Artificial intelligence (AI) could have predicted the powerful solar storm that impacted Earth in May last year, triggered by the highly active region AR13664 on the Sun, according to a new study. The team of researchers at the University of Genoa, led by Sabrina Guastavino, stated that by training AI on historical solar events, it could identify patterns that precede coronal mass ejections (CMEs).

This early warning system is crucial because traditional methods, which rely on human analysis of solar images and data, often provide less accurate and timely forecasts.

“Despite advances in observational capabilities and model development, so far there remains a substantial uncertainty in both flare forecasting and CME travel time predictions, with the latter averagely amounting to approximately 12 hours,” the study stated.

The AI model works by processing vast amounts of data from solar imagery and other space weather parameters. It looks for subtle cues in the solar atmosphere’s behaviour, such as changes in magnetic field strength, solar wind speed, and the appearance of solar flares.

“The May 2024 event also underscores the broader implications of AI-driven reverse engineering for space weather science,” the study highlighted.

“The ability to predict CME travel times with such precision suggests that AI can furthermore serve as a diagnostic tool for testing and refining existing models of CME propagation,” it added.

What is coronal mass ejection?

Solar storms or powerful CMEs are massive expulsions of plasma and magnetic fields from the Sun’s corona. The huge clouds of electrified gas travel at speeds of hundreds of miles per second and can affect power grids, communications, GPS navigation, air travel and satellites.

As per ISRO, last year’s geomagnetic storm was the most intense since 2003, causing disruptions to communication and GPS systems.

Also Read | Solar Storm That Recently Hit Earth Was Most Intense Since 2003: ISRO

Solar flares

Solar activity follows a pattern with peaks and lows occurring every 11 years. Scientists describe these cycles as solar maximum and solar minimum, which are driven by the Sun’s magnetic field.

Currently, Solar Cycle 25 is underway which is expected to reach a solar maximum around July 2025. This cycle has shown greater activity than anticipated by NASA and the NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration), with the official prediction of around 115 sunspots at the peak.

Despite having a greater amount of data at disposal, scientists are unsure why the Sun has been more active than expected. Further observation is necessary to improve future predictions and increase our understanding of the Sun’s internal processes.

Scientists have claimed that an interstellar visitor, much larger than any celestial body in our solar system, might have dramatically altered the orbits of the planets. The research, yet to be peer-reviewed but published in the arXiv preprint database, posits that this cosmic intruder, possibly eight times the mass of Jupiter, passed very close to where Mars orbits today, potentially affecting the orbits of Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune.

For a long time, scientists have stated that in ideal conditions, the planets should have lied in circles that are arranged concentrically around the Sun and in the same plane — meaning if you viewed them edge-on, you would only see a line. However, since planets orbit the Sun in different orbits in three-dimensional space, it makes it almost impossible for them to come together in a straight line.

To understand the discrepancy, the researchers considered a scenario around four billion years ago when a star-sized alien object, whizzed around in our solar system. They ran extensive simulations through 50,000 scenarios, each spanning 20 million years while adjusting various parameters like the visitor’s mass, speed, and closest approach to the sun.

These simulations indicated that in about one per cent of the cases, this cosmic guest could have reshaped the orbits of these planets to match what we observe today.

“We estimate that there is about a 1-in-100 chance that such a flyby produces a dynamical architecture similar to that of the solar system,” the study highlighted.

Also Read | Seven Planets To Align During Rare Celestial Event. When And How To Watch

Study results

The findings showed that the interstellar object might have come within 1.69 astronomical units (AU) of the Sun, which is just beyond Mars’ current orbit. An astronomical unit is roughly the distance from Earth to the Sun. This proximity would have been close enough for the visitor’s gravity to tug on our planets, nudging them into new paths.

“The scenario of a close encounter with a substellar object offers a plausible explanation for the origin of the moderate eccentricities and inclinations and the secular architecture of the planets.”

Previous theories suggested that the orbits may have been reshaped due to planetary interactions within the solar system. However, the new study challenges this belief and argues that a one-off event could explain these irregularities.

The scientists added that further exploration of this scenario was needed which might detail the “effect of substellar flybys on the dynamical excitation of minor planets in the asteroid belt and the trans-Neptunian belts”.

Scientists have finally solved the long-standing mystery of the Sun turning blue in Earth’s atmosphere almost 200 years ago. A massive volcanic eruption in 1831 has been attributed as the reason for the colour change as massive plumes of sulfur dioxide were thrust into the atmosphere, causing global cooling and forcing our planet to play host to some weird climatic conditions that year.

A study published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) has found that the Zavaritskii volcano on the remote, uninhabited island of Simushir – now a contested territory between Russia and Japan, was the ground zero of the eruption that changed the planet.

Scientists at the University of St Andrews, Scotland, analysed ice core records from the 1831 event to confirm their findings. They added that there was no written record of direct observation from the 1831 eruption as the island on which the eruption took place is remote and has remained largely uninhabited.

“The moment in the lab when we analysed the two ashes together, one from the volcano and one from the ice core, was a genuine eureka moment,” study co-author Will Hutchison said in a statement.

“We analysed the chemistry of the ice at a very high temporal resolution. This allowed us to pinpoint the precise timing of the eruption to spring-summer 1831, confirm that it was highly explosive, and then extract the tiny shards of ash,” Mr Hutchison added.

While the team solved the mystery of the 1831 eruption and its impact on the Sun, Mr Hutchinson noted they still didn’t have any instrumentation mentioning the volcanic activity on the faraway island.

“If this eruption were to happen today, I don’t think we’d be much better off than we were in 1831. It just shows how difficult it will be to predict when and where the next big climate-changing eruption will come from.”

Also Read | One-In-Six Chance Of Massive Volcanic Eruption This Century. Will It Trigger Climate Chaos?

Massive volcanic eruptions

1831 was not the only time when a volcanic eruption had a global impact. In 1815, the eruption of Mount Tambora in Indonesia led to a year without summer on the planet. The eruption released 24 cubic miles of gases, dust, and rock into the atmosphere, causing global temperatures to plummet, eventually leading to a 1-degree-Celsius cooling of the Northern Hemisphere.

Scientists warn that there is a one-in-six chance that a similar volcanic eruption that could disrupt life on the planet will take place this century.

The economic repercussions of a massive eruption could be staggering, with losses potentially reaching into trillions. Moreover, any cooling effect would be momentary, with the planet soon returning to its warming trajectory due to ongoing greenhouse gas emissions.

The European Space Agency’s (ESA) Proba-3 mission will be launched on ISRO’s Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV) from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre on December 4.

According to ESA, Proba-3 is the world’s first precision formation flying mission.

“A pair of satellites will fly together, maintaining a fixed configuration as if they were a single large rigid structure in space, to prove formation flying and rendezvous technologies,” states ESA.  

The mission will demonstrate formation flying in the context of a large-scale science experiment. Holding position to a precision of a single millimetre, one Proba-3 spacecraft will line up in front of the other, around 150 m away, to cast its shadow precisely onto the other.

“The shade provided by the first spacecraft will cover the fiery face of the Sun so that its faint surrounding ‘coronal’ atmosphere becomes visible. The enigmatic corona – much hotter than the Sun itself – is where space weather originates, a topic of widespread scientific and practical interest,” ESA said. 

It further added that on Earth, scientists must travel the world to position themselves for a brief glimpse of the Sun’s corona lasting just a few minutes at a time during total solar eclipses. However, the new cutting-edge technologies applied to Proba-3 mean that the mission will be able to create ‘solar eclipses on demand.’

Proba-3 instruments will peer closer to the solar rim than was previously possible in space, for up to six hours at a time during each approximately 19-hour orbit around Earth.

Bengaluru:

A powerful solar storm impacted Earth in early May 2024, triggered by the highly active region AR13664 in the Sun, ISRO said on Tuesday.

This region unleashed a series of X-class flares and Coronal Mass Ejections (CMEs) directed at Earth.

According to ISRO, the resulting geomagnetic storm was the most intense since 2003, causing disruptions to communication and GPS systems.

“This is the biggest geomagnetic storm since 2003 in terms of its strength, as the flaring region on the Sun was as big as the historically important Carrington event that took place in 1859,” ISRO said in a statement.

Multiple X-class flares and CMEs have hit the Earth in the past few days, the space agency said.

“This (CME) had severe effects over high latitudes where trans-polar flights are already being reported to get diverted. More events are expected in the next few days,” ISRO noted.

The space agency said that the Indian sector got less affected as the main event of the storm happened in the early morning of May 11, when the ionosphere had not developed fully.

Also, being at lower latitudes, widespread outages haven’t been reported in India.

The Ionosphere was very turbulent over the Pacific and American sectors, ISRO said.

The Ionosphere is part of the Earth’s upper atmosphere, between 80 and about 600 km where extreme ultraviolet and x-ray solar radiation ionises the atoms and molecules, thus creating a layer of electrons.

The ionosphere is important because it reflects and modifies radio waves used for communication and navigation.

The main punch of this event so far arrived in the early morning hours of May 11 in India, when the Ionosphere was not fully developed, ISRO said.

ISRO said it has mobilised all its observation platforms and systems to record the signatures of this event. Both Aditya-L1 and Chandrayaan-2 have made observations and signatures have been analysed.

“The ASPEX payload on-board Aditya-L1 is showing high speed solar wind, high temperature solar wind plasma and energetic ion flux till now,” the space agency said. PTI GMS ANE

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