From the casual conversation starter to the 24-hour cable channels and Web sites devoted exclusively to the subject, everyone talks about weather. There's even weather in space - and it's causing major upsets to our modern technological world. Space weather is all around us. There are no nightly news reports on space weather (yet), but we're rapidly developing the tools necessary to measure and observe trends in cosmic meteorology. New probes are going on-line that help us monitor the weather taking place miles above the Earth. But why does space weather matter? It doesn't affect whether we bring an umbrella to work or require us to monitor early school closings. It's far, far away and of little concern to us ...right! It was March 13, 1989. The Department of Defense tracking system that keeps tabs on 8,000 objects orbiting Earth suddenly loses track of 1,300 of them. In New Jersey, a $10 million transformer is burned up by a surge of extra current in the power lines. Shocks to a power station in Quebec leave 6 million people without electricity. New England power stations struggle to keep their power grid up. Listeners tuning in to their local stations in Minnesota hear the broadcasts of the California Highway Patrol. Residents of Florida, Mexico, and the Grand Cayman Islands see glowing curtains of light in the sky. All of these bizarre, and seemingly unconnected, events were caused by a storm on the Sun and a fire in the sky. A series of solar flares and explosions had launched bolts of hot, electrified gas at the Earth and stirred up the second largest magnetic storm in recorded history. Before rockets and radio and the advent of other modern devices, we probably would never have noticed the effects of this space storm. But in today's electrically powered, space-faring world, the greatest space storm of the twenty-second solar maximum rang like a wake-up call. And we are now in the midst of another solar maximum, the effects of which are expected to be felt all the way through the year 2004. "Storms from the Sun" explores the emerging physical science of space weather and traces its increasing impact on a society that relies on space-based technologies. Authors Carlowicz and Lopez explain what space weather really means to us down here - and what it may mean for future explorations and colonization of distant worlds. By translating the findings of NASA and other top scientists into fascinating and accessible descriptions of the latest discoveries, we are privy to some of the most closely held secrets that the solar - terrestrial system has to offer.
Growing up in Edison, New Jersey, Mike Carlowicz wanted to be an "-ologist." First he wanted to be an archaeologist, then a meteorologist, chemical engineer, and astronomer. Eventually he settled on biologist. At age 18, he told a local reporter (in a story about being the youngest American Legion baseball coach in the state) that he hoped "to find a cure for something." The only thing he has ever cured is boredom, as he rarely stays with one topic or in one place long enough to wear it out.
While floundering in chemistry class at Georgetown University, he decided that he was not cut out for the detail-driven work of a scientist. He switched to an English major, though he really majored in his college newspaper, The Hoya. He completely overlooked the fact that writers are as rigorous and detail-driven about words as scientists are about data.
Two years into a journalism career at The Discovery Channel, he served as ship's naturalist among a group of city-slicker editors sailing on the Chesapeake Bay. While observing once-threatened ospreys nesting on channel markers and watching engineers at war with rising seas around Tangier Island, Virginia, Mike rediscovered his love of science. He soon applied to The Johns Hopkins University to study science writing, stunned that anyone would offer such a degree and curious why anyone would pay him to be a lifelong student.
So far, he has convinced scientists and experts in several fields--geophysics (Eos/American Geophysical Union), medicine (Clinical Laboratory News), space physics (NASA Goddard Space Flight Center), oceanography (Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution) and Earth science (NASA) --- into letting him write about their work. He has written three books springing out of his NASA experience --- Storms from the Sun (Joseph Henry Press, 2002), The Sun (H.N. Abrams Books, June 2006), and The Moon (H.N. Abrams Books, June 2007). His next book adventure will rise out of the ocean or the ice.
Whether teaching nonfiction or procrastinating instead of writing, Mike relishes every day that he gets paid to talk to scientists and engineers, to learn how the planet and universe works, and to observe the first draft of science history.
