Massive Solar Storm Hits Earth
Rerouting airplanes isn’t a big deal, but could there be dangers from the radiation? Doug Cameron reports for the Wall Street Journal:
Delta Air Lines Inc. said Tuesday that it was rerouting some transpolar flights between Asia and the U.S. to avoid the impact of the largest solar storm in almost a decade.
The Atlanta-based carrier said some flights to Detroit from Hong Kong, Shanghai and Seoul took a more southerly routing on overnight flights, though a spokesman said planes flew faster to keep schedules intact. Tuesday departures from the U.S. were expected to follow similar routes.
A rare solar flare erupted late Sunday night resulting in a solar radiation storm today, according to NASA. It’s the strongest such storm since September 2005, according to NOAA’s Space Weather Prediction Center.
Airlines occasionally reroute transpolar flights as a precautionary measure during big solar storms, with radiation levels heightened…
NASA: Solar Flare Can’t Destroy Earth
Feeling the heat from 2012 apocalypticists perhaps, NASA feels the need to reassure people that we won’t be fried in 2012. Mike Wall reports on NASA’s Nov. 10, 2011 statement, for Space.com:
If the world ends in 2012, the sun won’t be to blame, NASA officials say.
Contrary to what some doomsayers would have you believe, our star isn’t capable of blasting out a solar flare powerful enough to burn our planet to a crisp, according to the space agency.
“Most importantly, however, there simply isn’t enough energy in the sun to send a killer fireball 93 million miles to destroy Earth,” NASA officials wrote…
Solar Storm Slams Earth
Just when we could really use a break from natural disasters, nuclear disasters, financial disasters, drought, famine, extreme weather, armed conflict and all sort of other afflictions, here comes a solar storm to knock out our communications systems, satellites and god knows what else (anyone thinking 2012?). Cassandra Sweet reports for the Wall Street Journal:
Two blasts of energy from the sun hit the Earth’s magnetic field Friday and could disrupt one or more electrical grids, global-positioning systems or other satellite-communications systems, scientists at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said Friday.
The blasts touched Earth’s magnetic field in the form of fast-moving “solar wind” and is blowing by the Earth, Joseph Kunches, a space weather scientist with NOAA’s Space Weather Prediction Center, said in an interview.
Mr. Kunches said it is too early to know what the effects of the blasts will be. “If it’s a really big storm, it still could be active…
Unprecedented Solar Eruption
According to C. Alex Young, a solar astrophysicist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, yesterday’s massive Coronal Mass Ejection on the Sun is “nothing we really have to worry about.” Try telling that to Lawrence E. Joseph, who in the disinformation documentary 2012: Science or Superstition, claims that there is a correlation between heightened solar storms and alarming meteorological and atmospheric changes on Earth.
Hmmm. Whatever the case it’s awe inspiring (see Young’s video below). He says that “the sun produced a quite spectacular prominence eruption that had a solar flare and high-energy particles associated with it, but I’ve just never seen material released like this before. It looks like somebody just kicked a giant clod of dirt into the air and then it fell back down.”
Chemtrails And Solar Flares
Has anybody else noticed unusual chemtrail activity recently? Being that much of the radiation from Monday’s solar flare was set to impact the Earth today, those who believe that chemtrails have something to do with Stratospheric Aerosol Geoengineering hopefully were looking to the sky. I would imagine that today would be perfect to spray substances which would reflect the large amounts of heat and radiation currently bombarding the planet. Surely enough upon glancing up above my university in upstate NY, I witnessed an unusual amount of chemtrails filling the skies.
I attempted to record them, however the scene was filmed with a cellphone camera so please pardon the quality and length…
Warning! Massive Solar Flare About To Impact Earth
Was Larry Joseph right all along? Many people discounted the author of Apocalypse 2012: An Investigation into Civilization’s End and his fears that a massive Coronal Mass Ejection will hit Earth with disastrous consequences in 2012, but now it appears that just such an event might be about to happen for real. Michael Sheridan reports for the Daily News:
A massive solar flare could make for a beautiful night for people in the northern United States – provided it doesn’t knock the lights out.
The blast of charged particles unleashed from the sun earlier this week has been peppering the Earth over the last few days, but it’s biggest punch is expected to hit the Earth’s atmosphere on Thursday.
Monday’s eruption, considered an X-class flare, is the biggest solar flare in four years. It is already being blamed for disrupting radio communication in China, and could potentially affect power grids and satellite communication around…
Solar Maximum Starts in 2011
The fearmongers wishing for something, anything, to happen in 2012 have seized on the next peak in the cyclical activity experienced by our sun. AFP reports that an upswing starts next year, but the climax will probably not be until 2013, rather than December 21, 2012:
The coming year will be an important one for space weather as the Sun pulls out of a trough of low activity and heads into a long-awaited and possibly destructive period of turbulence.
Many people may be surprised to learn that the Sun, rather than burn with faultless consistency, goes through moments of calm and tempest.
But two centuries of observing sunspots — dark, relatively cool marks on the solar face linked to mighty magnetic forces — have revealed that our star follows a roughly 11-year cycle of behaviour.
The latest cycle began in 1996 and for reasons which are unclear has taken longer than expected to end.
Now, though,…
Massive Solar Flare To Paralyze Earth In 2013
So was Lawrence Joseph right when he warned of a potentially catastrophic solar flare in the disinformation film 2012: Science or Superstition? This story from the Daily Mail lends his theory some credence, albeit a year later than he predicted:
A massive solar flare could cause global chaos in 2013, causing blackouts and wrecking satellite communications, a conference heard yesterday.
On August 1, 2010, almost the entire Earth-facing side of the sun erupted in a tumult of activity. There was a C3-class solar flare, a solar tsunami, multiple filaments of magnetism lifting off the stellar surface, large-scale shaking of the solar corona, radio bursts, a coronal mass ejection and more. These images taken by the STEREO Ahead satellite from 3:47 to 15:47 UT on August 2nd show the movement of the CME cloud, on the right of the disc, as it expands toward Earth. Credit: NASA/STEREO
Nasa has warned that a peak in…
Incoming! The Sun Unleashes A Massive CME at Earth (Video)
The most awesome part of this story from Ian O’Neill on Discovery News is the technology that even recognized this event in the first place, but there are some out there who fear-monger about it (needless to say the title of this story is in jest). I try to keep in mind that the universe is more a wondrous place, than one intent on destroying human life (I’m looking at you, Larry Joseph). Ian O’Neill writes on Discovery News:
Earlier this morning, NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) witnessed a complex magnetic eruption on the sun. The joint NASA/ESA Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) — a mission sitting at the L1 point between the Earth and the sun — also spotted a large coronal mass ejection (CME) blasting in the direction of Earth.
It is thought that the SDO and SOHO observations are connected, making this a global magnetic disturbance affecting the whole of the Earth-facing side of the sun.
What Does The Sun Sound Like?
Scientists at the U.K.’s Sheffield University have released a recording of the sounds one would hear while standing inside the solar corona — the sun’s outer atmosphere. Giant magnetized plasma loops oscillate, creating a kind of music. This is what it sounds like to be on the sun:
Here Comes The Sun(spots)
Thanks to Alex Ansary for posting this to his facebook. Tom Bruner writes on AmericanThinker.com:
February, 2010, was the first month since 2007 with sunspots every day according to Spaceweather.com for February 27. A quick check of February 28 confirms the streak. So far there have been only 2 spot-free days in 2010. By comparison there were 260 spot-free days in 2009, and there have been 772 spot-free days since 2004. What this means is that one of the quietest periods of solar activity in recent history may be coming to an end.
The relevance of this is that sunspot activity has been proposed by many, such as Geerts and Linacre, as a possible driver of Earth’s climate patterns, including global warming and cooling cycles. As with most climate theory, the science has not been settled on the link between sunspots and Earth’s climate.
Most, but not all according to some. Global Warming theory…
Solar Storms Could Be Earth’s Next Katrina
By Jon Hamilton for NPR:
A massive solar storm could leave millions of people around the world without electricity, running water, or phone service, government officials say.
That was their conclusion after participating in a tabletop exercise that looked at what might happen today if the Earth were struck by a solar storm as intense as the huge storms that occurred in 1921 and 1859.
Solar storms happen when an eruption or explosion on the surface of the sun sends radiation or electrically charged particles toward Earth. Minor storms are common and can light up the Earth’s Northern skies and interfere with radio signals.
Every few decades, though, the sun experiences a particularly large storm. These can release as much energy as 1 billion hydrogen bombs.
How Well Can We Weather The Solar Storm?
The exercise, held in Boulder, Colorado, was intended to investigate “what we think could be close to a worst-case scenario,” says Tom…
NASA Worried About Solar Threat To Earth?
One of the alarmist predictions for 2012 concerns the supposed cyclical climax of solar flare activity (see the Larry Joseph section in the disinformation documentary 2012: Science or Superstition). Although NASA felt moved to create a web page to deny this kind of story around the release date of Roland Emmerich’s 2012 disaster movie, apparently they are hedging their bets. Chris Hastings and Jonathan Leake report on a new NASA probe that could help scientists predict chaos-causing solar storms, in the Times:
NASA is to embark on one of its most ambitious missions in an attempt to unlock the secrets of the sun.
Following its launch in nine days’ time, the US space agency’s Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) will spend five years in orbit trying to discover the causes of extreme solar activity, such as sun spots and solar winds and flares.
Scientists have long been aware that disturbances on the sun can trigger…
