Storms from the Sun

Space weather is all around us. There are no nightly news reports on space weather (yet), but we're rapidly developing the tools necessary to measure and observe trends in cosmic meteorology. New probes are going on-line that help us monitor the weather taking place miles above the Earth.
But why does space weather matter? It doesn't affect whether we bring an umbrella to work or require us to monitor early school closings. It's far, far away and of little concern to us...right?
March 13 1989. The Department of Defense tracking system that keeps tabs on 8,000 objects orbiting Earth suddenly loses track of 1.300 of them. In New Jersey, a $10 million transformer is burned up by a surge of extra current in the power lines. Shocks to a power station in Quebec leave 6 million people without electricity. New england power stations struggle to keep their power grid up. Listeners tuning in to their local stations in Minnesota hear the broadcasts of the California Highway Patrol. Residents of Florida, Mexico, and the Grand Cayman Islands see glowing curtains of light in the sky.
All of these bizarre, and seemingly unconnected, events were caused by a storm on the sun and a fire in the sky. A series of solar flares and explosions had launched bolts of hot, electrified gas at the Earth and stirred up the second largest magnetic storm in recorded history. Before rockets and radio and the advent of other modern devices, we probably would never have noticed the effects of this space storm. But in today's electrically powered, space-faring world, the greatest space storm of the twenty-second solar maximum rang like a wake-up call. And we are now in the midst of another solar maximum, the effects of which are expected to be felt all the way through the year 2004.
Storms from the Sun explores the emerging physical science of space weather and traces its increasing impact on a society that relies on space-based technologies.

• Prologue: Here Comes the Sun
• Chapter One: The Day the Pagers Died
• Chapter Two: Sun-Eating Dragons, Hairy Stars, and Bridges to Heaven
• Chapter Three: A Sudden Conflagration
• Chapter Four: Connecting Sun to Earth
• Chapter Five: Living in the Atmosphere of a Star
• Chapter Six: The Cosmic Wake-Up Call
• Chapter Seven: Fire in the Sky
• Chapter Eight: A Tough Place to Work
• Chapter Nine: Houston, We Could Have a Problem
• Chapter Ten: Seasons of the Sun
• Chapter Eleven: The Forecast
• Epilogue: Over the Horizon
• Appendix A: Selected Reading
• Appendix B: Selected Web Sites
• Appendix C: Acronyms and Abbreviations