Thursday, February 27, 2014

Solar Flare's Coronal Cloud


When there is a solar flare, it is the coronal mass ejection’s hot plasma gas cloud containing radioactive material, protons, electrons, etc. with vast amounts of electrical energy in intensely fast moving nebulae that reaches the earth’s atmosphere and damages sensitive equipment, not the solar flare itself.

Coronal Mass Ejections occur when the solar flare becomes so hot that a rope of heated magnetism stretching between two sunspots breaks in two. It takes several days for the plasma to cool down enough to detach. Then, the magnetic cloud called a solar wind is released exceeding speeds of seven million mph and hurtles toward us.

Once the cloud reaches the Earth, it causes anomalies in our ionosphere. In early March 1989, a cloud 36 times the size of Earth caused the Space Shuttle Discovery to spin out of control for several hours. And, in June of 2012, the coronal mass ejection from a Class-M solar flare's cloud caused minor damage to the Spitzer Space Telescope.

 

Tuesday, February 25, 2014

Solar Flare Fun


Today’s Solar Flare emanated from the sunspot called AR1990, which was previously called AR1967. The AR stands for Active Region. Sunspots are renamed if they survive a complete rotation of the sun that is visible to the Earth. The sun is molten, not solid and rotates 14 days faster at its equator than at its poles. Today’s highly intense massive coronal mass ejection (CME) solar flare is an X class; actually X4.9 which ranks as a most powerful solar storm. The coming week is a very active geomagnetic period propelling supercharged plasma particles with a velocity of 4.4 million mph emitting radio shock waves that have the potential to harm satellites, disrupt sensitive equipment and delay space travel; but, upon reaching earth’s magnetosphere will dazzle with aurora in real time.

Wednesday, February 5, 2014

Black History Month 2014 | Chief Crazy Horse


As the noted preeminent scholar, Egyptologist and Professor of African American Studies at Hunter College, Dr. Yosef Ben-Jochannan affirms, African Americans are only one-fifth African. The other 80% is Native American, if European lineage is not involved.

February is Black History Month and this is the Year of the Horse. Since Native American and African American ancestry is so closely entwined, Black History Month 2014 is dedicated to Chief Crazy Horse.

Eyewitness accounts of the Chief’s military acumen were that he rode his horse close to his enemies in battle, but he was never hit by their bullets. He rode buck naked and bareback. As a tactical leader at Little Big Horn and the Battle of the Rosebud, Chief Crazy Horse killed General Custer.

There are no official pictures of Chief Crazy Horse; he would not allow himself to be photographed. But, there is a sculpture in his honor eight miles from Mt. Rushmore on Thunderhead Mountain called the Crazy Horse Monument. The likeness of Crazy Horse stands 27 feet larger than the presidents of Mt. Rushmore.

During the time that Mt. Rushmore was being sculpted, the Native Americans asked Gutzon Borglum to remember that the Black Hills belonged to the Lakota ‘Indians’ by the Treaty of Fort Laramie signed in 1868, which granted the natives rights to Mt. Rushmore in perpetuity. A Lakota holy man, John Fire Lame Deer said that the faces on Mt. Rushmore would ‘remain dirty until the treaties concerning the Black Hills are fulfilled’. The Crazy Horse Memorial Foundation rejects offers to be federally funded. The Department of Transportation commemorates Chief Crazy Horse with two memorial highways named in his honor, US-16 and US-38 both run through South Dakota.

A first-ever investigation into the conditions of Native Americans living in the U.S. was conducted by United Nations’ in special report on the rights of indigenous peoples in May 2012 by James Anaya. He recommended that the United States return land to the tribes including Crazy Horse’s home, the South Dakota Black Hills where Mt. Rushmore and Mt. Crazy Horse are seated.