NASA still tracking waves from last year's solar storms

[senorpepr]

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) - Eight months after some of the strongest solar flares on record, NASA is still tracking the blast waves as they approach the edge of the solar system, scientists said Thursday.

The intense, incredibly fast flares erupted from the sun last October and November. Billions of tonnes of electrified gas shot into space at speeds up to eight million kilometres per hour and swept past Earth and a network of spacecraft. Damage, fortunately, was minimal.

These blast waves have since slowed to an average 2.4 million km/h, physicists said, and sometime this month should reach Voyager 1, nearly 14 billion kilometres away and the most distant human-made object.

Late this year or early next, the blast waves will reach the boundary between the solar system and interstellar space.

Cassini, newly arrived at Saturn, detected the effects of the blast waves last fall, as did other unmanned spacecraft. A radiation-measuring device on Mars Odyssey was fried from the intense solar activity.

Scientists theorize that powerful solar storms may have eroded water on Mars over a 3.5 billion-year period.

http://cnews.canoe.ca/CNEWS/Space/2004/ ... 55-ap.html

[Wnghs2007]

WOW that is intersting I would of never guessed effects could be so devestating