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When will the next big solar storm slam Earth? New discovery about sun’s magnetic field could improve forecasts
New research indicates the sun’s magnetic field originates much closer to the surface than previously thought, a finding that could help predict periods of extreme solar storms like the ones that slammed Earth earlier this month.
The magnetic field appears to generate 20,000 miles beneath the sun’s surface. Previous calculations put the roots of this process more than 130,000 miles below, an international team reported Wednesday.
The sun’s intense magnetic energy is the source of solar flares and eruptions of plasma known as coronal mass ejections. When directed toward Earth, they can create stunning auroras but also disrupt power and communications.
“We still don’t understand the sun well enough to make accurate predictions” of space weather, lead author Geoffrey Vasil of the University of Edinburgh said in an email.
The latest findings published in the journal Nature “will be an important step toward finally resolving” this mysterious process known as solar dynamo, added co-author Daniel Lecoanet of Northwestern University.
/ AP
Galileo was among the first astronomers to turn a telescope skyward and study sunspots, back in the early 1600s. Solar flares and coronal mass ejections tend to occur near sunspots, dark patches as big as Earth that are located near the most intense portions of the sun’s shifting magnetic field.
Vasil and his team developed new models of the interaction between the sun’s magnetic field and the flow of plasma, which varies at different latitudes during an 11-year cycle. They fed their calculations into a NASA supercomputer in Northern California – the same one used in the 2015 movie “The Martian” to verify the best flight path to rescue the main character. The results suggested a shallow magnetic field and additional research is needed to confirm this.
The modeling was “highly simplified,” University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Ellen Zweibel, who was not part of the team, said in an accompanying editorial.
The results are intriguing and “sure to inspire future studies,” Zweibel said.
Preparing for “potentially much more dangerous” storm
The new knowledge should improve long-term solar forecasts, allowing scientists to better predict the strength of our star’s future cycles. The sun is approaching its peak level of activity in the current 11-year cycle, thus the recent flareups.
Strong solar flares and outbursts of billions of tons of plasma earlier this month unleashed severe solar storms that produced auroras in unexpected places. Last week, the sun spewed out the biggest solar flare in almost 20 years, but it steered clear of Earth.
NOAA Space Weather Prediction Center
That came just days after an “extreme” G5 geomagnetic storm reached Earth after NOAA’s Space Weather Prediction Center warned of the potential for a severe impact.
Better understanding of the sun can ensure “we are prepared for when the next storm — potentially much more dangerous — hits Earth,” Lecoanet said.
Earth is currently in Solar Cycle 25, which began in 2020. The last cycle maintained an average length of 11 years and was the weakest solar cycle to occur in a century, the National Weather Service said. Although the current cycle has been forecast to be fairly weak and similar to the one prior, NOAA officials saw “a steady increase in sunspot activity” from the get-go.
Li Cohen contributed to this report.
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The U.S. received written assurance from Iran before the presidential election that its leadership was not actively trying to assassinate President-elect Donald Trump, CBS News confirmed, according to a source with direct knowledge of the correspondence. The message arrived after the White House in September affirmed that killing a former U.S. president or former U.S. official would be seen by the Biden administration as an act of war.
“We consider this a national and homeland security matter of the highest priority, and we strongly condemn Iran for these brazen threats,” National Security Council spokesman Sean Savett said in a statement in September.
Iran said in its message, which was conveyed by a third party, that it understood this premise. The Wall Street Journal first reported Iran’s message to the U.S.
The Justice Department is currently prosecuting at least two individuals alleged to have been part of murder-for-hire plots to kill Trump while he was still a candidate. One operative working for Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps told federal investigators that he was tasked in September with “surveilling, and, ultimately, assassinating” Trump, according to court records unsealed last week.
Prosecutors said Farhad Shakeri, who is believed to be residing in Iran, told investigators in a phone interview that unnamed IRGC officials pushed him to plan an attack against Trump to take place in October. If the plan could not come together in time, the Iranian officials directed Shakeri to delay the plot until after the election because the official “assessed that [Trump] would lose the election,” the charging documents said.
In early August, a Pakistani national with alleged ties to Iran was arrested and charged with plotting a murder-for-hire scheme targeting U.S. government officials and politicians, according to charging documents unsealed Tuesday.
A U.S. official pointed out that Iran did not task its most effective proxy force, Hezbollah, with carrying out these plots. This official described Iran’s approach to date as “nice if it works. If it doesn’t, then it’s not a problem.”
In response to inquiries suggesting that “Iran told U.S. it wouldn’t try to kill Trump”, the Permanent Mission of the Islamic Republic of Iran said it would not comment on official messages between two countries.
The mission said in a statement, “The Islamic Republic of Iran has long declared its commitment to pursuing Martyr Soleimani’s assassination through legal and judicial avenues, while adhering fully to the recognized principles of international law.”
Trump has raised the ire of Iranians for a few reasons. He exited the international Iran nuclear agreement, which had lifted some sanctions in exchange for restrictions on Iran’s nuclear program. He also directed the 2020 airstrike that killed top Iranian commander Gen. Qasem Soleimani. Since then, some Trump administration officials and military officials received threats from the regime, among them, Robert O’Brien, who was national security adviser during the strike. His predecessor in the job, John Bolton, who was part of the maximum pressure campaign that exerted sanctions pressure on Tehran, has also received threats.
In 2022, the U.S. intelligence community assessed that Iran would threaten Americans — both directly and via proxy attacks — and was committed to developing networks inside the U.S. Two persistent threat assessments submitted to Congress by the State Department in January 2022 cited a “serious and credible threat” to the lives of former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and former Trump administration Iran envoy Brian Hook. The non-public assessments showed that throughout 2021 and again in 2022, the State Department determined that round-the-clock, U.S.-taxpayer-funded diplomatic security details were needed to protect both men. That continues today.
Multiple former officials have spoken to CBS about duty-to-warn notices that they have recently received from the FBI and other agencies regarding the ongoing threat from Iran and Iranian-hired actors, implying the U.S. is taking the threat seriously and not taking the Iranian regime’s assurances at face value.
contributed to this report.
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