Summary Solar winds are nothing new, sun keeps sending them all the time, says Lahore Astronomical Society
LAHORE: (Web Desk) - A news was published recently on the website of a popular private news channel of Pakistan which claimed that the real reason behind the heat in Karachi is that the storms stirring up on the sun are vomiting out charged particles in space which are causing the atmosphere to be so heated up that certain areas of the Earth are also getting affected by the heat. Though it is true that sun is actually emitting these particles, called the solar winds, they are nothing new and the sun keeps doing it all the time according to Lahore Astronomical Society.
A member of the society contacted Dunya News and said that the information provided on the news website is scientifically incorrect and gave a rebuttal to the story. Dunya News has decided to publish the response by the society in order to correct the scientific errors stated by the said news and also provide the readers with the accurate information on the subject.
First of all, the news story claimed that the solar wind (the news didn’t mention it by the scientific term) is reaching the Earth, causing extreme weather in certain areas of the world.
Correction: The Sun explodes and basically vomits out a bunch of hot, charged particles in space all the time. Sometimes however, the Earth gets in the way and we get a big solar plasma pie coming towards our planet.
1) This solar stuff hurtling towards us is called solar wind and it is made up of ionized (charged) particles that like to interact with magnetic fields.
2) Earth has a magnetic field! So what happens is, these incoming charged particles get trapped within the Earth magnetic fields and the only consequence we humans can see of this is the northern lights AKA the Aurora (both southern and northern).
What the news missed out at was that the Carbon Dioxide and Nitrogen Oxide in our atmosphere react with these incoming high energy particles, some of which are UV rays and these CO2 and NO (nitrogen oxide) molecules break up because of these high energy particles and they release that energy ‘into space’.
This brings us to the conclusion that the solar wind has ‘no effect’ whatsoever of increasing or decreasing the heat on the surface. There is a layer of atmosphere called Thermosphere which is high up, even above the orbital spacecrafts and though this Thermosphere gets warmed up, but, that’s not even to a degree that may be measured by the human standards.
So the conclusion is that Carbon Dioxide and Nitrogen Oxide molecules break up high up in the atmosphere with that incoming energy and that energy is then dissipated back into space. Thus the charged particles only produce Aurora (beautiful northern lights) as a result and do NOTHING MORE.
And yes, they don’t heat up Karachi!
