Sunstorm Read Online Free PDF

.”
    Siobhan was shown a view of the whole world, taken from a remote Earth resources satellite. Over the planet’s night side aurorae were painted in delicate, heartbreakingly beautiful swirls. But the world below was not so pretty. Darkened continents were outlined by the lights of the cities strung along their coasts and the major river valleys—but those necklaces of lights were broken. As each outage triggered problems in neighboring regions, the blackouts were spreading like infections. Power utilities were in some places trying to help each other out, but, Phillippa said, there was conflict; Quebec was accusing New York of “stealing” some of its megawatts. In a few places Siobhan saw the ominous glows of fires.
    All this in a couple of hours, Siobhan thought. How fragile the world is.
    But the satellite imagery was full of hash, and at last it broke down altogether, leaving a pale blue screen.
    “Well, this is dreadful. But what can I do?”
    Phillippa again looked suspicious.
You need to ask?
“Professor McGorran, this is a geomagnetic storm. Which is primarily caused by problems with the sun.”
    “Oh. And so you called an astronomer.” Siobhan suppressed an urge to laugh. “Phillippa, I’m a cosmologist. I haven’t even thought about the sun since my undergraduate days.”
    Toby Pitt touched her arm. “But you’re the Astronomer Royal,” he said quietly. “They’re out of their depth. Who else are they going to call?”
    Of course he was right. Siobhan had always wondered if her royal warrant, and the vague public notoriety that came with it, was worth the trouble. The first Astronomers Royal, men like Flamsteed and Halley, had run the observatory at Greenwich and had spent most of their time making observations of the sun, Moon, and stars for use in navigation. Now, though, her job was to be a figurehead at conferences like today’s, or an easy target for lazy journalists looking for a quote—and, it seemed, an escape route for politicians in a crisis. She said to Toby, “Remind me to quit when this is all over.”
    He smiled. “But in the meantime . . .” He stood up. “Is there anything you need?”
    “Coffee if you can get it, please. Water if not.” She raised her own phone to her face; she felt a spasm of guilt that she hadn’t even noticed it had lost its signal. “And I need to speak to my mother,” she said. “Could you bring me a land line?”
    “Of course.” He left the room.
    Siobhan turned back to Phillippa. “All right. I’ll do my best. Keep the line open.”
    6: Forecast
    Dressed in recycled-paper coveralls, Mikhail and Eugene sat in Mikhail’s small, cluttered wardroom.
    Eugene cradled a coffee. They were both awkward, silent. It seemed strange to Mikhail that such a handsome kid should be so shy.
    “So, neutrinos,” Mikhail said tentatively. “Tsiolkovski must be a small place. Cozy! You have many friends there?”
    Eugene looked at him as if he were talking in a foreign tongue. “I work alone,” he said. “Most of them down there are assigned to the gravity-wave detector.”
    Mikhail could understand that. Most astronomers and astrophysicists were drawn to the vast and faraway: the evolution of massive stars and the biography of the universe itself, as revealed by exotic signals like gravity waves—
that
was sexy. The study of the solar system, even the sun itself, was local, parochial, limited, and swamped with detail.
    “That’s always been the trouble with getting people to work on space weather, even though it’s of such practical importance,” he said. “The sun–Earth environment is a tangle of plasma clouds and electromagnetic fields, and the physics involved is equally messy.” He smiled. “We’re in the same boat, I suppose, me stranded at the Pole of the Moon, you stuck down a Farside hole, both pursuing our unglamorous work.”
    Eugene looked at him more closely. Mikhail had the odd feeling that this was the first time the younger man