ISWI Newsletter - Vol.4 No.67
16 June 2012

Dear ISWI Participant:

"Heliophysics Summer School" is in its sixth year now. For the latest info on it, please go to: http://www.vsp.ucar.edu/Heliophysics/summer-about-lectures.shtml (last updated on 13 June 2012)

As most of you know, Space Weather is getting more and more attention these days in governments, in the media, in industry, and in classrooms. An example of this attention is the impact space weather can have on contemporary electrical technology, which advances so quickly that we cannot be certain that it is necessarily safe from solar events and other events that take place in outer space. Maybe we are fine -- maybe we are not.

I would like to quote a passage from a forthcoming article, "White House and Agencies Focus on Space Weather Concerns", in AGU Eos (Page 235, Vol. 93, No. 25, 19 June 2012) :
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Louis J. Lanzerotti, distinguished research professor of physics at the New Jersey Institute of Technology’s Center for Solar- Terrestrial Research, provided a history of the impacts of space weather on electrical technology. “We have a vast array of unseen physical processes in the space around the Earth that can affect our technologies as we go forward. As the complexity of systems increases, including their interconnectedness and their interoperability, they become more susceptible to space weather effects,” said Lanzerotti, editor of Space Weather: The International Journal of Research and Applications, which is published by AGU. He added that it is not a matter of whether space weather affects the Earth but rather when solar events might occur and how big they might be.
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If you have young physics students under your wings, consider sending the brightest ones to the summer school mentioned above. If not this year, then next year.

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With kind regards,
George Maeda
Editor of ISWI Newsletter
Hakozaki Campus, Kyushu University, Japan.

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