Friday, October 24, 2003

Search me

You know how authors read books? Starting from the index, to see if they're quoted or mentioned.

Which is why it can be humbling to see how few times your name gets mentioned in Amazon's new whole-book-search feature. (Too bad you can't link to the results.)

Brian Dear calls the feature Amazon's Free Book Giveaway.

Blogway

Some interesting comments under Jay Rosen's Blogging is About Making and Changing Minds post yesterday, including pointers to this and this. Deep and excellent reading there.

Seems like a good time as well to point back to my Certidudes post from last April. It's in the same vein.

Whoa: Howard Greenstein says Bill O'Reilly was going to talk about Jay's piece on the O'Reilly Factor two nights ago. What happened, I wonder? Was O'Reilly paranoid about a piece about paranoia? Be interesting to see. Howard says he taped it, so maybe he'll report on what went down.

Aurora Alert

Went outside at about 5:15 this morning, looked up at the starry sky, and noticed a second Milky Way. Even though it looked a bit like the aurora I saw in Alaska a few weeks ago, I figured it was just a cloud pattern. Still, on the outside chance that a solar storm might be pushing northern lights far to the south, I came inside and brought up the Solar Terrestrial Dispatch.

Turns out there IS a storm going on:

Latest Geomagnetic and Auroral Activity Conditions

Updated: 04:00 UTC 24 October (12:00 am [midnight] EDT, 24 October):

Within the next 12 hours, a major geomagnetic and auroral storm is predicted to commence. Auroral activity could become visible into the middle latitude regions. Storm activity is expected to continue for the next 3 days due to persisting coronal mass ejections from intense solar activity.

Much more significant activity will be possible over the coming 10 days if the existing intense active regions continue to produce energetic solar activity.

Solar Activity Update

INTENSE solar activity is continuing in-progress. Another major solar flare (class M7.6 event) occurred at 02:53 UTC on 24 October (10:53 pm EDT on 23 October) from Region 486. Additional major flare activity is expected.

Meanwhile, from BBC News, Earth Put on Solar Storm Alert, by David Whitehouse:

Imminent disruption is predicted for satellites, power systems and even mobile phones because of a solar storm. It comes from one of the largest groups of sunspots seen for years. On Thursday superhot gas erupted above them.

The event, called a Coronal Mass Ejection, sent 10 billion tonnes of superhot gas speeding towards Earth. As well as communication blackouts, aurorae - polar lights - may be seen from mid-latitudes as the gas arrives.

On the upside, we can be in for some spectacular aurora displays here in the lower lattitudes. There have already been sightings in Montana, Kentucky and New Zealand. I doubt what I saw was the Real Deal, but I'm glad I checked. Here in Santa Barbara I'm pretty far south, but not as far as San Diego, where they were spotted in November 2001. Two years and two days ago, auroras were spotted in Australia, Spain, Japan and North Carolina.

Check for more bulletins at SpaceWeather.com.