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NASA Warns of Potential "Huge Space Storm" In 2013
Low Ranked Craig writes "Senior space agency scientists believe the Earth will be hit with unprecedented levels of magnetic energy from solar flares after the Sun wakes 'from a deep slumber' sometime around 2013. In a new warning, NASA said the super storm could hit like 'a bolt of lightning' and could cause catastrophic consequences for the world's health, emergency services, and national security — unless precautions are taken. Scientists believe damage could extend to everyday items such as home computers, iPods, and sat navs. 'We know it is coming but we don't know how bad it is going to be,' said Dr. Richard Fisher, the director of NASA's Heliophysics division. '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 concludes. 'We take this very seriously indeed.'"
That IS impressive.
I read Slashdot for the headlines, because the headlines, unlike the articles, are usually original and never duplicated
I seriously wonder whether I should purchase a few crate-sized Farady cages in preparation, and ensure I have non-magnetic backups of everything.
Oh, good... I was worried that I'd have to throw out all that canned Y2K food that I have in my basement bunker. (actually, it's technically my mom's basement)
Doesn't worry me seeing as we won't survive 2012 anyway.
If you RTFA, it's not a world ending event. It's just gonna mess up some transformers if they don't turn them off in time.
Disagree != mod troll.
With influenza pandemy, Maya's calendar doomsday, $|€ crisis, oil spills, earthquakes...
Or NASa just saw the light and how public fear can me made into profit, using for example big pharma recipes...?
Whatever, only reasonable thing to do about it is to cool down and ignore as much as we can.
http://opencm3.net, http://www.nongnu.org/gm2/
because apparently the only PMP's affected will be ipods..
No EMP resistance, less space then a nomad, lame
People, what a bunch of bastards
Are you an astrophysicist?
I'm going to assume you aren't. If so, wtf makes you think anyone is going to take your BS accusation seriously?
I call BS on your BS.
So would something like an EMP destroy pace makers, artificial hearts, etc.? I know the typical discussion is in regards to someone not being able to listen to their Jason Mraz album on their iPod, but would something like this essentially kill anyone with an artificial/bionic enhancement that controls life support?
No. My titanium ribs act as a Faraday Cage and protect my electronic innards. So after the disaster happens.... I'LL BE BACK.
Why should we expect a worse sun spot maximum than previous maxima?
Nowhere in the two linked articles does it say anything about why it would be worse than 2006.
They don't even talk about the unusually long sun spot miminum we've had.
I was hoping for some science about how that might affect the coming maximum...
Yes, secret plans. Don't worry, when we need to know, they'll be disseminated, presumably by a network of tin cans and bits of string, with a smoke signal backup system.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
Does it seem to anyone else that the telegraph routinely confuses "Something up to size X could hypothetically happen some day" with "X IS ABOUT TO HAPPEN!!!!"?
I'm not saying this is a bad topic to have a conversation about (in fact it's one of my favorite disaster scenarios to rant about), it's just that if slashdot is going to reference the telegraph, it should frame it as though a new Hollywood disaster movie has been released, not as though it was an actual news item was printed.
It is common knowledge the sun has seasons, like the hearth. But they take 11 years to cycle.
With statistical analysis and observations, it is very well possible to make an educated guess...
Protip: If TFA is found on the "telegraph.co.uk" domain, it almost certainly represents the state of knowledge of someone who majored in "journalism", after surviving an editor, rather than the state of knowledge of the actual scientists involved with the question...
You people laugh at my Zune now....but, you'll see!
Wise men say, "Forgiveness is divine, but never pay full price for late pizza."
So would something like an EMP destroy pace makers
Pacemakers are installed inside a poorly constructed Faraday cage. That being your highly conductive body. Pacemakers historically have occasionally gotten all wound up in high RF fields, but aside from folks working at high power UHF TV station transmitters it has not been a serious issue.
You can "short out" and essentially blow the fuses of a pacemaker. Of course it takes more than enough power to hopelessly electrocute someone, in fact depending on the design you pretty much need to cook them like one of those electric hot dog cookers.
Its pretty much the usual useless scaremongering B.S.
would something like this essentially kill anyone with an artificial/bionic enhancement that controls life support?
Could something worse than we have ever experienced, result in deaths? Just speaking generally, not about any specific threat, and taking a wild guess, I'd say that's a good solid maybe, unless my salary depending on raising money by saying yes, in which case I'd say yes.
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
I think they're saying exactly December 21, 2012, the Winter Solstice and end of the thirteenth b'ak'tun, the ending of the Great Year, the Age of Pisces, the Platonic Cycle, Barack Obama's first term.
I'm convinced that there are a lot of powerful (and not so powerful) interests are using "2012" as a tabula rasa onto which to draw their agendas. And I'm not just talking about crazy new agers.
The US intelligence service has been toying with manipulating belief systems since the end of WWII. They've looked at (and maybe used) the UFO phenomena, Egyptian mysticism, Christianity, parapsychology and of course, psychotropic drugs as ways to influence events around the world and here at home. I'm not saying they believe in these things, but that they believe they can use these things, or rather, that they can manipulate other peoples' belief in these things. MK-ULTRA, Project Monarch, astrology, Andrija Puharich and the "Council of Nine" (involving Arthur M. Young of Bell Helicopters and Lee Harvey Oswald's wife by the way) were some nascent efforts in this area, and "2012" may be their pièce de résistance.
There's just something that feels to me really manipulative about all this "2012" mishegas.
[I just realized I quoted Latin, French and Yiddish in this post, which while not my record, is pretty good for 8 o'clock on a tuesday morning.]
You are welcome on my lawn.
Big transformers in the power grids will be the main victims.
OMG... Won't someone think of the Decepticons!?!
Now that I think about it, I'm pretty sure everything I just said is completely wrong.
Physicist here (not an astro-, but good enough for these purposes).
Solar activity generally occurs in cycles. As far as we know and have observed, these cycles are fairly regular and predictable in a "big-picture" sort of way.
Although I might not trust the weatherman's forecast for this Friday, I will trust his assertion that it's going to start getting cold around November.
-- If you try to fail and succeed, which have you done? - Uli's moose
I seem to recall that the 1859 solar storm caused the telegraph (the service not the trashy paper) network to run without batteries for some time after it.
Who knows, maybe this will trigger new science for harnessing solar flares/space storms.
It also caught fire.
This morning's unprecedented solar eclipse - Is no cause for alarm ... Only Doctor Hans Zarkov formerly at NASA - Has provided any explanation
Flash will save us all. Except for iPhone/Pad users.
Big transformers in the power grids will be the main victims. And all of us that rely on having a power grid, of course. As long as you keep a spare car battery to recharge any bionics that require that, and provided that the outage doesn't last too long, I'd expect something like a pacemaker to be just fine.
The issue you refer is to ground loop currents in the electric grid. The storm creates a difference in the ground voltage between different transformers. This creates a massive current that blows out the transformer.
The real issue is that the devices to prevent this (basically huge resistors) are expensive, rare, and take a long time to manufacture. And when we suddenly have half of the transformers in the US explode at once, the outage will not be brief. There is not a large stock of transformers sitting in warehouses as replacements. Transformers take even longer to produce than those resistors, and we would be waiting months before we could repair most of the grid. That's a huge issue.
Write your representatives! Repeal the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics!
You must be the oldest person on slashdot!
More likely a result of bad journalism than bad science, but I suppose it could be both.
Anyway, here's the link to spaceweather.com for anyone who wants to learn a little about the sun, sunspots, etc. http://www.spaceweather.com/
Here's a link to the latest from NASA published about two weeks ago. Their take on sunspot cycle 24 as best I can translate it? They haven't a clue and won't for several years -- after they have a decent sampling of cycle 24 sunspots to work with. Right now the cycle is late to start and may be fairly weak ... or not. http://solarscience.msfc.nasa.gov/predict.shtml
You can't see ANYTHING from a car, You've got to get out of the goddamned contraption and walk...Edward Abbey