Solar cannibalism.Billion-ton parcels of charged gas hurled from the sun can overtake and eat their slower-moving gaseous brethren, according to researchers who presented their findings March 27 at a meeting of the European Geophysical Society in Nice, France. Cannibalism cannibalism (kăn`ĭbəlĭzəm) [Span. caníbal, referring to the Carib], eating of human flesh by other humans. The charge of cannibalism is a common insult, and it is likely that some alleged cannibal groups have merely been victims of popular fear and misrepresentation. among these clouds of charged particles, known as coronal 1. Of or relating to a corona, especially of the head. 2. Of, relating to, or having the direction of the coronal suture or of the plane dividing the body into front and back portions. CME - Coronal Mass Ejection CME - C4I Maritime Extensions CME - Cache-Miss Exception CME - Cadet Medal of Excellence (Canadian Cadet Organization and Royal Canadian Legion) CME - Camera Module Electronics CME - Canadian Manufacturers and Exporters CME - Caribbean Music Expo CME - Carmel Middle School (California) CME - Center for Management and Entrepreneurship), is more than an astronomical curiosity. CMEs can harm communications and power systems on Earth. Commenting about the work, Ernest Hildner, director of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Space Environment Laboratory in Boulder, Colo., says that combined CMEs can act differently from single ejections. Astronomers may have to take that into account when they predict earthly effects, he notes. The collision of two CMEs could generate, for example, a single, more powerful punch, slow the speed of the faster eruption, or direct the merged CME toward or away from Earth. Natchimuthuk Gopalswamy of the Catholic University of America Catholic University of America, at Washington, D.C.; the national university of the Roman Catholic Church in the United States; coeducational; founded 1887 and opened 1889. It includes a college of arts and sciences as well as schools of engineering and architecture, law, library and information sciences, music, nursing, philosophy, religious studies, and social service. The university has access to the facilities of the national laboratories at Oak Ridge, Tenn. in Washington, D.C., and his colleagues base their findings on observations by two spacecraft. Several years ago, NASA's Wind craft recorded a group of puzzling, intense radio bursts far from the sun. Images taken by the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory, a NASA-European Space Agency Arianespace, the first commercial space transportation company and a division of ESA, now conducts more than half of all commercial satellite launches. The foundation of ESA was laid with the formation of the European Space Research Organization (ESRO) in 1962 and of the European Launcher Development Organization (ELDO) in 1964. mission, have revealed that the bursts occurred when one solar eruption swallowed another, creating energetic, radio-emitting electrons. "It is not very surprising that CMEs should interact," notes Gopalswamy, who is based at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., but the radio outbursts suggest that the interaction is extremely violent and can occur millions of kilometers from the sun. Scientists expect such collisions to be much more common now, at the peak of the sun's 11-year activity cycle, when the sun can jettison jettison (jĕt`əsən, –zən) [O.Fr.,=throwing], in maritime law, casting all or part of a ship's cargo overboard to lighten the vessel or to meet some danger, such as fire. Such cargo, when found later, is known as jetsam (see flotsam, jetsam, and ligan). CMEs in relatively rapid succession. The collisions occur "when a slow CME is expelled before a fast one from the same general region on the sun," says Gopalswamy. "The fast CME simply gobbles 1. gobble - To consume, usually used with "up". "The output spy gobbles characters out of a tty output buffer." 2. gobble - To obtain, usually used with "down". "I guess I'll gobble down a copy of the documentation tomorrow." See also snarf. up the slow one." His team has identified 21 instances of CME cannibalism since 1997. |
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