NASA: 2012 solar flares could DEVASTATE CITIES!
'Not capable of destroying Earth', though. Yay
In an attempt to defuse internet hysteria regarding the purported end of the world next year as the Mayan calendar long-count completes, NASA has stated that next year's solar maximum will see solar flares which are "a problem the same way hurricanes are a problem".
That's a very big problem, then. As the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)
will tell you, Hurricane Katrina alone devastated three major US cities, killing hundreds of people. The Galveston hurricane of 1900 killed thousands.
NASA-funded studies have
previously warned of a "Space Katrina" flare or coronal mass ejection that would devastate modern civilisation, bringing down power grids and frying satellites en masse. Food would rot, trains wouldn't move, traffic would be gridlocked, phones and the internet wouldn't work, the financial markets would be devastated, planes and ships would be lost and wrecked.
But it's not all doom! This
statement issued today from NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, in which we are told of hurricane-like solar flares coming, also adds reassuringly:
There simply isn't enough energy in the sun to send a killer fireball 93 million miles to destroy Earth ... even at their worst, the sun's flares are not physically capable of destroying Earth.
But:
[Solar flares are] a problem the same way hurricanes are a problem. One can protect oneself with advance information and proper precautions. During a hurricane watch, a homeowner can stay put ... or he can seal up the house, turn off the electronics and get out of the way.
So the planet may survive, but you may not, seems to be the message. However it may be reasonable to take some of the solar-flare doomsaying of recent years with a pinch of salt. As NASA notes, anyone older than 11 has already lived through at least one solar maximum of the sort coming up: and furthermore these maxima have been steadily decreasing in intensity, not increasing, over recent decades.
read more...
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/11/12/nasa_on_solar_2012/
REMARKABLE SOLAR ACTIVITY: There haven't been any strong solar flares in days. Nevertheless, some impressive activity is underway on the sun. For one thing, an enormous wall of plasma is towering over the sun's southeastern horizon. Stephen Ramsden of Atlanta, Georgia, took this picture on Nov. 11th:
"Solar forums all over the world are buzzing with Sun-stronomers proclaiming this to be the biggest prominence that many of them had ever witnessed," he says.
Remarkably, though, this is not the biggest thing. A dark filament of magnetism is snaking more than halfway around the entire sun:
SDO image. From end to end, it stretches more than a million km or about three times the distance between Earth and the Moon. If the filament becomes unstable, as solar filaments are prone to do, it could collapse and hit the stellar surface below, triggering a
Hyder flare. No one can say if the eruption of such a sprawling structure would be Earth directed.
"I cant help but wonder what could possibly come next since we are still over a year away from the forecasted Solar Maximum," adds Ramsden. "There's never been a better time to own a
solar telescope than now!"
NASA shoots down 2012 doomsday scenario
By QMI Agency
Forget everything you've heard about the world ending on Dec, 21, 2012.
NASA is here to assure us that come Dec. 22, 2012, we will still be standing.
In a post that appears on the
space agency's site, NASA dispelled several myths surrounding the doomsday date.
"Given a legitimate need to protect Earth from the most intense forms of space weather -– great bursts of electromagnetic energy and particles that can sometimes stream from the sun -– some people worry that a gigantic 'killer solar flare' could hurl enough energy to destroy Earth," the statement said.
"Citing the accurate fact that solar activity is currently ramping up in its standard 11-year cycle, there are those who believe that 2012 could be coincident with such a flare. But this same solar cycle has occurred over millennia. Anyone over the age of 11 has already lived through such a solar maximum with no harm. In addition, the next solar maximum is predicted to occur in late 2013 or early 2014, not 2012."
NASA says there simply isn't enough energy in the sun to "send a killer fireball 93 million miles to destroy Earth."
The agency says the prediction that we'd be toast in 2012 started with claims that Nibiru, a supposed planet discovered by the Sumerians, is headed toward Earth.
"This catastrophe was initially predicted for May 2003, but when nothing happened the doomsday date was moved forward to December 2012. Then these two fables were linked to the end of one of the cycles in the ancient Mayan calendar at the winter solstice in 2012 -- hence the predicted doomsday date of December 21, 2012.
"Nothing bad will happen to the Earth in 2012," NASA says. "Our planet has been getting along just fine for more than 4 billion years, and credible scientists worldwide know of no threat associated with 2012."
read more at
http://cnews.canoe.ca/CNEWS/Science/2011/11/13/18961881.html
