Sun's shadow could tell us when solar storms are coming

摘要

We are used to the sun creating shadows when it hits other objects, but it casts its own when viewed through a cosmic ray detector. Now it seems monitoring this shadow could help us to prepare for solar bursts. Cosmic rays are high-energy, charged particles that constantly stream through the solar system, but are blocked in part by the magnetic field of the sun's corona. The result is a patch that is low in cosmic rays - a shadow - that appears on any cosmic ray detector on Earth.