Tech & Science Daily: Sun’s ‘canyon of fire’ shoots solar storms at Earth

Example of earlier super-hot ‘flares’ erupting near Sun’s surface, captured by Esa and Nasa’s British-built Solar Orbiter satellite.
Solar Orbiter/ESA/NASA
Rachelle Abbott22 July 2022

Electromagnetic explosions on the Sun’s surface have sparked what’s described as a “canyon of fire” that’s due to blast Earth with three days of solar storms.

The good news is experts say the electrically-conducting plasma zaps are likely to be mild, while Nasa has warned of weak power grid fluctuations and minor disruptions to satellite operations.

Britain’s leading architects are campaigning to improve building design to fight the climate crisis and cut carbon emissions in the centuries ahead.

We hear about the challenges of future-proofing construction materials against extreme heat from David Liddicoat, a partner at award-winning London architecture and interior design studio Liddicoat & Goldhill.

Facebook’s parent company Meta is revamping the social network’s main feed in a bid to tempt Gen Z users to the platform, under pressure from cooler apps like TikTok.

University of Cambridge researchers have developed a way to study the first stars through the clouds of hydrogen that filled the Universe after the Big Bang. Tech & Science Daily spoke to Dr Eloy de Lera Acedo, from Cambridge’s Cavendish Laboratory.

It’s hoped the Square Kilometre Array - which is a next-generation telescope due to be completed by the end of the decade - will be able to detect the cosmological signal of the stars through the thick hydrogen clouds.

Snap has painted a grim picture of the effects of a weakening economy on social media and declined to make a forecast in “incredibly challenging” conditions, sending its shares down 25 per cent.

Designers at the Netherlands’ Technical University of Eindhoven have built a prototype electric car they say doesn’t cause significant environmental damage and even captures carbon dioxide on every drive that’s converted into gas. A free pop-up in London’s Tottenham Court Road is offering commuters a mindfulness space complete with virtual clouds on the ceiling and mood music to help them relax a bit. And, endangered pine martens could be reintroduced to south-west England following a 150-year absence.

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