Nasa warns solar flares from 'huge space storm' will cause devastation

Sounds like a good time for a savvy high-tech inventor to come out with a magnetic surge protector to shield our electrical systems and devices.

reply to post by ziggy1706


Wow... I guess you never studied astronomy...


You act as if you have never learned about solar cycles? The thing that the video above does not tell you, that the article does, is that there are two solar cylces which are pertinent here.

The 11 year pole flip
The 22 year Heat maximum

Both of these will happen at the same time. Of one thing you are correct though... I don't believe we can nail it down to a day, or week for this to occur... most likely a month...

Now, for those of you who don't remember the last 11 year pole flip, I had just gotten my first Motorolla Smart Pager which was not only a pager but allowed you to send emails! I think it was called PageWriter or something like that...

Anyway, they stopped working for a few days because the sats were knocked out by this 11 year cycle.

Now... at the time, cellphones had just emerged from their former "Big Brick" days... and sending email via the cell networks was extremely novel...

Now fastforward 11 years... many more "birds" in the air right now.... cell phones and other 3g/4g equipment is ubiquitous....who still has a tube in their TV now? I did 11 years back... but now it's a flat screen....

You see, a lot has happened with us technologically over the past 11 years...

Now... throw the 22 year solar maximum on top of this

No matter how intense the experience may or may not be... we will definitely all experience this as sats go down for a 24 -48 hour period... and this at the very least.



[edit on 14-6-2010 by HunkaHunka]

According to an article that I read the other day, they have been aware of this problem coming for awhile and are already discussing ways to lesson the impact of such solar storms on our satellites, etc.

The sun is about to get a lot more active, which could have ill effects on Earth. So to prepare, top sun scientists met Tuesday to discuss the best ways to protect Earth's satellites and other vital systems from the coming solar storms.

People of the 21st century rely on high-tech systems for the basics of daily life. But smart power grids, GPS navigation, air travel, financial services and emergency radio communications can all be knocked out by intense solar activity.


A major solar storm could cause twenty times more economic damage than Hurricane Katrina, warned the National Academy of Sciences in a 2008 report, "Severe Space Weather Events—Societal and Economic Impacts."

Luckily, much of the damage can be mitigated if managers know a storm is coming. That's why better understanding of solar weather, and the ability to give advance warning, is especially important.


Putting satellites in 'safe mode' and disconnecting transformers can protect electronics from damaging electrical surges.

"I believe we're on the threshold of a new era in which space weather can be as influential in our daily lives as ordinary terrestrial weather." Fisher said. "We take this very seriously indeed."

Bolding mine.


news.yahoo.com...


If they can find a way to predict when these solar storms will happen and how to protect our satellites we should be able to avoid anything major.

This threat looks real and serious. Look at the solar superstorm that occured in 1859.

Space.com - The Great Storm: Solar Tempest of 1859 Revealed

In early September in 1859, telegraph wires suddenly shorted out in the United States and Europe, igniting widespread fires. Colorful aurora, normally visible only in polar regions, were seen as far south as Rome and Hawaii.
The 1989 coronal mass ejection that knocked out power to all of Quebec, Canada measured -589 nT, Brekke said. The 1859 perfect storm was estimated to have been -1,760 nT. Brekke used three exclamation points in his e-mail delivering that number.

Wikipedia - Solar Storm 1859

(...) caused a massive coronal mass ejection (CME), to travel directly toward Earth, a journey of 18 hours (...) .On September 1–2, 1859, the largest recorded geomagnetic storm occurred, causing the failure of telegraph systems all over Europe and North America. Aurorae were seen around the world, most notably over the Caribbean; also noteworthy were those over the Rocky Mountains that were so bright, the glow awoke gold miners, who began preparing breakfast because they thought it was morning.

NASA - A Super Solar Flare 1859

Even more disconcerting, telegraph systems worldwide went haywire. Spark discharges shocked telegraph operators and set the telegraph paper on fire.

And electronic was nearly inexistant at this period, image the same thing, even bigger, now ...

reply to post by HunkaHunka

You seem to be referring to the Hale cycle. I've never heard of the "heat maximum". The 22 year Hale cycle is simply two of the normal 11 year cycles. The Sun's magnetic field does reverse at each solar maximum. The Hale cycle is the period it takes to return to the same state it was in. In other words, this solar maximum will return the Sun's magnetic state to where it was in 1990.

The reversal of the Sun's magnetic field doesn't really have a direct effect on Earth but it does occur around solar maximum. At solar maximum the number of sunspots and CMEs peaks so the likelihood of geomagnetic storms is higher.

There is no reason to expect the upcoming solar maximum to be any more (or less) intense than any others. While it is true that the chances of strong solar activity is greatest around solar maximum, intense CMEs can occur at just about any part of the solar cycle. There could be another "Carrington Event" (the most powerful geomagnetic storm ever recorded) next month, or then again, not for another 100 years.

It is true that we are more susceptible to the effects of a geomagnetic storms than we were in the past due to our great dependence on satellite technology and our power grids. As has been pointed out, the awareness of this is growing and steps are being taken to mitigate the effects of future geomagnetic storms.

Ive never read or heard of the heat maximum either, in ANY of my astronomy books, and ive got like 12 of them, the most recent being published in 2005* under about the sun in all books, thiers nothing printed ever about a heat maximum, just the magentic reversal of its poles aka 12 year solar cycle*

I find it quite amusing that although independent scientists and researchers have been discussing the possibilities of such an occurrence and the potential ramifications it could have on the global electrical and communications grids for atleast the past 20 years, only now are government agencies and officials starting to show concern - or atleast something that could be construed as concern by the public masses.

I personally don't believe that a worst-case scenario, as many guests on C2C about the subject proclaim, could happen; that the entire world or a better part of the hemisphere exposed directly to the sun at the moment the plasma wave hits the ionosphere would experience an electrical meltdown, but I do believe that it would seriously detriment our communications nonetheless. And given how society has grown entirely dependent on the Internet and remotely-administered devices, even a temporary (on the span of days or weeks) shutdown of these systems on a national scale would be next-to-catastrophic.

I'm continuously amused by the unwavering quality of humans to never plan ahead. We only seem to accomplish things at the moment given instead of years ago before a problem arose; better late than never, I suppose. That same quality applies here more than anywhere else, with perhaps sole exception to our energy production and consumption. Instead of protecting our most critical electrical and communications systems against EM overloads, we're probably going to be forced to do it when our whole fragile and backup-less system collapses into one big fizzling heap, because if it doesn't happen this time around, it'll happen sooner or later anyway.

"Always be prepared." I learned that in Boy Scouts and it's a motto I try to focus my life around. Too bad the people in charge never went to Boy Scouts, I guess.

Talk about your misleading post titles.

The disuption of electronic devices and some cellular networks is hardly "devastation".

Yet more scaremongering while the real risks go unreported.

reply to post by jcrash


I remember when scientist Michio Kaku went on TV to talk about this and stirred up a lot of trouble by putting it in 2012. It was music to the 2012 believers ears. Its amazing that many 2012 proponents will distrust mainstream science until a scientist comes and offers an idea that they believe gives their mindless belief more credence, then they lap it up.

I wouldn't be too worried about what the sun is doing, least not for a few billion years and by then I'll be looooong gone

[edit on 14-6-2010 by Titen-Sxull]

[edit on 14-6-2010 by Titen-Sxull]

Senior space agency scientists believe the Earth will be hit with unprecedented levels of magnetic energy from solar flares

reply to post by jcrash






Hmm, coincidence?

8th: As Marduk pulled out the spear from the ground, lifted him and threw him with force down on the ground world.
And while Marduk did this, ordered Ishtar the stars to broadcast a new light, invisible.

www.abovetopsecret.com...

Originally posted by Wolftotem
Sounds like a good time for a savvy high-tech inventor to come out with a magnetic surge protector to shield our electrical systems and devices.

I've dreamed of making a working magnetosphere for many years.

I've even got a good idea how it might work. But I won't make one.

We need this. Until you lose everything you can never really have anything.

Originally posted by stopthathurts
One need only go back a few years, maybe a decade to see real effects from solar storms. I forget the year but the last good sized one knocked out satellites and some earthbound electronics. That one was nowhere near as big as what they are talking about coming up. Nuclear weapons detonated in the atmosphere cause the same effect. Look up EMP,Electromagnetic Pulse.

Not at all. Nuclear EMP doesn't bear a lot of resemblance to the types of effects you get from a solar flare or CME. There are a number of components to both, but pretty much the only things they share are electron trapping in the magnetosphere and geomagnetic heave. The electron trapping causes damage to satellites by smacking high speed charged particles into the satellites, and the geomagnetic heave causes damage to long AC transmission lines by causing core saturation in transformers. EMP has a lot of other effects in addition to these. CME basically only has those two. You can't really equate the two except in those two aspects.

Rumsfeld said we "dropped" one on Baghdad at the outset of GWII. I'm not familiar with any other weapon that can do that. He called it an EMP bomb. Remember when they lost all power in the city? It wasn't due to knocking out all power generators or totally destroying the power grid physically, it was an EM pulse that fried every bit of electronic gear in the area. Kinda gives "bomb 'em back to the stone age" new meaning,huh?....or does it?
STH

Well, no, it didn't "fry every bit of electronic gear". It wasn't even an EMP weapon. Those do exist, they're not that cost effective, and they're non-nuclear. What we DID use was a rather entertaining ship-launched weapon that's a Tomahawk variant. It strews very very conductive carbon fibers behind it, causing massive shorts and line trips on every power line and substation it comes across. Very effective, and quickly reversible when you want to restore the infrastructure after the occupation.

Look up "Hyder flare" and "Carrington Event".
We're staring into a vortex of ELEs from solar, tectonic, and man-made sources.

reply to post by Bedlam


Well thank you very much. In my defense Rummy did call it an "EMP bomb".
STH

Originally posted by stopthathurts
reply to post by Bedlam

 

Well thank you very much. In my defense Rummy did call it an "EMP bomb".
STH

There actually IS one, we don't have a fieldable one as far as I know but they have dropped some in test. It was a big thing at certain national labs, but interest seems to have waned a bit, at least I don't see as many bid requests go by related to it. Thorn EMI used to be really off into EMP bomb design before the breakup - the Brits were the EMP weapon kings.

But these days what we DO have is the carbon fiber weapon, there was definitely a Tomahawk version which we used there, but I think there are other spinoffs for newer UAV platforms. It makes for a near-instant blackout of an enemy's electrical infrastructure, while causing minimal damage (usually) which you can then wheel in and repair and look like the good guys you are. Besides the cruise missile launched versions, we also used the BLU-114B which does the same thing, but you drop it from airplanes.

We've been working on EMP and HPM warheads for Tomahawks too. LANL and Sandia love the things, but like I say, either they've perfected it and quit developing, which is not what I've heard, or it's sort of stalled, which matches the grapevine scuttlebutt.

Depending on when Rumsfeld said it, the BLU-114B and Kit2 Tomahawk may have still been uber-classified, so he said something similar but intentionally misleading to give you the gist without giving you the details. YMMV.

edit: clarification

[edit on 20-6-2010 by Bedlam]