US Patent Issued to Board of Trustees of Western Michigan University on June 3 for "Advanced warning for solar flares from photosphere image analysis" (Michigan Inventors)

ALEXANDRIA, Va., June 4 -- United States Patent no. 12,320,949, issued on June 3, was assigned to Board of Trustees of Western Michigan University (Kalamazoo, Mich.).

"Advanced warning for solar flares from photosphere image analysis" was invented by Robert Allen Makin III (Kalamazoo, Mich.) and Steven Michael Durbin (Kalamazoo, Mich.).

According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "A method for quantifying disorder and extracting a corresponding numerical value of an order parameter from contrast analysis applied to optical images acquired of the solar photosphere. Temporal variation of the order parameter may be utilized to predict events such as solar flares, which have the ability to disrupt both communica...