How do flares work on the moon

A typical dental x-ray, for example, delivers about 0. So, for the crew of the ISS, the Jan. On the Moon, Cucinotta estimates, an astronaut protected by no more than a space suit would have absorbed about 50 rem of ionizing radiation. That's enough to cause radiation sickness. Right : The Jan. The many speckles are solar protons striking the spacecraft's digital camera.

The key word is suddenly. You can get rem spread out over a number of days or weeks with little effect. Spreading the dose gives the body time to repair and replace its own damaged cells. But if that rem comes all at once It's legendary at NASA because it happened during the Apollo program when astronauts were going back and forth to the Moon regularly. At the time, the crew of Apollo 16 had just returned to Earth in April while the crew of Apollo 17 was preparing for a moon-landing in December.

Luckily, everyone was safely on Earth when the sun went haywire. The spate of explosions caused, "a proton storm much worse than the one we've just experienced," adds Cucinotta. Researchers have been studying it ever since. Cucinotta estimates that a moonwalker caught in the August storm might have absorbed rem.

A quick trip back to Earth for medical care could have saved the hypothetical astronaut's life. Below : One of the August solar flares. Click to view a 2-MB mpeg movie of the explosion, which solar physicists call "the seahorse flare.

Surely, though, no astronaut is going to walk around on the Moon when there's a giant sunspot threatening to explode. Related Questions. Still Curious? Will a signal flare burn on the moon?

If so for how long. Sure, a signal flare will burn on the moon, but you have to make a special one. Both should burn in a bright red colour. In zero gravity, there is no up or down. The Sun is a blackbody—its light output is related to its high temperature. So, neglecting air resistance, the bullet will go about 6 times farther on the Moon than on Earth. Once you take air resistance into account, the Moon bullet has an even bigger advantage! If you do face a lethal threat, then a flare gun is a very bad tool for self-defense.

Consider a firearm. On Earth, the atmosphere supplies that oxygen. But while the moon has no atmosphere, most signal flares would still work there, said John Moore, director of the Institute for Chemical Education at UW-Madison, because flares generally contain an oxidizer — a chemical that can release the oxygen it contains quickly during combustion.