Huge solar storms could zap Earth, scientists warn...

[Cessna Invesco Palin]

An 11-year epoch of increasingly severe solar storms that could fry power grids, disrupt cell-phone calls, knock satellites back to Earth, endanger astronauts in space, and force commercial airliners to change their routes to protect their radio communications and to avoid deadly solar radiation could begin as soon as this fall, scientists announced Monday.

When the solar cycle reaches its peak in 2012, it will hurl at Earth mammoth solar storms with intense radiation and clouds of high-speed subatomic particles millions of miles across, the scientists said.

A storm of that magnitude could short-circuit a world increasingly dependent on giant utilities and satellite communications networks. Such a storm in 1989 caused power grids to collapse, causing a five-hour blackout in Quebec.

Monday's forecast was announced by scientists from agencies including NASA and the National Science Foundation, based on research centered at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Colorado.




http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2006/03/07/MNGAFHJJL91.DTL

[havocmom]

1. Couple of sites for those interested in sky watching:

Auroral Activity

http://www.sec.noaa.gov/pmap/

And for solar storm updates and heads up about any interesting stuff in the sky, this is a handy site and you can sign up for email alerts. People also upload pitures which are interesting. There is a table of near earth astroids to see too.

http://www.spaceweather.com/

[bananas]

25. Here is a great site for auroras

You can sign up for email alerts and warnings (and even pager alerts),
a live discussion forum, live observation reports, and other good stuff.
http://www.spacew.com/

[mike_c]

26. those are among my all time favorite web sites....

eom

[Atman]

2. Lemme guess...it will happen in November, 2006

And computers and polling equipment will go down all across America, and it will take the GOP two years to schedule a "new" election because of all the confusion.

[Cessna Invesco Palin]

3. Damn, dude.

I mean, I know cynical, and that's cynical.

:)

[AX10]

6. It just might happen then.

Cynical? Yes, but possible.

[RaleighNCDUer]

11. OTOH, maybe the republican election computers will get fried

and we'll be forced to rely on hand-counted paper ballots.

And actually win an election, for a change.

[RobertSeattle]

4. GOP will probably respond with.... tax cuts

[Cessna Invesco Palin]

5. How about invading the sun?

To liberate it.

[goondogger]

7. The sun hates us

for our freedoms. Besides, the vast energy resources of the sun could be used to pay for the war and reconstruction.

:evilgrin:

[sakabatou]

8. The sun is a suicide bomber waiting to happen

It will destroy us all someday! :evilgrin:

[Sequoia]

22. Rumsfield and Cheney to fire atomic bombs at the sun

Who needs the sun, snarled Dead Eye Dick. I live in a bunker and so can you.

[Texifornia]

12. You would have to go at night! n/t

[Mnemosyne]

14. Welcome to DU Texifornia!

:hi: :rofl:

[ozymandius]

17. Can't. The sun signed energy deals with China.

That means we're screwed.

[SledDriver]

23. Bushco would probably invade Neptune...

after convincing the sheeple that Neptune was involved in the solar storms and was directly linked to the Sun.

[savemefromdumbya]

9. God, it could short-circuit those Diebold machines!

what a shame

[Mithras61]

10. Should be interesting...

I saw a program on the History Channel that attributed part of the warming prior to a mini-ice age in the ~1000-1299 CE period to be because of increased solar activity, which was followed by a reduction in solar activity for the ~1300-1850 CE mini-ice age. With the increased temperature that we've already experienced in the last few decades, the solar storms increase could cause some interesting effects...

[TallahasseeGrannie]

13. Can we blame this on the Right Wing?

Please?

[Cessna Invesco Palin]

16. Probably not.

I was, however, waiting for someone to blame it on global warming.

[mom cat]

18. Consider it done. I hereby blame the Repukes for this disaster!

:bounce::bounce::smoke::smoke::toast::smoke::smoke::bounce::bounce:

[theHandpuppet]

15. 2012, huh?

Now where have I heard that date before? :think:

[shadowknows69]

19. yeah, Mayan Calendar

not good.

[mom cat]

20. End of the Mayan calender. Yea, I had the same thought. Hope this does not

mess with the timing of project X.

[SpiralHawk]

33. World of the 4th Sun ended in 1987, we are in null zone now

Dec. 21, 20012 marks the start of the World of the 5th Sun.

From the mouths of the Daykeepers themselves

http://www.chiron-communications.com/communique%207-10.html

"The Mayan calendars are an object of intense interest for many thousands of people right now, because they focus upon the watershed date of Dec. 21, 2012. Everything changes by then, it is said...

(snip)

[mom cat]

50. Facinating link. Thanks. I bookmarked it and will dwell on it.

[Sivafae]

51. Thanks for the link. I can see now why things are happening the way they

are happening. (Not that I really need an answer to this question, but are the ones, ie Bush et al, conscious of what they are doing and why?) But now that I can see what is going on, I can help fight it better. I just got a clearer picture of why I am doing what I am doing in my life. Bless us all.

[SpiralHawk]

52. You are welcome

"From that 1987 date until now, Mr. Barrios says, we have been in a time when the right arm of the materialistic world is disappearing, slowly but inexorably. We are at the cusp of the era when peace begins, and people live in harmony with Mother Earth. We are no longer in the World of the Fourth Sun, but we are not yet in the World of the Fifth Sun. This is the time in-between, the time of transition.


"As we pass through transition there is a colossal, global convergence of environmental destruction, social chaos, war, and ongoing Earth changes. All this, Mr. Barrios says, was foreseen via the simple, spiral mathematics of the Mayan calendars."

(snip)

[jseankil]

21. so what happened in 2001?

this happens every 11 years, sounds like hype to me.

[Viva_La_Revolution]

48. I had customers lose their cell phone connections

during the storms of 2001. But never for more than a few hours.

[Wilber_Stool]

24. Don't worry

No sun spots today.



http://www.spaceweather.com/

[4dsc]

27. How many times I have heard this before

I have lost count at the number of times a report comes along about solar storms going to knock out our communications and nothing ever happens..

[angryxyouth]

28. Thats what Shrub and the Directer of FEMA are going to say.

"Uh,and that's why.... we didn't.... uh.. take it serious...":nopity:

[Solon]

32. Wouldn't say nothing has ever happened...

Even as far back as a hundred or more years ago, telegraph wires, electrical trolleys, etc have all been knocked out by solar storms.

http://www.solarstorms.org/SRefStorms.html

[DemoTex]

34. Sat-com and sat-nav are the most vulnerable.

Satellite communication and navigation systems, which are now ubiquitous, are more vulnerable to the flux from solar storms than earth-based systems (including power grids). The 11-year solar cycle almost always disrupts some electronic communications systems to some extent, and enhances some other forms of electronic communications. Ask any Ham radio operator about the fantastic peak-cycle "skip" during the solar storms on the HF (high-frequency) bands. Last peak-cycle (2000-2001) I regularly communicated with Australia, New Zealand, and Japan on 10-meters using less that 10 watts P.E.P. with PSK-31 from Dallas, Texas.

With respect to the power grids, I am much more worried about fossil fuel availability (and the damage done from relying on that fuel source), nuclear plant safety, and the threat of terrorists targeting the grids.

[Ian David]

29. But the important questions are...

1) Will they re-broadcast episodes of 24 if nobody gets to see them because the entire network was knocked off-line?

2) Will the cable company give us partial credit for service missed due to satellites falling out of orbit?

These are the things scientists should be asking right now.

:sarcasm:

[One_Life_To_Give]

30. With our protective magnetic shield weakening, could be interesting

Has anyone looked at how this will impact us. Concidering that the earths magnetic field has been weakening over recent decades. We have less protection from these storms than at any other time in our history.

[bananas]

39. Solar wind to shield Earth during pole flip

I guess we'll find out.

http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn4985

Solar wind to shield Earth during pole flip

09:30 15 May 2004

<snip>

In a paper to be published in the journal Astronomy and Astrophysics, Guido Birk and Harald Lesch of the University of Munich, Germany, and Christian Konz of the Max Planck Institute for Plasma Physics in Garching report an investigation of exactly what happens when the field is drastically reduced or vanishes altogether.

Their simulations show that the solar wind - the million-kilometre-an-hour stream of hydrogen and helium nuclei from the sun - wraps itself around the Earth in a way that induces a magnetic field in the ionosphere as strong as the original field.

<snip>

Abstract (pdf) http://www.arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0404580

[cantstandbush]

31. So, our scientists are catching up to the Mayans. n/t

[BiggJawn]

35. On the bright side, the Auroras will be nice in Galveston...

Should make HF communications interesting, provided Mac and I aren't trying to get AAR on a razor blade set in some Camp someplace....

[Massachusetts]

36. Huge solar storms could zap Earth

Good! Something that Bu$hco can't control or do anything about. In the scheme of things this administration is just a piss hole on the snow.

[muriel_volestrangler]

37. Can anyone tell me how power grids are affected?

Radio communications I can understand; but why are power lines more or less at ground level vulnerable?

[bananas]

42. wikipedia has an explanation - affects pipelines too

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geomagnetic_storm#Electric_power

Electric power

When magnetic fields move about in the vicinity of a conductor such as a wire, an electric current is induced into the conductor. This happens on a grand scale during geomagnetic storms (the same mechanism also influences telephone and telegraph lines, see above). Power companies transmit alternating current to their customers via long transmission lines. The nearly direct currents induced in these lines from geomagnetic storms are harmful to electrical transmission equipment, especially to the transformers—it overheats their coils and causes saturation of their cores, constraining their performance; it also tends to trip various protective devices. On March 13, 1989, in Québec, 6 million people were without commercial electric power for 9 hours as a result of a huge geomagnetic storm. Some areas in the northeastern U.S. and in Sweden also lost power. By receiving geomagnetic storm alerts and warnings, power companies can minimize damage and power outages.

Pipelines

Rapidly fluctuating geomagnetic fields can induce currents into pipelines. During these times, several problems can arise for pipeline engineers. Flow meters in the pipeline can transmit erroneous flow information, and the corrosion rate of the pipeline is dramatically increased. If engineers unwittingly attempt to balance the current during a geomagnetic storm, corrosion rates may increase even more. Pipeline managers routinely receive alerts and warnings to help them provide an efficient and long-lived system.

[rman]

38. "the next sunspot cycle will be 30 to 50 percent stronger

than the last one,"

I think that's the crux of the report.

[Hobarticus]

40. Get me Ben Affleck on the phone! I smell "Armageddon II"! n/t

[Canuckistanian]

41. Limbaugh was talking about it today

He says this is the real reason for Global Warming. All those librul scientists are not telling you the truth!

:crazy: :crazy: :crazy: :crazy:

[Mithras61]

43. Rush Limpballs is the reason for global warming...

it's his constant bloviating... all that hot air is doing the rest of us in!

[muriel_volestrangler]

44. I suppose it's too much to hope that someone asked why future storms

have already caused global warming? Does any dittohead have the power of independent thought?

[Canuckistanian]

46. It's not worth it...

They'll be back to saying the same thing tomorrow.

[yellowcanine]

45. Pat Robertson's prayers must have been answered. Hopefully just his

house will lose power. No point in punishing his neighbors for a patwa gone awry.

[leftofthedial]

47. dude!

wanna catch some rays?

[truthisfreedom]

49. all the more reason to install solar panels and wind generators on your

house. i have a natural gas generator for backup now, but i plan to install solar within 5 years.