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back to article Potent proton pulse to BOMBARD EARTH Tuesday morn

Late Sunday, the sun aimed a huge coronal mass ejection (CME) at our planet, along with a "solar energetic particle" event – the largest since September 2005 – which is expected to cause a solar storm of highly energetic protons to hit us on Tuesday at 9am Eastern Time, plus or minus seven hours. The solar storm, according to …

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  1. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Don't look at the light display in the sky, unless you want to wake up blind the next day and find that your geraniums have taken over the world.

    BTW — "...Tuesday at 9am Eastern Time..."

    What the hell does that mean in proper UTC/GMT? ie. the global standard —not bloody Moosejaw Creek, Arkansas time. I swear the Reg is getting more Americanised every day!

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    1. Andus McCoatover
      Reply Icon
      Windows

      Exactly what I was going to comment on!

      Put it in standard, internationally recognised time, please, El. Reg.

      Otherwise we'll all have to sit on a bridge over a stream, grow big ears, and play a banjo. Then 'squeal like a piggie'.

      (With apologies to the writer of "Deliverance")

      OTOH, as I live in Finland, I'll look forward to a grand night out. Once I figure out what "Eastern Time" means...

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      1. BitDr
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        Eastern Standard Time ...

        EST is UTC - 5, so add 5 hours to get UTC.

        You can get all time zone names and their UTC offsets here

        http://www.worldtimezone.com/wtz-names/timezonenames.html

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        1. Vic
          Reply Icon

          > You can get all time zone names and their UTC offsets here

          No you can't.

          There's no mention of the Moosejaw Creek meridian there.

          Vic.

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        2. Steve McPolin
          Reply Icon
          Coat

          UTC - 5

          Does that mean it will hit England first? Will we know we are OK if blighty makes it through the night?

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          1. Anonymous Coward
            Reply Icon
            Go

            @ Steve McPolin

            So if the proton burst causes the hungry dead to rise from their graves, they will be taking over London first! Y'all better get down to the Winchester Arms then!!

            Poor zombies, first they die, then they are re-animated but have nothing to eat but English food!

            And the downvotes begin....right......now!

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            1. Vic
              Reply Icon

              > And the downvotes begin....right......now!

              What - after mentioning the Winchester?

              Vic.

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        3. Jonathon Desmond
          Reply Icon
          FAIL

          yeah, thanks for that. Very useful.....

          ... Because even your own reference says that "EST" can be one of three different time zones, and doesn't even list "Eastern time". So which EST are you referring to? Why even mention EST, it's not mentioned in the article?

          As for the article, what is "Eastern time" anyway? The time in China?

          The standard use of GMT/UTC/Zulu removes all ambiguity.

          When I was back in Oz I pointed out to the ANZ bank their use of "EST" in their online banking service. Thing was, they kept using "EST" even when the times they were quoting were blatantly daylight (EDT) times. They changed to saying "Melbourne time" which at least removed the ambiguity.

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    2. Dropper
      Reply Icon
      Thumb Down

      Huh?

      You can't be blinded watching the Northern Lights.. it's not the sun you're watching but a magnetic reaction to solar activity. The only possible harm you can get from watching the Northern Lights is to be beaten by your wife (or girlfriend) when you wake them up at 5am to watch it too.

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      1. hplasm
        Reply Icon
        Happy

        Er...

        and you won't be killed by yer geraniums either....

        Did you hear that woosh?

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      2. Robert Carnegie Silver badge
        Reply Icon

        The "Don't look" comment was a tiny humorous reference to the well-known science fiction story [The Day of the Triffids], in which carnivorous plants terrorise a population... that was mostly blinded by, well:

        http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Day_of_the_Triffids

        "The narrative begins with Bill Masen in hospital, his eyes bandaged after having been splashed with droplets of triffid venom in a lab accident. During his convalescence he is told of the unexpected and beautiful green meteor shower that the entire world is watching. He awakes the next morning to a silent hospital and learns that the light from the unusual display has rendered any who watched it completely blind." Perhaps not straight away, or you'd stop. "Later on in the book Masen again theorises that both the 'meteor shower' and subsequent plague may have been an orbiting government weapons' system that was triggered accidentally." But, remember, he's a triffid farmer - or was - anyway, what does he know?

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      3. Alfred
        Reply Icon

        register

        Of similar note, one of the new kids at work had never seen Carpenter's "The Thing". Just what do they teach kids these days?

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        1. Field Marshal Von Krakenfart
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          Paris Hilton

          "Just what do they teach kids these days?"

          Too busy watching Paris....

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    3. Anonymous Coward
      Reply Icon
      Anonymous Coward

      Awesome idea

      We have el Reg units for everything else, let's use Moosejaw Creek, Arkansas as the official El Reg timezone.

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      1. Notas Badoff
        Reply Icon
        Joke

        North and West

        Y'all gots the wrong'a timezone state and country y'all doo. Y'all meant Moose Jaw, Sasskatchetoon. That'd be the centrawl zone of north America! Jes liek the blessed land of Arkansaw. Shoot, y'awl 'taint bin nowheres me thinks!

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    4. Michael
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      EST UTC - 5 hours

      The post is required, and must contain letters.

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    5. Simon_E
      Reply Icon

      Will Universal Time do?

      14:18 UT* (+/- 7 hours), as per

      http://spaceweather.com/archive.php?view=1&day=23&month=01&year=2012

      *call it GMT if you like...

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    6. Big-nosed Pengie
      Reply Icon

      I suppose that should be "Americanized".

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    7. Bob H
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      Trollface

      @madra

      I agree with the sentiment that it should have been at least followed by a UTC reference

      But! I must point out that Moose Jaw is located in Saskatchewan, Canada and is on CST-6.

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    8. lawndart
      Reply Icon

      What is it in Owl Stretching Time?

      3 0
      1. Matthew 25
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        Joke

        Owl Streching Time

        I think its ten past twoo

        2 0
  2. N2

    Now

    where my lead pants?

    oh and please post GMT/UTC times, thank you

    1 0
  3. Raz
    Joke

    To all asking for UTC/GMT: that suits you because you are in the ol' UK, while for me EST is just fine. Why not use the Mongolian time, whatever that is, so that everyone will have to calculate something.

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    1. NoDosh
      Reply Icon
      Facepalm

      see that .co.uk bit?

      It's not a badly spelled anagram.

      Just sayin'.

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      1. LaeMing
        Reply Icon
        Boffin

        Even from Aus.

        I'd prefer GMT to be used. It is far easier to add the time adjustment from zero than some arbitrary offset where the article author happenes to live.

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        1. Anonymous Coward
          Reply Icon
          Anonymous Coward

          Not to mention that we have an "Eastern" timezone here too. Well actually we have two of them, one with daylight savings and one without.

          When people quote random US based timezones they usually get the day wrong too. Not our fault them there Merkins live in yesterday.

          Hence I'll vote for UTC/GMT which is not the same as BaSTard time.

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        2. Evan Essence
          Reply Icon
          Boffin

          @LaeMing

          Except, according to his byline, the author is in San Francisco, which is three timezones west of Eastern Time. So it's rather puzzling as to why he mentioned Eastern Time at all.

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      2. Raz
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        I was betting on this. I actually got here from theregister.com :)

        2 1
        1. Annihilator
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          Thumb Down

          @Raz

          "I was betting on this. I actually got here from theregister.com :)"

          And you do know that .com doesn't mean "America", or even "United States of"? GMT/UTC is the International standard for recording time, it's not some prissy Brit thing - in fact funnily enough, GMT/UTC runs all the way down the prime meridian and is the time zone of many countries. It's also a lot easier to calculate from one reference point instead of two.

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        2. Vic
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          > I was betting on this. I actually got here from theregister.com :)

          And what's in your address bar now - .com or .co.uk ?

          Vic.

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      3. John Brown (no body) Silver badge
        Reply Icon
        Coat

        Badly spelled anagram?

        As the librarian might say, "ouck! ouck!"

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        1. Anonymous Coward
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          Headmaster

          Oook!

          I think you'll find that the correct spelling is "ook", "oook" or even "eek"

          4 0
    2. Anonymous Coward
      Reply Icon
      Anonymous Coward

      "Why not use the Mongolian time, whatever that is, so that everyone will have to calculate something." Well the people who live in Monfolia wouldn't, there are people there you know. I know, there is no oil there, so you probably wouldn't have a clue...

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  4. Harry the Bastard
    FAIL

    it's reg dot co dot U FUCKING K that's why it's G FUCKING M FUCKING T

    egads, the horror, the horror

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    1. LaeMing
      Reply Icon
      Alert

      Next they will want us to spell everything with a 'Zee'!

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      1. TchmilFan
        Reply Icon
        FAIL

        ize/ise etc.

        -ize is actually original British English. We've only recently started using -ise, the burger eating warmongers have just hung on to it.

        Inspector Morse even uses it to solve a murder.

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    2. Anonymous Coward
      Reply Icon
      Anonymous Coward

      I tried to visualise this, and I'm pretty sure it violates the 'extreme porn' law.

      3 0
  5. Nate H.
    Happy

    Optional

    And don't even get me started about Daylight Savings Time!

    1 0
    1. LaeMing
      Reply Icon

      You mean,

      Night-time wasting?

      10 0
  6. Steve McPolin
    Paris Hilton

    Solar Sails

    I'm sorry that my astro-physics is weak. I kind of understand that you can make a spacecraft go by pressure from particles emitted by the sun. Does this work like garlic - a little is good, so more is better? Can we make some sort of sail that takes advantage of these events? One day to mars is pretty intriguing.... Or would it just blow teensy holes through the sail and leave us ejecting the horses to try to get home?

    Paris, because I don't have a clue either.

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    1. Anonymous Coward
      Reply Icon
      Anonymous Coward

      Solar sails

      Yes and no. You can make a solar sail, it will get thrust from the solar wind (and also from the sunlight falling on it), but the amount of thrust you will get is very small - you'd get more delta-V (more speed) from just putting the same mass of extra fuel on the craft as from the mass of the sail.

      It *might* work out better for a really long trip, say to Jupiter or further out, but not really as well to Mars.

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      1. Big-nosed Pengie
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        more delta-V = more speed?

        I thought delta V was acceleration.

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        1. Dan 37
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          Coat

          I'd imagine delta V is 'rate of change of velocity', which could be acceleration but could equally be deceleration or simply change of direction.

          mine's the one with pedants weekly in the pocket

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          1. Dan 37
            Reply Icon

            erm... not 'rate of change', just change in velocity. The point that it's not necessarily acceleration stands, just for different reasons.

            phew! think i got that in time to save my pedants club membership.

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            1. Annihilator
              Reply Icon
              Boffin

              Delta-v

              It's not that hard to find out instead of guessing... It's not acceleration, nor deceleration (which is the same thing).

              http://lmgtfy.com/?q=what+is+delta-v

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              1. Vic
                Reply Icon

                Re: Delta-v

                > It's not that hard to find out instead of guessing

                It's a delta, right, in the v, right, hence the name "delta v".

                </holly>

                Vic.

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        2. Stoneshop
          Reply Icon
          Boffin

          Delta V is acceleration

          So with more delta V you get more more speed.

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          1. Dan 37
            Reply Icon

            yes, unless you get less speed.

            change in speed is not always the same as increase in speed. Still, acceleration can be positive or negative so that's ok. The real issue is that acceleration is change in velocity per second whereas delta v is simply change in velocity (or speed, delta v can generally be used as a scalar or linear quantity). So while delta V can't really be said to be acceleration we could probably get away with saying acceleration is delta v per second.

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          2. Vladimir Plouzhnikov
            Reply Icon

            Oh, noes

            Acceleration is dv/dt, a rate of change of velocity with time.

            Delta-v is (roughly) the scalar sum of velocity changes which happened on the way from one point to another.

            The difference between the two is like the difference between speed and distance traveled.

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          3. John I'm only dancing
            Reply Icon

            No

            With more delta V in the direction you are travelling, you get acceleration, more delta V in the opposite direction provides deceleration. Have none of you ever resolved forces?

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