Solar storms send shock waves

<div class="section0"><div class="Normal"><span style="" font-size:="">WASHINGTON: The massive solar storms that pummelled the Earth last fall have continued almost to the edge of the solar system, causing disruptions on other planets and other surprising effects, scientists said on Thursday.</span><br /><br /><span style="" font-size:="">In a 20-day period from October to November 2003, more than a dozen storms, including the most powerful ever measured, erupted from the face of the Sun, sending blast waves in every direction.</span><br /><br /><span style="" font-size:="">Because of a fleet of spacecraft dispersed throughout deep space, scientists said they now had the best picture yet of how shock waves from these storms reverberate through the solar system setting off disturbances billions of miles away.</span><br /><br /><span style="" font-size:="">"All of the explosions combined and threw an enormous blast wave across the solar system,'''' Eric Christian of Nasa''s solar physics division said during an agency teleconference with reporters on Thursday.</span><br /><br /><span style="" font-size:="">The solar eruptions were so powerful that billions of tonnes of electrified gas shot into space at speeds of up to five million miles per hour, the fastest ever measured from the Sun, scientists said.</span><br /><br /><span style="" font-size:="">The blast waves from the series of explosions merged as they moved out, creating a front that is now moving toward the edge of the solar system at about 1.5 million miles per hour, they said.</span><br /><br /><span style="" font-size:="">"You get a buildup and a consolidation as you move out in the solar system,'''' said Edward Stone of Nasa''s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. The storms caused minimal damage on Earth, partly because some of the most powerful blasts were not aimed directly at our planet.</span><br /><br /><span style="" font-size:="">Earth''s protective magnetosphere trapped the particles from the solar mass ejections, creating a show of "Northern Lights'''' so prominent it could be seen in the southern United States. (NYT News Service)</span></div> </div>