ALL YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT SOLAR WIND | Why Sunburst Hack Matter? | Video

ALL YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT SOLAR WIND

There is no end to learning and knowledge has no end because discoveries (about Solar Wind) are limitless with nature.

While we focus on coronavirus, mother earth gives us another spark of knowledge which happens to be the “Solar Wind”.

I have heard about the solar system while growing up but haven’t heard about solar wind or let me say; fewer lights shared about the Solar Wind. 

What is solar wind?

At a distance of more than a few solar radii from the sun, solar wind can attain a speed of about 250-750 km/s  and it’s ultrasonic; meaning having a speed without a sound(about Solar Wind).

Solar wind is a stream of charged particles that comes from the upper atmosphere of the sun called the corona. It could also be seen as the flow of particulars that comes off the sun at about one million miles per hour. The solar wind varies in density, temperature and speed over solar latitude and time.

Due to the hotness of the  corona, particles are flung off into space and they travel throughout the solar system in every direction.  As the sun spins, burns and burps, it creates complex swirls and eddies of particles.

These particles, mostly protons and electrons, are traveling about a million miles per hour as they pass Earth. 

However, the solar wind is known to have both positive and negative effects on our lives .

The solar wind protects us from stray cosmic rays coming from elsewhere in the galaxy—but the effects of storms on the sun’s surface can also affect (about Solar Wind) our telecommunications networks.

EARLY DISCOVERIES WHICH LEAD TO THE SUBJECT MATTER 

The existence of particles flowing outward from the Sun to the Earth was first suggested by British astronomer Richard C. Carrington. In 1859, Carrington and Richard Hodgson independently made the first observations of what would later be called a solar flare.

This is a sudden, localized increase in brightness on the solar disc, which is  known to often occur in conjunction with an episodic ejection of material and magnetic flux from the Sun’s atmosphere, known as a coronal mass ejection. 

The following day, a powerful geomagnetic storm was observed, and Carrington suspected that there might be a connection; the geomagnetic storm is now attributed to the arrival of the coronal mass ejection in near-Earth space and its subsequent interaction with the Earth’s magnetosphere.

Irish academic George FitzGerald later suggested that matter was being regularly accelerated away from the Sun, reaching the Earth after several days.

In 1910, British astrophysicist Arthur Eddington essentially suggested the existence of the solar wind, without naming it, in a footnote to an article on Comet Morehouse.

Eddington’s proposition was never fully embraced, even though he had also made a similar suggestion at a Royal Institution address the previous year, in which he had postulated that the ejected material consisted of electrons, whereas in his study of Comet Morehouse he had supposed them to be ions (about Solar Wind).

The idea that the ejected material consisted of both ions and electrons was first suggested by Norwegian scientist Kristian Birkeland(about Solar Wind). His geomagnetic surveys showed that auroral activity was almost uninterrupted. 

As these displays and other geomagnetic activity were being produced by particles from the Sun, he concluded that the Earth was being continually bombarded by “rays of electric corpuscles emitted by the Sun”. 

He proposed in 1916 that, “From a physical point of view it is most probable that solar rays are neither exclusively negative nor positive rays, but of both kinds”; in other words, the solar wind consists of both negative electrons and positive ions.

Three years later, in 1919, British physicist Frederick Lindemann also suggested that the sun ejects particles of both polarities: protons as well as electrons.

Around the 1930s, scientists had concluded that the temperature of the solar corona must be a million degrees Celsius because of the way it extended into space (as seen during a total solar eclipse). 

Later spectroscopic work confirmed this extraordinary temperature to be the case.

In the mid-1950s, British mathematician Sydney Chapman calculated the properties of a gas at such a temperature (about Solar Wind) and determined that the corona being such a superb conductor of heat, it must extend way out into space, beyond the orbit of Earth. 

Also in the 1950s, German astronomer Ludwig Biermann became interested in the fact that the tail of a comet always points away from the Sun, regardless of the direction in which the comet is travelling.

Biermann postulated that this happens because the Sun emits a steady stream of particles that pushes the comet’s tail away.

German astronomer Paul Ahnert is credited (by Wilfried Schröder) as being the first to relate solar wind to the direction of a comet’s tail based on observations of the comet Whipple-Fedke (1942g).

An icon then made the discovery that cleared the Air of Assumption

American astrophysicist Eugene Parker realised that heat flowing from the Sun in Chapman’s model, and the comet tail blowing away from the Sun in Biermann’s hypothesis, had to be the result (about Solar Wind) of the same phenomenon which he termed the “solar wind”. 

In 1957, Parker showed that although the Sun’s corona is strongly attracted by solar gravity, it is such a good conductor of heat that it is still very hot at large distances from the Sun.

As solar gravity weakens with increasing distance from the Sun, the outer coronal atmosphere (about Solar Wind) is able to escape supersonically into interstellar space.

Parker was also the first person to notice that the weakening influence of the Sun’s gravity has the same effect on hydrodynamic flow as a de Laval nozzle, inciting a transition from subsonic to supersonic flow. 

There was strong opposition to Parker’s hypothesis on the solar wind; the paper he submitted to The Astrophysical Journal in 1958 was rejected by two reviewers, before being accepted by the editor Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar.

In 2018, NASA launched the Parker Solar Probe, named in honor of American astrophysicist Eugene PaParker, Eugene N. (November 1958). “Dynamics of the Interplanetary Gas and Magnetic Fields”. The Astrophysical Journal. 

During its seven-year mission, the probe was to make twenty-four orbits of the Sun, passing further into the corona with each orbit’s perihelion, ultimately passing within 0.04 astronomical units of the Sun’s surface.

It is the first NASA spacecraft named for a living person, and Parker, at age 91, was on hand to observe the launch(about Solar Wind).

So What’s next after discovery?

The solar wind as earlier said has both positive and negative effects and so it’s imperative that a regular check on its flow be done to monitor it in order to reduce its effect on earth which can be catastrophic.

Although, the earth is shielded with a system known as the magnet field which  breaks the particles of the solar wind. But further, research says that the particles of solar wind are still capable of penetrating the earth(about Solar Wind). 

By this, there is an urgent need to keep monitoring the activity of the solar wind before it gets out of hand and also that it’s effect might not be felt that much in terms of preparation to avoid its effect. 

Why does the Sunburst Hack Matter?

There’s always a reason to long for more either as a person, a group and even as a nation and in the quest for more lies the unforeseen actions that leads to practices that calls for civil unrest.

So long there is more than one interest in a room filled with people, there’s bound to be disagreement. 

This takes us to the state of a nation where power has been the reason why a nation will submit to another nation. 

The US is known for its power and strength (about Solar Wind)to stand and even command other nations to order.

The question should be: what do they have that other nations lack?Why are they seen as the world power ? And other endless questions. 

No matter the questions there’s just an answer that’s very much simple to give as it gives you an answer to any question you can ask or think which is “KNOWLEDGE”. 

Today, an incident has brought the nation into a break of confusion as what should not be heard of had taken place which is the “the sunburst hack “.

What is the sunburst hack?

Sunburst hack is a massive, fifth-generation cyber attack, waged against US government agencies and technology companies.

The attack led to the compromise of systems in over 40 government agencies, including the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), the US agency responsible for nuclear weapons.

Targets in other countries, including Canada, Belgium, Britain, and Israel, were also hit. Sunburst hack is a supply chain attack (about Solar Wind)that targets large organizations indirectly, by breaching their direct suppliers. 

Attackers leveraged Sunburst to breach US software company SolarWinds. SolarWinds provides technology to manage and protect computer networks.  

How did Sunburst come about?

According to Reuters report; “Hackers believed to be working for Russia have been monitoring internal email traffic at the U.S. Treasury and Commerce departments, according to people familiar with the matter, adding they feared the hacks uncovered so far may be the tip of the iceberg”. 

SolarWinds, a major US information technology firm(about Solar Wind), was the subject of a cyberattack that spread to its clients and went undetected for months, Reuters first report in December. 

Foreign hackers, who some top US officials believe are from Russia, were able to use the hack to spy on private companies like the elite cybersecurity firm FireEye and the upper echelons of the US Government, including the Department of Homeland Security and Treasury Department. 

In early 2020, hackers secretly broke into Texas-based SolarWinds systems and added malicious code into the company’s software system(about Solar Wind). 

The system, called “Orion,” is widely used by companies to manage IT resources. Solarwinds has 33,000 customers that use Orion, according to SEC documents.

Most software providers regularly send out updates to their systems, whether it’s fixing a bug or adding new features. SolarWinds is no exception. 

Beginning as early as March of 2020, SolarWinds unwittingly sent out software updates to its customers that included the hacked code. 

The code created a backdoor to customer’s information technology systems, which hackers then used to install even more malware that helped them spy on companies and organizations(about Solar Wind). 

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Why does the Sunburst Hack Matter?

Knowing that the database of an organization and even governmental portal agencies have been compromised; is a enough reason to make such an act of crime a subject matter that needs serious Attention.

SolarWinds told the SEC that up to 18,000 of its customers installed updates that left them vulnerable to hackers.

Since SolarWinds has many high-profile clients, including Fortune 500 companies and multiple agencies in the US government, the breach could be massive. 

Microsoft president Brad Smith said in a February congressional hearing that more than 80% of the victims targeted were nongovernment organizations. 

The US agencies — including parts of the Pentagon, the Department of Homeland Security, the State Department, the Department of Energy, the National Nuclear Security Administration(about Solar Wind), and the Treasury — were attacked. 

So were private companies, like Microsoft, Cisco, Intel, and Deloitte, and other organizations like the California Department of State Hospitals, and Kent State University, the Wall Street Journal reported. 

And since the hack was done so stealthily, and went undetected for months, security experts say that some victims may never know if they were hacked or not, the Wall Street Journal reported.  

At the Treasury Department, hackers broke into dozens of email accounts and networks in the Departmental Offices of the Treasury, “home to the department’s highest-ranking officials,” Sen. Ron Wyden said. 

The IRS hasn’t found any evidence of being compromised, he added. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said on CNBC that the hackers have only accessed unclassified information, but the department is still investigating the extent of the breach. 

Based on these analysis,  that multiple networks have been penetrated, it will be expensive and very difficult to secure systems back.

Tom Bossert, President Trump’s former homeland security officer, said that it could be years before the networks(about Solar Wind) are secure again.

With access to government networks, hackers could, “destroy or alter data, and impersonate legitimate people,” Bossert wrote in an Op-Ed for the New York Times. 

Who is to be blamed for the Sunburst Attack?

Although, Federal investigators and cybersecurity experts say that Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service, known as the SVR, is probably responsible for the attack.

Russian intelligence was also credited with breaking into the email servers in the White House, the State Department, and the Joint Chiefs of Staff in 2014 and 2015. 

Later, the same group attacked the Democratic National Committee and members of the Hilary Clinton presidential campaign. Russia has denied any involvement with the breach and former President Donald Trump had suggested, without evidence, that Chinese hackers may be the culprits. 

But the Biden White House has said it may respond to the cyberattack in the coming weeks, which could include actions against the Russian government.

However,  not only is the breach one of the largest in recent memory, but it also comes as a wake-up call for federal cybersecurity efforts as the Cyber Command(about Solar Wind), which receives billions of dollars in funding and is tasked with protecting American networks, was “blindsided” by the attack, the New York Times reported. 

Instead, a private cybersecurity (about Solar Wind) firm called FireEye was the first to notice the breach when it noticed that its own systems were hacked. This is a whole lot more to digest.