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NASA has warned of a once-in-a-lifetime ‘space storm’ after the sun wakes ‘from a deep slumber’ sometime around 2013, causing ‘20 times more economic damage than Hurricane Katrina’.
Senior space agency scientists believe that the super storm would hit like ‘a bolt of lightning’ and damage everything from emergency services’ systems, hospital equipment, banking systems and air traffic control devices, through to “everyday” items such as home computers, iPods and Sat Navs.
And unless precautions are taken, it could cause catastrophic consequences for the world’s health, emergency services and national security.
"We know it is coming but we don’t know how bad it is going to be,” Dr Richard Fisher, the director of NASA’s Heliophysics division, said in an interview with The Daily Telegraph.
coupmedia.org...
Every 22 years the Sun’s magnetic energy cycle peaks while the number of sunspots — or flares — hits a maximum level every 11 years. Fisher said these two events would combine in 2013 to produce huge levels of radiation.
The current prediction for Sunspot Cycle 24 gives a smoothed sunspot number maximum of about 96 in late 2013. We are currently over three years into Cycle 24. The current predicted size still makes this the smallest sunspot cycle in over 80 years.
Originally posted by sir_slide
reply to post by Chadwickus
Thanks Wickus, I'm not really sure what that means though....
Like most experts in the field, Hathaway has confidence in the conveyor belt model and agrees with Dikpati that the next solar maximum should be a doozy. But he disagrees with one point. Dikpati's forecast puts Solar Max at 2012. Hathaway believes it will arrive sooner, in 2010 or 2011.
The National Academy of Sciences framed the problem two years ago in a landmark report entitled "Severe Space Weather Events—Societal and Economic Impacts." It noted how people of the 21st-century rely on high-tech systems for the basics of daily life. Smart power grids, GPS navigation, air travel, financial services and emergency radio communications can all be knocked out by intense solar activity. A century-class solar storm, the Academy warned, could cause twenty times more economic damage than Hurricane Katrina.
Originally posted by LeTan
Originally posted by sir_slide
reply to post by Chadwickus
Thanks Wickus, I'm not really sure what that means though....
It's his way of saying "Hush, go back to sleep. Nothing is going to happen". In the absence of Phage.
Originally posted by Phage
The article is a sensationalist load of crap. Twisting what was really said.
science.nasa.gov...