What’s the weather like in space? This isn’t the British obsession with the weather gone made, it really exists!
It may not be covered in the TV forecasts, but it affects our lives – and on technology.
This is not Michael Fish and telling us about rain on Mars, or storms on Jupiter, but how solar activity influences us on earth.
Jim Wild is President-Elect of the Royal Astronomical Society and a Professor of Space Physics at Lancaster University, and is perfectly placed to tell us all about what space weather is.
He brings us up to (light) speed about solar flares, predicting the sun’s behaviour, how space operators can protect themselves, how it might affect you and your phone, the importance of the Earth’s magnetic field (and its similarities with the shields on the Starship Enterprise), monitoring the aurora borealis, and his work with UK infrastructure operators on the risk of space weather to their operations.
Plus, we learn about the Carrington Event in 1859, when telegraph lines went haywire after a giant solar flare erupted. What might happen if something similar were to occur in the modern electronic world? How often do these big solar events happen (and could they be bigger)? And how does it all tie in with the Northern Lights over Lancaster and GPS glitches for farmers and their tractors in California?
You can find out about Aurora Watch UK here: https://aurorawatch.lancs.ac.uk/
See the latest space weather forecasts from the UK Met Office here: https://weather.metoffice.gov.uk/specialist-forecasts/space-weather
And discover more about Jim and his work here: https://www.lancaster.ac.uk/sci-tech/about-us/people/jim-wild