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Team Number: 037 School Name: Shiprock High School Area of Science: Earth Science Project Title: Calculating When CME Hits Earth Project Abstract: http://www.challenge.nm.org/Abstacts/037.shtml Interim Report: http://www.challenge.nm.org/Interim/037.shtml Final Report: http://www.challenge.nm.org/Finals/037.html
My project is on CMEs, which is a giant magnetic bubble that contains gas and charged ions. CMEs expand away from the sun's atmosphere and explodes into outer space. The problem that I investigated was how long it would take a CME to hit earth and its satellites. My purpose for choosing this project was to learn about CMEs and how it affects the earth's satellites. The importance of this project is to find out how CME can affect the earth and its satellites.
DescriptionCME stands for Coronal Mass Ejection. A Coronal Mass Ejection is a huge magnetic bubble that contains gas with charged ions that keep the CME from falling apart. CMEs occur when an amount of cool, dense, ionized gas escapes from the closed, low level of the sun's magnetic atmosphere. When this gas escapes from the sun's atmosphere it expands away from the sun like a huge bubble turning almost as big as the sun itself. As the CME expands, gas escapes from the sun's atmosphere.
When the gas escapes, it causes the sun to release the CME, moving through outer space at a fast amount of speed. The pressure that the sun releases is strong and that makes the CME move at a high rate of speed. When the CME is released, it travels through space at about 1,000 to 2,000 miles per hour. As the CME travels through space, it has a great amount of radiation and mass. The radiation that is released from the CME reaches earth in about 7-8 minutes. After the release of the CME, the radiation travels much faster than the CME. When the radiation reaches earth, it causes black outs on earth.
The CME follows the radiation and takes about 3-5 days to reach earth, depending on the size of the CME. When the CME reaches earth, it collides with the atmosphere of the earth. The CME can't enter the atmosphere of the earth. When the CME arrives, it causes a static reaction on the television stations, and one can sometimes see it when one is watching Television. CME doesn't do damage to people on earth, but it damages their electronic material that is programmed by the satellites that are in orbit outside earth's atmosphere. Satellites have to be turned in a safe position by the owners before the CME hits earth because the radiation and pressure that the CME contains can do damage to the satellites that are outside the earth's atmosphere. The CME ruins the connection to the electronics on earth. When this happens, the satellite owners have to send someone up to the satellites so they could fix it.
ResultsA math problem was used for this project: s=d/t. This problem was used to solve how long it would take the CME to travel from the sun to earth.
ObservationFirst, I had to find the diameter of the sun, which is 1.4-milli kilometers. Then the distance from the sun to the earth which is 150 mili kilometers and also the total time on earth. Different sizes of CMEs were solved with this math problem. I discovered that the bigger the CME is, the longer it takes to reach earth. I did not make any graphs or any computer programming. But I made a power point for my interim report.
ConclusionA CME travels faster when it is small, and travels slower when it is big. The time it would take a CME to reach the earth from the sun was calculated, and also the damage that the CME causes. I was unable to do a C++ programming for this project.
AcknowledgmentsI would like to thank Vernetta Noble for letting us into the computer lab to work on our projects and also helping us and Mary Hines for going on the trips with us. I also want to thank Rick Espinoza for helping me with my project and Lucinda Chee, Shirleen Washburn, and Wes Beletso for helping me when I needed help.