Here’s a fun space fact for the day – The Met Office is today set to open its Space Weather Operations Centre, designed to forecast conditions somewhat further from home.
As opposed to providing us with essential information like “avoid going to Mars today”, the centre will monitor solar activity in order to provide an early warning of any major events. Solar flares can disrupt communications and power networks, with potentially huge knock-on effects on modern life.
It’s a bit like living in the future really – it’s bizarre to imagine this grey office block in Exeter is monitoring the celestial event so often used in science fiction. As US and UK astronomers work together to keep us abreast of flares and solar storms, it might be some time before the updates hit the regular news broadcasts, but this is a cool development in any case.
Head over to the Met Office Space Weather page for more info on the project.
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