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submitted 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) by j0hn@lemmy.world to c/world@lemmy.world
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[-] medicsofanarchy@lemmy.world 13 points 11 months ago

I hope someone can ELI5. I mean, we're told that sunlight/etc we see is 8 minutes old - it took 8 minutes to get from the sun to the earth. The radiation, light, etc all travel at the speed of light, neither slower nor faster.

If we can see anything on the sun, it happened 8 minutes ago. It's not like we're looking out over a Kansas field and see a tornado coming.

Further, there's this from a quick Google (while attempting to answer this question myself), from Oct 13 2023:

"How much warning do we have for solar storms? So it should come as no surprise that a team at NASA has been busily applying AI models to solar storm data to develop an early warning system that they think could give the planet about 30 minutes' notice before a potentially devastating solar storm hits a particular area."

So how are we getting a notice one or two days in advance here? Is the sun currently ejecting matter into space, intersecting the place in our orbit we'll occupy tomorrow (or the next day)? Or is this like predicting a volcanic eruption, basing it on other observable behavior?

[-] money_loo@1337lemmy.com 1 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

ChatGPT says:

This delay is due to the fact that solar storms consist of charged particles (mostly electrons and protons) ejected from the Sun. These particles are not electromagnetic radiation (like light), so they don’t travel at the speed of light. Instead, they are propelled by the solar wind, a continuous stream of charged particles that flows outward from the Sun.

The solar wind travels at varying speeds, but it typically takes several days for the charged particles associated with a solar storm to travel from the Sun to Earth. The exact time depends on the speed of the solar wind and the distance between the Sun and Earth.

So, although light from the Sun reaches us in just over eight minutes, the charged particles involved in solar storms take longer to traverse the vast distance of space between the Sun and Earth.

*downvoters be like “oh no, it answered the question successfully, how can I get triggered emotionally by this?!” Like seriously guys you realize it’s basically a calculator for language? what the fuck are you hating on?

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this post was submitted on 29 Nov 2023
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