klotz)
Interior design in law offices traditionally has featured pricey, imposing furniture, expensive paneling, carpeting and artwork, and other opulent touches. But the Minneapolis law firm of Nilan Johnson Lewis emphatically broke with that tradition when it developed its ecology-conscious space on two floors of the One Financial Plaza building.
The LEED-certified, 77,000-square-foot office, designed by Minneapolis-based Cuningham Group architects, offers a lengthy list of earth-friendly and energy-saving elements: sustainable hardwoods and other locally sourced materials, high-efficiency plumbing and light fixtures, and low VOC (volatile organic compound) paints and carpeting.
And, in the demolition process, Greiner Construction diverted at least 80 percent of the materials from landfills by repurposing or recycling.
Local contractors, architects and landlords say the green build-out trend is growing and can benefit even small space users with limited budgets. Along with sending a socially responsible message, green improvements also can yield significant financial benefits, said Kim Ess, the law firm?s chief operating officer.
After the firm moved into its new office in late 2009, a detailed study showed that the improvements reduced the space?s energy consumption by 35 percent. The daylight-filled space also conveys a welcoming message to clients and employees, Ess said.
Obviously, smaller office tenants do not typically have the same degree of control over their leased spaces as a large business that is leasing two whole floors. Smaller tenant-improvement budgets are one reason.
But they can apply some of the same eco-friendly and energy saving improvements, Ess said. ?Much of what we did involved lighting and power consumption.? Along with choosing energy-efficient office equipment, she said, ?you can use lamps and fixtures that not only consume less power but also generate less heat.?
Chuck Palm, vice president of engineering and sustainability for Bloomington-based Cushman & Wakefield/NorthMarq Real Estate Services, agrees that even small or mid-size office tenants can make choices that will lead to significant energy savings. Energy Star-rated PCs, copy machines and other office equipment are examples, he said.
Several national organizations have developed ?model? green leases for use by landlords and tenants, including the Building Owners and Managers Association (BOMA).
Beyond the usual legal stipulations, a green lease addresses key environmental issues such as indoor air quality, energy use, carbon credits, recycling, insurance, maintenance, operating costs, tenant improvements, green cleaning specs and building regulations.
Eric Dueholm, NAI Welsh?s vice president for corporate solutions, said he has not seen much demand for green leases in this market, ?although there is a lot of good information? available.
?What I have seen ? and what I think is most likely to continue ? is proactive efforts on the part of the landlord to ?green? their operations and more requests from tenants for green build-outs,? Dueholm said.
NAI Welsh has recently been making green upgrades to a number of its vacant office spaces to ?make them more sustainable and more marketable,? he said. ?In a lot of older spaces, it?s work that needs to be done anyway.?
David Williams, a building performance specialist and senior mechanical engineer with LHB Engineers and Architects in Minneapolis, points out that landlords and tenants can agree to split the cost of energy-saving improvements.
Williams suggests asking the landlord for data on how much energy has been used to heat, cool and light a space especially if it will be rehabbed ? ?to see if we can split potential savings by either operating the building better or improving something lessees have control over.?
Palm wishes more office tenants would take advantage of green tenant-improvement opportunities. ?I do quite a bit of auditing of commercial spaces, and it surprises me how na?ve people are about energy use,? he said. ?Even though there is a lot of opportunity to save money, we don?t get nearly as much demand as I would like to see. Most tenants are more concerned with having a nice-looking office space, not necessarily whether it is going to be energy-efficient.?
For example, ?there are opportunities missed in choosing light fixtures that look beautiful but may not be that efficient,? Palm said. ?Even with standard, 4-foot fluorescent bulbs, many people are not aware that there are multiple options available that could be 20 percent more efficient. I don?t think those are usually presented as options when architects are pulling together plans.?
Of course, some tenants, landlords and architects are greener than others. ?We?re always looking at energy efficiency and occupant health, from soup to nuts,? said Rick Carter, a principal with LHB Architects.
?In some cases, that means using less materials or salvaging materials from the build-out. Or you might not have (fixed) walls dividing up the space, which is also a green strategy,? said Carter, recently named one of the Green Building Certification Institute?s first 34 LEED Fellows, chosen for their leadership.
?Sometimes, it depends on a company?s culture,? said Andi Simon, senior director of project management for Cushman & Wakefield/NorthMarq Real Estate Services. ?Before they lease, some tenants want to know what the landlord is offering for sustainable practices.?
Simon said clients who opt for green features typically do so for altruistic reasons rather than focusing only on costs and payback. ?Some people feel it?s the right thing to do and that it supports their culture and business platform.?
This entry was posted on Monday, January 23rd, 2012 at 3:26 pm and is filed under Focus on Energy. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.
ScienceDaily (Jan. 24, 2012) ? In August 2010, an entomologist at the University of California, Riverside discovered a tiny fairyfly wasp in upstate New York that had never been seen in the United States until then. Nearly exactly a year later, he discovered the wasp in Irvine, Calif., strongly suggesting that the wasp is well established in the country.
Called Gonatocerus ater, the wasp is about 1 millimeter long and arrived in North America from Europe. It lays its eggs inside the eggs of leafhoppers.
Leafhopper females lay their eggs inside plant tissue. Gonatocerus ater females find these eggs and lay their own eggs inside them. When the wasp eggs hatch, the larvae eat the leafhopper eggs.
"This wasp was accidentally introduced in North America," said Serguei Triapitsyn, the principal museum scientist in the Department of Entomology and the director of the Entomology Research Museum, who made the discovery. "It most likely got here in parasitized eggs of the leafhoppers in twigs of Lombardy poplar seedlings coming from Europe, perhaps long ago."
Triapitsyn explained that the wasp had been reported in Italy where the leafhopper Rhytidodus decimaquartus was determined to be its host.
"In California, we do not know if the wasp's host is this leafhopper, but I found it on the same Lombardy poplar trees that had the wasp, so an association is very likely," he said.
Triapitsyn found the wasp on August 7, 2011, when he was doing field work along a trail. He caught the insects in a net that he had swept over Lombardy poplar leaves. He preserved the sample of insects in ethanol and brought it to his lab at UC Riverside for analysis and identification, which can take long. He got a positive identification of the potential leafhopper host only two weeks ago.
"I identified the wasp as Gonatocerus ater by comparing it to wasps from upstate New York and also Europe," he said. "It would not surprise me if this wasp is found wherever Lombardy poplars are located because its likely leafhopper host prefers these trees for feeding."
According to Triapitsyn, the wasp poses no known risk -- besides killing leafhopper eggs.
"It actually helps naturally control leafhopper numbers," he said. "In its absence, leafhopper populations could have skyrocketed. This illustrates how plant pests are sometimes accompanied by their natural enemies across very long distances without our knowledge."
In August 2010, Triapitsyn discovered another species of Gonatocerus on a large willow tree in the middle of a lawn on the campus of the New York State Agricultural Experiment Station in Geneva, NY.
"This wasp, which has yet to be described, is native to the United States," he said. "The fact that I found it in a relatively well visited and studied area shows just how little we know about these minute insects."
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All Critics (191) | Top Critics (36) | Fresh (178) | Rotten (13)
"Mission: Impossible-Ghost Protocol" is sheer hurtling mechanism-and it's great silly fun.
As usual with the series, the movie combines a plot line a toddler could understand with gadgets that would baffle an engineering Ph.D.
I'm thinking it, so I might as well say it: Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol is no Fast Five.
...it's pretty much state-of-the-art.
[Bird's] fresh touch gives breathless energy, tremendous excitement and, above all, humor to what could have been a wearying genre exercise.
Powered by Cruise's moxie, Mission: Impossible -- Ghost Protocol proves that in a Hollywood action-ride culture drenched in fake adrenaline, it's cathartic to encounter the real thing.
... a good-size barrel of fun.
still does not have the hang of what made the TV show so good.
Cruises on the WOW! factor.
Snagging Oscar-winning animation director Brad Bird to fill the director's chair proves to be an inspired choice--and, upon thought, a bit of a no-brainer.
The screenplay doesn't rely too much on gimmicks to advance the plot. Instead, the plot is also character-driven to an extent. There are interesting dynamics going on in the Mission Impossible team.
Director Brad Bird juices and gooses the whole affair with edge and excitement, new energy, humor and heartbeat, and a terrific feel for big, bold, audaciously daring sequences that beg for the biggest screen available.
Great stunts and not a dull moment,
Mission: Impossible -- Ghost Protocol could very well be the series' best installment.
It has a few very good ideas, and then, the rest of it is totally lackluster.
Watching Tom leap from a hospital window on to a passing truck, I couldn't help but worry: Tom, those knees won't last forever.
Succeeds in dishing up exactly what you would expect: State of the arts stunts, non-stop action, and a series of clearly laid-out heists and chases that go awry in all kinds of creative ways.
Bird manages the escalations from the preposterous through the more preposterous to the most preposterous with skill and wit...
...great cinematic entertainment.
Better than the tower climb is the scene in which Hunt infiltrates the Kremlin with, essentially, a high-tech magic trick; the playfulness of the effect demonstrates the usefulness of Bird's background in the astonish-the-audience culture of animation.
So exciting you have to remind yourself to breathe.
Ghost pulls off the impossible.
Film number four has found its optimum screen display, its best director for the job and its sense of humour while increasing the gadgets and death-defying stunts.
Something goes wrong and the entire Kremlin blows up. 'The wattage of my smile has overpowered the antiquated Russian electrical grid,' explained Tom.
The cinematography is rewarding enough for a travelogue. The good guy vs. the world with a hateful bad guy is involving. This is another film where you should just leave your brain at home, relax, and enjoy it.
Rising human carbon dioxide emissions may be affecting the brains and central nervous system of sea fishes with serious consequences for their survival, an international scientific team has found.
Carbon dioxide concentrations predicted to occur in the ocean by the end of this century will interfere with fishes' ability to hear, smell, turn and evade predators, says Professor Phillip Munday of the ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies and James Cook University.
"For several years our team have been testing the performance of baby coral fishes in sea water containing higher levels of dissolved CO2 ? and it is now pretty clear that they sustain significant disruption to their central nervous system, which is likely to impair their chances of survival," Prof. Munday says.
In their latest paper, published in the journal Nature Climate Change, Prof. Munday and colleagues report world-first evidence that high CO2 levels in sea water disrupts a key brain receptor in fish, causing marked changes in their behaviour and sensory ability.
"We've found that elevated CO2 in the oceans can directly interfere with fish neurotransmitter functions, which poses a direct and previously unknown threat to sea life," Prof. Munday says.
Prof. Munday and his colleagues began by studying how baby clown and damsel fishes performed alongside their predators in CO2-enriched water. They found that, while the predators were somewhat affected, the baby fish suffered much higher rates of attrition.
"Our early work showed that the sense of smell of baby fish was harmed by higher CO2 in the water ? meaning they found it harder to locate a reef to settle on or detect the warning smell of a predator fish. But we suspected there was much more to it than the loss of ability to smell."
The team then examined whether fishes' sense of hearing ? used to locate and home in on reefs at night, and avoid them during the day ? was affected. "The answer is, yes it was. They were confused and no longer avoided reef sounds during the day. Being attracted to reefs during daylight would make them easy meat for predators."
Other work showed the fish also tended to lose their natural instinct to turn left or right ? an important factor in schooling behaviour which also makes them more vulnerable, as lone fish are easily eaten by predators.
"All this led us to suspect it wasn't simply damage to their individual senses that was going on ? but rather, that higher levels of carbon dioxide were affecting their whole central nervous system."
The team's latest research shows that high CO2 directly stimulates a receptor in the fish brain called GABA-A, leading to a reversal in its normal function and over-excitement of certain nerve signals.
While most animals with brains have GABA-A receptors, the team considers the effects of elevated CO2 are likely to be most felt by those living in water, as they have lower blood CO2 levels normally. The main impact is likely to be felt by some crustaceans and by most fishes, especially those which use a lot of oxygen.
Prof. Munday said that around 2.3 billion tonnes of human CO2 emissions dissolve into the world's oceans every year, causing changes in the chemical environment of the water in which fish and other species live.
"We've now established it isn't simply the acidification of the oceans that is causing disruption ? as is the case with shellfish and plankton with chalky skeletons ? but the actual dissolved CO2 itself is damaging the fishes' nervous systems."
The work shows that fish with high oxygen consumption are likely to be most affected, suggesting the effects of high CO2 may impair some species worse than others ? possibly including important species targeted by the world's fishing industries.
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ARC Centre of Excellence in Coral Reef Studies: http://www.coralcoe.org.au/
Thanks to ARC Centre of Excellence in Coral Reef Studies for this article.
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