‘Space hurricane’ from the sun sweeping over our planet

Flights rerouted due to solar storm; radiation rated strongest since 2003

A wave of charged particles from an intense solar storm is raising alerts about airline flights and satellite operations — and raising the prospect of stunning auroral displays.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/46118390/ns/technology_and_science-space/#.Tx_FbyPgLog

The storm began when a powerful solar flare erupted on the sun Monday, blasting a stream of charged particles toward our planet. This electromagnetic burst — called a coronal mass ejection, or CME — started hitting Earth somewhere around 10 a.m. ET Tuesday, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Space Weather Prediction Center.

Two Earth-sized planets found orbiting another star

The planets are the smallest ever confirmed orbiting a sun-like star, and their discovery, reported Tuesday, is an important milestone for NASA’s Kepler mission.

http://articles.latimes.com/2011/dec/20/science/la-sci-planets-20111221

Kepler-20e and Kepler-20f, as the two rocky planets are called, are interspersed with three larger, gaseous planets, believed to be similar to our own Neptune, in an alternating pattern that has astronomers somewhat perplexed. All five planets orbit their sun at a closer distance than Mercury orbits ours.

A sustainable city seems far off. We try and be as eco friendly as we can biking and carpooling but in the end were still emitting Co2 and increasing our carbon foot print. Yet people have already started the idea of a sustainable city and in fact they are in the process of creating the first eco friendly city. The city of Masdar in the deserts of Abu dhabi and will hopefully be the first green city in the world. They already have created sun powered buses called SuperBuses and so many others ideas. Heres a YouTube video showing the plans for Masdar. If they could succeed than it would hopefully be the start of creating more and more green cites.

After years of quiet, the sun is coming alive with solar storms. The sun shot off a flare Thursday afternoon from a region that scientists are calling a “benevolent monster.” It has dozens of sunspots, including one that is the size of 17 Earths. Sunspots are kinks or knots in the sun’s magnetic field, and affect Earth only if they shoot off flares and hit our planet. Photo provided by NASA.

$1 billion in new solar loan guarantees OK’d by US

Space probe detects a planet with a double sunset - in a scene reminiscent of science fiction, researchers using observations from NASA’s Kepler spacecraft have detected a distant planet orbiting two waltzing stars, the first time such a phenomenon has been confirmed.

The size of the universe is beautifully illustrated in this video. I hope you enjoy it!