Tag Archives: year

Severe Solar Storm Creates Stunning Auroras During Meteor Shower

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A power geomagnetic storm that hit Earth on Monday created beautiful auroras that lit up the night sky during the Perseids meteor shower.

Bad Turns Good

Looks like the Sun is having another one of its outbursts again, because it just blasted us with a severe geomagnetic storm that crackled through our planet's magnetic field.

The Space Weather Prediction Center said it detected the solar event on Monday morning when it was classified as a severe G4 level storm — the second most intense kind.

By that same afternoon, the event eventually weakened to a G2-level storm — but not before zapping our skies with absolutely stunning auroras.

Now, observers the world over — not to mention off-world — are sharing the magical glimpses they got of these incredible light displays, which just so happened to coincide with the year's best meteor shower.

We’re in the middle of an intense geomagnetic storm! ???

A series of solar eruptions arriving at Earth are triggering widespread auroras. Here’s what NASA space weather analyst Carina Alden saw last night as she traveled through Michigan and Wisconsin! https://t.co/KG5pvCdyit pic.twitter.com/qrpdkva4Vj

— NASA Sun & Space (@NASASun) August 12, 2024

Fun in the Sun

Geomagnetic storms are caused by coronal mass ejections, which is when the Sun expels enormous blobs of solar material into space.

Occasionally, some of these ejections hit our planet, and their payload of charged particles can wreak havoc on the Earth's magnetic field.

If intense enough, the effects of the ensuing solar storm can be serious, such as disrupting communications infrastructure and causing power blackouts.

Most of the time, though, they go unnoticed. But if we're lucky, they create the marvelous curtains of light dancing across the night sky known as the northern lights, or auroras.

Cosmic Coincidence

This year, the stars aligned — well, strictly speaking, just the Sun did — and hurled a coronal mass ejection at Earth right as the Perseids meteor shower hit its peak, when it can deliver up to a hundred shooting stars in an hour.

It's not every day you get to see a dazzling aurora be the backdrop to a barrage of luminescent meteors, and skywatchers the world over marveled at the rare event's beauty.

"Aurora over the Grand Canyon, during the peak of the Perseids, with lightning flashes on the horizon. Does it get any better?" one photographer tweeted, sharing a photo of the spectacle.

We've even gotten a view of this from space, shared by NASA astronaut Matthew Dominick aboard the International Space Station.

This sky display will be hard to top — but keep your eyes peeled for storms like these in the future, because a lot of the time, auroras follow.

More on solar phenomena: NASA Investigating Mysterious Radio Signals From the Sun

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Tech Company Lays Off 5,500 Workers to Invest More in AI, Despite Making $10.3 Billion in Profit

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Cisco posted $10.3 billion in profits last year but is still laying off 5,500 workers as part of an effort to invest more into AI.

Pink Slip Season

Despite tech conglomerate Cisco posting $10.3 billion in profits last year, it's still laying off 5,500 workers as part of an effort to invest more in AI, SFGATE reports.

It joins a litany of other companies like Microsoft and Intuit, the maker of TurboTax, that have used AI as justification for the mass culling of its workforce.

The layoffs at Cisco came to light in a notice posted with the Securities and Exchange Commission this week, affecting seven percent of its staff.

In a short statement, CEO Chuck Robbins used the term "AI" five times, highlighting the company's efforts to keep up in the ongoing AI race.

Earlier this year, Cisco also laid off 4,000 or five percent of it staff, saying that the company wanted to "realign the organization and enable further investment in key priority areas."

In short, companies are no longer hiding their optimism over replacing human labor with AI, an unfortunate reality for those looking to maintain a stable job. But whether this "realignment" will pay off in the long run remains to be seen.

Red Herring

The layoff news helped boost Cisco's stock price on Wednesday, going from $45.04 in the morning to spiking over $48 per share in after-hours trading.

We've already seen similar spikes in the stock prices of other tech companies announcing layoffs.

Cisc's layoffs are also part of another pattern: tech companies saying they are shifting resources to boost their AI efforts and therefore they need to lay off people as part of a restructuring campaign.

While many companies have used AI as a public-facing excuse for their restructuring efforts, experts remain skeptical and think the tech is instead used as a cover.

"Fighting against robots is a nice cover story," University of Oxford economist and data scientist Fabian Stephany told Business Insider earlier this year. "But if you have a closer look, it's often old school, simple economic dynamics like outsourcing or lead management cutting costs to increase salaries in other places."

More on tech layoffs: Microsoft Lays Off 1,500 Workers, Blames "AI Wave"

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The Earth Just Can’t Stop Setting Heat Records

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A record 15 national heat records have been shattered since January, as this year looks on track to surpass the last as the hottest ever.

Coming In Hot

It's too early to say if 2024 will top last year as the hottest on record — but it will already go down in history for blowing past another damning heat metric.

As The Guardian reports, an unprecedented 15 national temperature records from countries around the globe have been broken since January. Monthly national temperature records, meanwhile, have been broken a whopping 130 times, with tens of thousands of monitoring stations worldwide observing all-time local highs.

This is according to data gathered by climatologist Maximiliano Herrera, who maintains an online database of extreme temperatures.

"This amount of extreme heat events is beyond anything ever seen or even thought possible before," Herrera told The Guardian. "The months from February 2024 to July 2024 have been the most record-breaking for every statistic."

Hell on Earth

The hottest temperatures have descended on the tropics, where heat records were broken every day for 15 months in a row, Herrera said. Egypt recorded a national high of 123.6 degrees Fahrenheit in June, while just two days before, Chad tied its record of 118.4 degrees.

Just north of the Tropic of Cancer, Mexico also matched its record of 125.6 degrees later that month. Other countries that either tied or broke heat ceilings include Costa Rica, Laos, Ghana, and Cambodia. Extraordinarily, the Cocos Islands in the eastern Indian Ocean near Australia equaled its all-time high of 91 degrees twice this year: once in February, and again in April.

It's no wonder, then, that this July was also the hottest in history — and so has every month since June of last year, making it 14 record months in a row.

And in yet another hot streak: many scientists, including those at the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, say we're on track for 2024 to be the hottest year ever recorded, which would make an ominous double-header with last year.

Summer Is Coming

Summer heat waves that scourged cities around the globe are believed to have killed hundreds of people this year, Reuters reported — if not thousands.

Scientists fear that if temperatures continue to climb, the extreme climate will render vast amounts of land uninhabitable, which could displace billions of people.

This recent spate of record-setting heat has heightened attention on the issue. But, even if the streak ends, "we are bound to see new records being broken as the climate continues to warm," Carlo Buontempo, director of the European Union's Copernicus Climate Change Service, told The Guardian. "This is inevitable unless we stop adding greenhouse gases into the atmosphere and the oceans."

Until that happens, Herrera said that extreme weather alerts could save lives amidst our ever-hotter climate.

More on extreme heat: Dozens of Americans Die in Brutal Heat Wave

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