Out of Pod Experience

Chillax mate. Enjoy the x-ray sunbath

EDIT: It's not gonna kill yo any time soon.

Oh.. yeah.. I just grabbed the latest on google news from my laptop, was 5min old at the time of posting. I used to use that site a lot, but I have all these apps for my android tab now, like 3d sun and the NASA app etc. some of which throw out alarm sounds for CME's as well as geologic alerts etc.

At any rate, this is solar cycle 24 and it peaks early to mid next year. Currently on the up by all data accounts. NASA is predicting the most intense activity in 400 years peaking around May 2013. Yet there is another group predicting the least active. NASA bases the prediction on the long-term memory cycle of the sun, while the other based on short-term memory.

I'm siding with NASA here, and to me the data does suggest a significant rise in activity while it's still early before we get into the projected peak for next year. So quite possibly we'll see a bit of havoc over the coming months. Like I suggested, good time to check batteries, food and water supply as well, as anything strong could be knocking some of us off of the power grid for a time.

They first thought it would peak this year. I don't think they know anything for sure. When the sun had zero sunspot activity last solar minimum all the 'experts' had no idea why it did that, or knew when the sun would return to normal. The fusion reactor theory about how the sun works is full of problems and falls short of explaining much, but it's still used to try and predict things because there is no alternative. One thing we do know just from observation is that the more quiet the minimum is, the more intense the maximum is, so with the abnormally quiet minimum we'll have an abnormally intense maximum, whenever it does happen.



I think NASA is actually downplaying it. They usually work very hard at saying there's nothing at all for people to worry about, so if they say we should be a little worried, we might want to be a lot worried.

Oh no, just used it as another example of how much of this is a guessing game, even to those who study this stuff for a living.

If i was implying anything, it was that it could still peak any day now, and not necessarily sometime next year.

didn't the sun had a real big mass ejection earlier this year and did absolutely t...nothing to us , except for sqome pretty nightskies up north

Speaking of gun barrels... let's make bacon!

well apparantely some people just can not stop hyping the end of the world , if it is not solarflares , which hit us every 10 years or so it is , aligning with the center of the galaéxy , which is as we all know is only a optical effect and will not even get close , or a collision with planet X , would be the brightest object in the night sky now and probably even visible during the day,
sudden shift in the Earths polar field causing catasthropic earthquakes , happens every 250 000 years and takes 25000 years which is in geologiacal terms pretty fast
probably forgot some more but i am getting tired of this ,
doomsdaysayers had their fun and the smartones made their money , now just leave us alone will you

Let's put it this way : it's pointless to worry about something you have no power of preventing, and it's counterproductive to prepare for something that's very costly to just barely and maybe protect against that's highly improbable to happen in your lifetime.
You know, keep calm and carry on as if nothing was about to happen, even if it might ;)
Now, if we're talking something very likely to happen within a lifetime and not very inconvenient to have a decent chance to protect against, then by all means, prepare for it and worry about it away as much as you like.

P.S. Getting a household generator, a decent but not excessive stockpile of fuel for it, a large UPS, some less-spoilable staple foods, and Faraday-caging your house (preferably built into the walls) is pretty inconvenient, but not complete overkill if you really do worry. You want to keep the windows uncaged, but the parts handy - you'll get a few days' worth of warning either way, so you have ample time to complete the shielding and disconnect yourself from the mains before it hits.

P.P.S. As far as satellites are concerned, with sufficient warning time, at least some of them be able maneouver into the "shade" the planet provides for the duration of the event and get out of it unscathed. Power lines can be disconnected and thoroughly grounded just before the start of the event in areas affected (with burnt-out sections in critical loops replaced soon after from storage), sensitive parts can be shielded at least partially, and so on and so forth.
It certainly won't be pretty for a while, but it would take quite a bit to actually crash down the economy of the "sun side" of the planet when it happens to hit us, let alone the entire human civilization (nearly half of it should be pretty safe by default anyway, at least geographically speaking).

P.P.P.S. http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2010/26oct_solarshield/