Space Weather research and applications: Cosmic Rays
meeting room, 2nd floor
BIRA-IASB
Monitoring and measuring cosmic particles and radiation for space weather research and applications
The continuous advances in communications, services automation and computer technologies has led to immense improvement in the quality and safety of life, the manufacturing and transportation technologies. The modern society has become dependent on these technological advances. Even more, the ordinary everyday life is unthinkable without their the correct and reliable operation. Its failures to deliver would bring huge and presently unknown material damage and disturbances.
The question how resistant is this technology and its infrastructure to natural disasters, environmental and space effects is not yet satisfactorily determined. Based on the present knowledge and understanding the complete answer to this question might be elusive. Even worse - the possible damage might not be recoverable.
In recent years, the potential effects of the Sun and its activity has been well identified as possible factors that might knock off our highly technological systems and infrastructure. It has drawn huge attention in order to fully understand the known and the unknown effects of space environment to our everyday life, effects referred to as space weather.
The goal - to prevent and/or minimize the negative effects and damage. Space weather has become an important factor in systems design, transportation, communication and electrical power management.
The source of space weather - the Sun and its activity - play the leading role in this phenomenon by producing streams of particles and atoms and magnetic fields - the solar cosmic rays and magnetic fields. Space weather research is directed mainly on the complex interaction of the Sun's magnetic fields and particles with the omnipresent galactic cosmic rays and the Earth's magnetosphere.
Its primary objective is to explain these interactions, to develop models and to apply these models for now- and forecast. A major obstacle is the limited number of instruments and their price.
In January 2019, a new instrument to monitor the intensity of the cosmic rays particles commenced continuous operation. The instrument is largely based on a standard neutron monitor without the lead producer.
This conference has the objective to introduce this new space weather instrument, to present some of the aspects and research topics and show the recent advances in space weather research. An important message of the meeting is to emphasize the importance of space weather observations, research, and modelling.
Speakers
Confirmed
Erwin De Donder
Karl-Ludwig Klein, Observatoire de Paris, France
Danislav Sapundjiev
Tentative
Mark Dierckxsens
If you want to contribute, please contact dasapund at meteo.be
Registration
Is for free. Click on the link next to the registration part 'Apply here'.
All participants are welcome to join for a free lunch at 13:00 in the RMI-kanteen. On the menu: 'Cheese plate with fruits and bread'. If you want to join for lunch, email kevin.michaux@oma.be before April 16 - obligatory!
Agenda
The agenda below is a preliminary agenda.