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About The Battalion. (College Station, Tex.) 1893-current | View Entire Issue (Oct. 30, 2003)
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Offer expires Wednesday, Nov. 5, 2003 Grab your friend, roommate, whatever, and do the following: 1. Cut out this coupon 2. Drive to Margarita Rocks 3. Give this coupon to your server 4. Someone eats free, they watch sports, and kick back with the city’s best patio and killer drink menu. Stick around for live music on the patio 680-0600 * Must present this ad for special. * Free entree must be equal or lesser value. Offer expires I 1/5/03. Texas Ave. Q n JZ if) Culpepper C 3 CD Plaza P 1 0) O) vl O MARGARITA (3 ROCKS Thursday, October 30, 2003 NATIO' THE BATTALIO' Potent geomagnetic storm hits Eartl disrupting airline communications By Joseph Verrengia THE ASSOCIATED PRESS DENVER — The most power ful geomagnetic storm possible walloped the Earth early Wednesday, knocking out some airline communications but appar ently causing no large power out ages or other major problems. The storm, the most disrup tive to hit Earth since 1989, was unleashed by the fourth-most powerful solar flare ever seen, NASA said. The gigantic cloud of highly charged particles hurled from the sun posed a threat to electric utilities, high frequency radio communications, satellite navi gation systems and television broadcasts. Continued turbu lence on the sun remains a con cern for the next week, space forecasters say. The biggest immediate effect was the blackout of high-fre quency voice-radio communica tions for planes flying far north ern routes. But airliners in an emergency could still communicate through VHF contact with another air craft or military monitoring sta tion, said Louis Garneau, a spokesman for the company that handles Canada’s civil aviation navigation service. British controllers were keeping trans-Atlantic jets on more southerly routes than usual to avoid the problem. The particle storm, measuring 13 times larger than Earth, was rated a G5, the Highest intensity on scientists’ scale of space weather. Space observers have measured G5 storms five times in the past 15 years, but few of them have hit Earth so directly. It whipped through the solar system at about 5 million mph, takiijg just 19 hours to travel the 93 million miles from the sun to envelop the planet. Federal sci entists said it collided with Earth’s magnetic field at 1:13 a.m. EST on Wednesday, about 12 hours earlier than predicted. Last week, a weaker solar Hare erupted on the sun’s sur face, but scientists said the parti cle cloud from that event largely spared the planet. Such storms pose no direct threat to people on the ground because the Earth’s thick atmos phere deflects and absorbs incom- Solar storm causes disruptions A large solar storm traveled to Earth Wednesday in about 19 hours. Typically storms can take more than four days to reach the Earth. Storms of this size occur about three times every 11 years — Solar flares Flares send out electromagnetic rays and electrically charged particles that disrupt the Earths magnetic field. ing charged particles. But the storm may produce colorful auro Earth's ras in the northern night sky visi ble as far south as El Paso, Texas, Storm’s possible effects magnetic field beginning late Wednesday. Biological Satellite Other The last time a G5 storm hit Astronauts and people in planes Disruptions Radio Earth was in 1989, which dam at higher latitudes experience in memory. communica aged the power grid and caused greater radiation than normal imaging and lions in the electrical blackouts in the (equivalent to 10 chest X-rays is reduced poles may- Canadian province of Quebec. possible). solar panel blackout “It is extremely rare to get this NOTE: Drawing is not to scale efficiency said Larry Combs, forecaster for the Space Weather Center at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in Boulder. “This is one of the strongest storms that we have received during this cycle.” There were few immediate reports of damage related to the geomagnetic storm. However, Combs said, “We know that our power grids are definitely feel ing the effects of this.” That’s because disruptions in the magnetic field caused by the incoming particles can induce power surges and other current fluctuations in electrical systems. In Princeton, N.J., officials at the North American Electric Reliability Council, which over sees the power grid, said this storm had not caused any fail ures so far. Geomagnetic storms have caused power disturbances in the United States and Canada at least 1 1 times since 1940. Among the precautions taken SOURCE. NASA by various utilities: making less electricity at generating stations, removing vulnerable transmission lines from service and adding voltage control equipment. The increased solar activity is also affecting the international space station. The Expedition 8 crew. Commander Mike Foale and Russian cosmonaut Alexander Kaleri, briefly retreated to the aft end of the station’s service mod ule, which is shielded from higher levels of radiation. The pair will spend about 20 minutes there, twice on each orbit of the Earth for about three orbits, until the station phases out of the high radiation areas. The sun generates flares and particle stonns in 11-year cycles as sunspots develop. The current solar cycle peaked nearly three years ago. so such a powerful event occurring on the cycle’s downside is especially surprising. In Tokyo, Japan’s space agency said the Kodama commu nications satellite malfunction because of the flare, so it waste porarily shut down. There wasi major communication disrupt!/, the agency said. Space scientists in the 0 and Europe, as well as comm cial satellite operators, down some delicate instrumei and turned them away from storm’s blast. Solar panels e particularly vulnerable. Researchers said Earth n protected from the storm’s impact because the magnelt field of the storm cloud wa pointed north in the same dim tion as Earth’s magnetic field. But if the cloud’s magnet: field shifted southward - something that still could pen, scientists say — itso| ing force would, in effect, a “hole” in the planet's magnit- ic shield. That could resulti later disruptions to electrici systems, they said. 40 names removed from WTC death tol By Sara Kugler THE ASSOCIATED PRESS NEW YORK — Forty names listed on the World Trade Center death toll for more than two years were removed Wednesday because the city cannot confirm their deaths or — in some cases — their existence. The list was cut from 2,792 to 2,752, a decision made by several city agencies, including the medical examiner’s office, the police department and the mayor’s office. The names removed include illegal immigrants whose jobs were not well documented and people whose relatives say they were near the trade center on Sept. 11,2001, but know little more. Thousands of names landed on the list in the chaos immedi ately after the attack, when wor ried callers swamped the city’s “missing” hot lines to report a friend or relative they hadn’t heard from. Missing-person reports poured in from around the world, many from people who gave only sketchy information, partial phone numbers, mis spelled names and few details. The city formed a group called the Reported Missing Committee, charged with weeding out fraud and crossing errors off the death list, which peaked at 6,700 two weeks after the attack. As of early September 2003, police had made about 40 arrests related to people falsely claim ing they lost loved ones, and law enforcement agencies in other cities have nabbed others. In most cases, victims whose remains have not been identified World Trade Center death toll adjusted 7.000 e.ooo 9B 5,000 IB B| B 4,00° ||f| 3,000 « SI ■ 2,000 m Bfrii 1,000 jB( Mat The official number of people who died at the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001 was reduced by 40 to 2,752. Death toM at the World Trade Center Be, it.Sept. Oct. Nov. Dec. Jan. Feb. March April Aug. Sept. Oct. Nov. 24 1 1 1 1 1 1 22 19* 6 7 1 2001 1 * The 10 hijackers were removed from the list. SOURCE: Associated Press 2002 4 have been legally declared dead by the court and their families issued death certificates based on documents or other proof they were at the trade center or on the hijacked airplanes. In the names removed Wednesday, no such proof wi ever found and remains weri never identified. About 60 pet cent of the victims have U remains identified. The tally had stood at 2,791 since December 2002. OUR GUAC ROCKS. Ckipoile. CHIP IN WITH SOME FRIENDS. UNIVERSITY OR. & COLLEGE AVE. NEWS IN BRIEF Harry Potter books blamed for y Hogwarts headaches' A pediatrician says he had three otherwise healthy children complain of headaches for two to three days last summer. It turns out all had been reading the 870-page “Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix” in marathon sessions. “The kids I saw were all avid Harry Potter fans who just plowed through the book,” said Dr. Howard J. Bennett, whose office is ii 1 Washington. “A lot of my kids would be readinc six, eight hours a day. And it’s a big book fora 9- or 10-year-old child.” He dubbed their ailment “Hogwarts headache” after the Hogwarts School ol Witchcraft and Wizardry that the boy wizard attends. He said the youngsters’ headaches were probably caused by tensing their head muscles for long periods. The The Best in Adult Entertainment • Happy Hour Daily until 7pm s 2.00 Well / s 2.00 Drafts tf L 2 for 1 Cover with Student ID Sat. - Wed. 5pm-2am Thurs. - Fri. 2pm-2am (979) 690-1478 read the fine print. 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