"We’ll always have Niburu."
Posted on 11/11/2011 12:35:03 PM PST by decimon
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. 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.
Most importantly, however, there simply isn't enough energy in the sun to send a killer fireball 93 million miles to destroy Earth.
This is not to say that space weather can't affect our planet. The explosive heat of a solar flare can't make it all the way to our globe, but electromagnetic radiation and energetic particles certainly can. Solar flares can temporarily alter the upper atmosphere creating disruptions with signal transmission from, say, a GPS satellite to Earth causing it to be off by many yards. Another phenomenon produced by the sun could be even more disruptive. Known as a coronal mass ejection (CME), these solar explosions propel bursts of particles and electromagnetic fluctuations into Earth's atmosphere. Those fluctuations could induce electric fluctuations at ground level that could blow out transformers in power grids. The CME's particles can also collide with crucial electronics onboard a satellite and disrupt its systems.
In an increasingly technological world, where almost everyone relies on cell phones and GPS controls not just your in-car map system, but also airplane navigation and the extremely accurate clocks that govern financial transactions, space weather is a serious matter.
But it is 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. Similarly, scientists at NASA and NOAA give warnings to electric companies, spacecraft operators, and airline pilots before a CME comes to Earth so that these groups can take proper precautions. Improving these predictive abilities the same way weather prediction has improved over the last few decades is one of the reasons NASA studies the sun and space weather. We can't ignore space weather, but we can take appropriate measures to protect ourselves.
And, even at their worst, the sun's flares are not physically capable of destroying Earth.
For more information concerning 2012, visit
› 2012: Beginning of the End or Why the World Won't End?
That's an idiotic statement by the author. This fact we haven't seen anything serious occur doesn't mean it cannot. The sun rotates just like other celestial bodies and the flares/CMEs can miss us. Perhaps we've just been extremely lucky.
roentgen equivalent man (REM).
Okay, if we combine this Nibiru with cripplecreek’s Niburu then we’re getting close to a catastrophic collision with Uhura. Worked for Kirk. ;-)
If that CME could fry telegraph lines it could do the same for telephone lines and electronics. It would be a mess.
It was full of location shot bloopers (it's hard to make Australia look like Massachusetts.)
Dang! I was hoping something would have some chance to save us from obamo's 2nd, 3rd, & 4th terms.
...some people worry that a gigantic "killer solar flare" could hurl enough energy to destroy Earth. 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.
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Hey, thanks, that could be a topic of its own. OTOH, maybe it already is, I didn’t check, and there are a couple million FR topics...
http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2003/23oct_superstorm/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_storm_of_1859
http://www.google.com/search?q=solar+storm+of+1859+site:freerepublic.com
“And, even at their worst, the sun’s flares are not physically capable of destroying Earth”
No but they can knock out the big transformers and take down the grid. Then we will all be stars in the new reality series “Back to the Past of 1832” or “How I learned to read by candlelight and wash the clothes in a pot over a fire in the back yard.”
Those transformers take 2 years to replace as we do not produce them in the USA. The only people who will be living in any semblence of normality are those with an alternative electrical system, well and wood stoves and at least 1 year of food stored up. Look down your street. Who has solar or wind? Thats what I thought. We are putting it in our mountain house. Most people will not survive 1-2 years without elecricity. We could see a 70-90% die off in the US alone.
I guess that's NASA's latest prediction. They've been moving it forward a year for the last 3, because there was such a dearth of sunspots in the 2008-2010 time frame. They kept predicting the new solar cycle would ramp up, and it just didn't happen. Now the sunspots are coming back, but they're not anywhere NEAR a maximum, and may not even get there by 2014, despite NASA predictions.
If sunspots will mean reasonably warm weather then I hope they increase for a few more years. Snow up the wazoo is just not fun.
Another solar storm like the Carrington Event of 1859 would kill a lot of people given our dependence upon technology.
The active sunspot cycle in the late 80s to the mid 90s was the reason for any of the warming we had in the 90s, into the the early part of the century. It was a natural cycle that the AGW alarmists used to try to convince people that humans were causing it.
“roentgen equivalent man (REM).”
Yup, and for most gamma spectra REM=RAD, which is 100 ergs per gram.
So 50000 ergs per gram delivered to the Earth surface would dose us most severely.
And an erg is 1E-7 Joules, and a typical camera flash is 50 J, or 50E7 ergs, which is not a lot of energy in astronomical terms.
I find it hard to accept that our sun “cannot” deliver that much energy in a mega-flare or CME.
I was suprised at the ending. It was actually rather uplifting.
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