Space: weather effects on
Deceptive spring is about to turn another volatile episode in the week ahead. What is the condition above, above the Earth’s sphere of life? Unstable is what’s up there!
The Sun is rushing towards maximum activity, the familiar eleven-year cycle. Hence the recent occurrences of the aurora borealis, interference with the signals of position-navigation systems, partial, shorter, blackouts and interference with the propagation of radio signals…
But what does this have to do with us in the end?
In our minds, space weather is being dealt with by some scientists and it has nothing to do with us, right? Well, not really. Space weather is a collection of everything that comes to us from near and far space outside our planet and in one way or another affects the circumstances “down here”. And that is not unimportant!
Air temperatures are starting to rise above 20°C, the sea is warming up and Vitamin D addicts are coming into their own. What we have to pay attention to is the ultraviolet radiation that comes to us from space. The most dangerous of this type is UVC radiation.
Fortunately, the ozone layer also stops the radiation quite high, usually above the tropopause limits, and it does not reach us. In fact, even smaller doses are deadly for a good part of plant and animal life, including humans.
UVB radiation is also filtered to a considerable extent in our atmosphere, but some of it still reaches us. UVA radiation has the freest passage to our bodies. While UVB has a very low penetration rate, UVA gets deeper parts of the skin.
Too long, or rather too intense, exposure of the body to these radiations in combination with infrared radiations and for a long time leads to changes in the skin.
Space weather literally affects our daily life and work, moreover, if we are unlucky and benevolent towards it, it can endanger our health, up to and including death.
Space exploration is not the interest of some weirdos out there, on which money that could have been put to better use is wasted. Sure, we hear about novel ideas every day and as these ideas come to life, oftentimes things don’t turn out as they were initially planned. A lot of resources are spent trying to get a hold of things that nobody has ever dared to do before. And space is no joke!
Exploring the universe and understanding natural processes is literally a struggle for our mere survival. Knowing the enemy and understanding the intentions is the way to our sustainability. The more we know and learn, the better our chances of making predictions of what is happening in the space outside the visible. With this, we might be on our way to getting to understand our planet and ourselves better as well.
Stay tuned with us while we follow all the latest astronomy news and everything else that it spans out to!
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