Latest news with #EasternSeaboard
Daily Mail
21-05-2025
- Science
- Daily Mail
Scientists issue urgent warning over solar storm poised to cause global blackouts and travel chaos: 'We're not prepared'
Scientists have warned that humanity is not prepared for extreme space weather as a solar storm is predicted to smash into Earth this week. They conducted a 'solar storm emergency drill ', simulating what would happen if a major geomagnetic storm hit Earth. Results showed power grids failed, blackouts were triggered and communication broke down across the US. The exercise ran four simulations of geomagnetic storms of different severities, which is is a temporary disturbance of Earth's magnetic field caused by a massive eruption of charged plasma from the sun's outermost layer. One scenario included a 'solar superstorm', strong enough cause an 'internet apocalypse,' resulting in power grid disruptions across the entire US with the eastern seaboard experiencing blackouts, which lasted for weeks. Not only were power grids impacted, but railways and pipelines were also knocked offline, causing mass disruptions of travel and dramatic price increases of gas. Scientists are now calling for a whole-of-government planning approach, arguing it will be critical for protecting America from cosmic disaster. That would include deploying more satellites to monitor space weather, enhance real-time data collection to improve forecasting models, and provide earlier warnings. The report comes as NASA warns a massive solar storm is heading toward Earth this week, which could turn the simulations into a reality. The imminent solar storm is the result of a powerful X-class flare, which could trigger the event simulated in the exercise. These are the most powerful solar flares, and they often coincide with coronal mass ejections (CMEs), which are large eruptions of plasma and magnetic fields. The sun has unleashed powerful streams of energized particles several times in the past few days with the most recent on May 19. NASA warned that more is to come, saying the bursts could continue to impact 'radio communications, electric power grids, navigation signals, and pose risks to spacecraft and astronauts '. The latest exercise was conducted in May 2024 by the Space Weather Operations, Research, and Mitigation (SWORM) task force, which includes agencies like the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). The fictional scenario was set on January 29, 2028, and involved a series of massive solar flares and high-energy radiation from the sun aimed at Earth. Solar flares are intense bursts of radiation that come from sunspots — darker, cooler areas on the sun's surface — and are among the most powerful explosions in the solar system. These flares can last from a few minutes to several hours. The drill tasked scientists with tracking an active solar region rotating toward Earth, testing protocols and response times in the face of a potentially catastrophic solar storm. In the simulation, the solar activity disrupted critical systems such as damaging satellites and knocking out power grids across the US. Scientists observed intense radiation exposure to satellites, astronauts and commercial aviation, and radio communications outages and disruptions. Participants identified the greatest challenge was forecasting impact of a coronal mass ejection (CME)—a massive burst of plasma and magnetic field from the sun. The current technology could only detect a CME about 30 minutes before it reaches Earth, when the magnetic orientation becomes clear, which makes preparation impossible. The report recommends investing in advanced space weather satellites, deploying more sensors to monitor solar activity, and increasing cooperation between US. agencies, international allies, and private industry. 'Ongoing preparedness efforts for a space weather event are crucial because an extreme event has the potential to severely impact our nation's critical infrastructure and threaten our national security,' the report stated. 'Just as we prepare for earthquakes, hurricanes, and cyberattacks, our nation must take action before a major space weather event occurs.' Coincidentally, the exercise was conducted at the same time the Gannon Storm, Earth's most powerful solar storm in two decades, hit on May 10, 2024. That storm triggered a mass satellite migration, temporarily making Earth's orbit unsafe, and caused local power outages as well as widespread radio and satellite communication blackouts. Now, a year later, NASA issued the warning after a powerful burst of energy from the sun on May 14, which measured as an X2.7-class solar flare, the highest category for solar flares and coronal mass ejections (CMEs). The flare has caused radio blackouts across Europe, Asia, and the Middle East, along with some power degradation in the eastern US. But the space agency suggested more are to come. While NASA warned more blackouts and communication interference are expected in a matter of days, the agency also noted that several US states will witness stunning northern lights. Those include Alaska, Washington, Idaho, Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota, Minnesota, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Maine, as well as parts of nearby states, including New York. Solar flares are grouped into five categories: A, B, C, M, and X, with each level representing a tenfold increase in energy output. A is the weakest, and X is the strongest. The UK's Met Office reported that up to five sunspot regions are currently visible on the side of the sun facing Earth, with a new magnetically active region rotating into view over the southeastern solar horizon. The agency also noted that a region near the sun's northwest limb may have produced a moderate-class flare earlier on May 19. 'Solar activity is expected to remain mostly low, but with an ongoing chance of isolated moderate-class flares,' the Met Office added. This uptick in solar activity highlights the importance of monitoring space weather, especially as our society becomes more reliant on technology. As the sun continues through its active phase, more solar flares and potential geomagnetic storms could occur in the coming days and weeks.
Yahoo
17-05-2025
- General
- Yahoo
The lesser-known story of 100K courageous runaway slaves who fled the South via the ‘Blue Highway'
In 1857, an 18-year-old female slave, Lear Green, who had been repeatedly raped and forced into prostitution by her white owner, one James Noble, was surreptitiously placed in a wooden seaman's chest wearing a dress, bonnet and cape and delivered as simple freight on a steamship bound to Philadelphia from the port of Baltimore. To avoid suffocation and starvation, her benefactors covered her with a quilt and put a little pillow in the box for a semblance of comfort, along with a few articles of clothing, a small amount of food, and a bottle of water, before sealing the crate, bound with heavy rope. Eighteen hours later, the steamer arrived in the City of Brotherly Love, and the box was delivered to a family friend's house, where the young stowaway recovered from her arduous journey. Lear Green was one of some 100,000 runaway slaves with unimaginable courage, willing to face horrifying cruelty and vicious flogging, who escaped bondage from the antebellum South on ships at sea. The setting for their flights was what became known as the 'Blue Highway,' which ran up and down the Eastern Seaboard and enabled enslaved people to escape as stowaways in below-deck hideaways. They journeyed under wind-filled sails from the Carolinas to the Chesapeake Bay and Boston's harbors three decades before the Civil War. The ocean carried Africans into slavery, and the ocean was also a pathway that transported them to freedom with the assistance of Black sailors and waterfront workers, and sympathetic working-class whites. 'Thousands of people escaped slavery by sea — yet the history books have had little to say about them. Why have these dramatic tales of dockside conspiracies, below-deck hideaways, billowing sails, and ultimately liberation been so rarely told?' asks preeminent maritime scholar Marcus Rediker in his new book, 'Freedom Ship: The Uncharted History of Escaping Slavery by Sea' (Viking). The legendary Underground Railway had carried those fleeing bondage in the Deep South through swamps, thickets, forests, and rivers. But the Blue Highway, though far less well-known, was equally important in providing liberty to slaves. 'The maritime system of escape was organized by people who are largely unknown to us — poor people with calloused hands, often nameless in the historical record and therefore unremembered, the wretched of the earth,' writes Rediker. 'They acted out courageous, death-defying stories. They escaped slavery in ingenious ways. Their labor on the docks and ships, with the dynamic political economy of port cities, drove the freedom story.' Enraged owners advertised in port city newspapers when a slave absconded, but shipmasters were expected to police their own ships, and fugitives were able to find their way on board. 'Escaping slavery by sea was an art,' observes the author. It required planning, reading people and situations quickly. Some runaways dressed as gentlemen, while some females disguised themselves as male sailors. A would-be runner had to understand the climate, ecology, and geography of the escape route — and that could mean the difference between life and death. Rediker, the award-winning University of Pittsburgh professor of Atlantic history, anchors his book in a series of extraordinary Blue Highway narratives. Along with Green, there's Moses Roper, who made his first escape in 1834 at age 13 from his enslaver, the brutal cotton planter John Gooch. Repeatedly captured and sent back to his owners, Roper made no less than a dozen more escape attempts over six years — a never-ending cycle of flight, recapture, grisly punishment, and resale. 'The slave-owning terrorists 'ploughed' his back with hundreds, perhaps thousands of lashes; crushed his fingernails in a vise; smashed his toenails on an anvil with a hammer; and poured tar on his head and set it on fire,' writes the author. 'They forced him to carry burdensome log chains, wear iron collars, and walk around with heavy bars on his feet.' On his final escape, Roper traveled 350 miles by land and river, from Florida to Savannah, Ga., where he boarded a vessel disguised as a steward. Finally ashore in New York, he escaped the slave catchers crawling the waterfront and made it up the Hudson River to Albany and then overland to Boston with a bounty hunter on his heels. He boarded a ship to Liverpool, where he published an account of his travails that brought him fame as an abolitionist. African American abolitionist William Still interviewed 930 hungry, sick, and penniless runaways, provided them with aid and shelter between 1852 and 1860, and documented their lives. Some had scars from being whipped, bullets fired at them, or suffered horrifying sexual abuse, and 'cruelty too revolting to be published,' Rediker writes. Still, they had the strength to face death and escape being tortured. And they rallied together to help each other. That was Slave Power. 'These fugitives educated Still and the entire American abolitionist movement about the grim realities of the Slave Power,' Rediker writes. Though mostly hidden from history, these brave men and women demonstrated equal doses of resilience and resistance, and ultimately inspired both movement and nation.
