(SOMATÓRIA)
SUN STRUCK
The space-weather forecast for the next few years: solar storms, with a chance of catastrophic blackouts on Earth. Are we prepared?
On Thursday, September 1, 1859, a 33-year-old beer brewer and amateur astronomer named Richard Carrington climbed the stairs to his private observatory near London, opened the dome slit, and as was his habit on a sunny morning, adjusted his telescope to project an 11-inch image of the sun onto a screen. He was tracing sunspots on a piece of paper when, before his eyes, "two patches of intensely bright and white light" suddenly appeared amid one large sunspot group. At the same time the magnetometer needle dangling from a silk thread at London's Kew Observatory began dancing wildly. Before dawn the next day enormous auroral displays of red, green and purple illuminated the skies as far south as Hawaii and Panama.
The flare Carrington had observed heralded a solar superstorm – an enormous electromagnetic outburst that sent billions of tons of charged particles hurtling toward Earth. Hours later our planet was hit by the most powerful geomagnetic storm on record. When the invisible wave collided with the planet's magnetic field, it caused electrical currents to surge through telegraph lines. The blast knocked out service at several stations.
No solar superstorm as powerful as the 1859 event has occurred since, so it is difficult to calculate what impact a comparable storm might have on today's more wired world. A recent National Academy of Sciences report estimates that such a storm could wreak the economic disruption of twenty Katrina-class hurricanes, costing one to two trillion dollars in the first year alone and taking a decade to recover from.
Adaptado de: Timothy Ferris. National Geographic Magazine – junho de 2012.
Com relação ao que fez Carrington, no dia 1º de setembro de 1859, como de costume, assinale o que for correto.
01) Subiu as escadas para seu observatório.
02) Verificou a agulha do magnetômetro que pendia de uma linha de seda.
04) Traçou manchas solares em uma folha de papel.
08) Abriu o domo e ajustou o telescópio.