A Talk on Solar Storms: The Dark Side of the Sun by Dr Ranadeep Sarkar

About the Talk:
When was the last time you really thought about the Sun? Have you ever imagined that the Sun may cause potential hazards to human technologies? The Sun isn’t just a lovely yellow circle that children doodle in their colouring books. It’s a giant ball of hot plasma which experiences violent eruptions in its atmosphere. These eruptions of plasma and magnetic waves can affect satellites and cause severe magnetic storms at near-Earth space. We need to predict such adverse space weather conditions to get advance alerts that may prevent the disruptions of electric and tele-communication system on Earth. In this talk, Dr Ranadeep Sarkar will share his experiences with space-weather forecasting, and his current work on cutting edge computer-based modelling which will be a steppingstone towards building a reliable space weather forecasting tool.

About the Speaker:
Dr Ranadeep Sarkar earned his PhD in Physics from the Physical Research Laboratory in India. For his postdoctoral experience, he relocated to the University of Helsinki and has been actively engaged in research there to the present day. His primary research interest centres around the observation and modeling of solar eruptive events, aiming to comprehend their origin and the subsequent space weather effects. He was awarded a three-year postdoctoral research grant funded by the Academy of Finland to conduct research on the topic Exploring the Formation, Evolution, and Space-weather Impact of Sheath-regions (EFESIS). Additionally, he has served as a visiting scholar at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center and the Royal Observatory of Belgium.