Solar Storm this Time

The sun is about to get a lot more active, which could have ill effects on Earth. So to prepare, top sun scientists met Tuesday to discuss the best ways to protect Earth's satellites and other vital systems from the coming solar storms.


Solar storms occur when sunspots on our star erupt and spew out flumes of charged particles that can damage power systems. The sun's activity typically follows an 11-year cycle, and it looks to be coming out of a slump and gearing up for an active period.

NOW.. The EFFECT

People of the 21st century rely on high-tech systems for the basics of daily life. But smart power grids, GPS navigation, air travel, financial services and emergency radio communications can all be knocked out by intense solar activity.

A major solar storm could cause twenty times more economic damage than Hurricane Katrina, warned the National Academy of Sciences in a 2008 report, "Severe Space Weather Events—Societal and Economic Impacts."

Luckily, much of the damage can be mitigated if managers know a storm is coming. That's why better understanding of solar weather, and the ability to give advance warning, is especially important.

Putting satellites in 'safe mode' and disconnecting transformers can protect electronics from damaging electrical surges.

"Space weather forecasting is still in its infancy, but we're making rapid progress," said Thomas Bogdan, director of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)'s Space Weather Prediction Center in Boulder, Colo.

When they say on the news "it could happen sometime within the next few years" I just roll my eyes over the speculation.

Can you give me some proof? Or at least a link to see if any of this is credible?

http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/Space/sun-awakens-scientists-warn-solar-storms/story?id=10877241

2013..

if we ever survive 2012.. This shit will kill internet

If you think about it, what is the core benefit we get from satellites? Information. Information dominates are very lives in many forms, without it we would suffer a quite horrid position. If we had satellites that backed up every day or so all the information would be collected into a server down on earth. Satellites are just tools to gather information, if they are destroyed we will just keep building new ones. That not only solves the problem, but also increases the economy at the same time. If there is a problem that the servers might be destroyed from the sun then I think we have a bigger problem than just worrying about our satellites.

space weather forecasting. like regular weather forecasting is reliable by any means, now they're heading off into space.

Lol, we will be fine, people freaking out over stupid stuff.
When I see fire flying from the sky, then ill freak.

Can't wait to survive Armageddon, then I can play some post-apocalyptic shit.

SRSLY WE ARE DOOMED IF THATS REAL.

Before i die im raeping my loli neighbors if this shit goes down.

Well all die anyway is that make u happy.

We are doomed since the beggining, ´cause the constant change in the universe makes impossible for a specie to survive, anyways, each 25,000 years a climatical change, or another thing, makes the extintion of all species that wheights more than 20 pounds.

It´s true, so, nice death for you.

I can still believe about the solar storm coming but not the 2012 bullshit.

what the hell can we do to prepare?

Maybe try to develop our satellites and energy networks in a way that will prevent them from being fired by first solar flare that pops up? But it's probably too late for it now...so, buy AK-47 and lots of survival knives, I think?

Theoretically, it is possible to protect satellites to move the behind the Earth prior to solar flare, but it's problematic. And you have to put them back on their place. And that's not entirely easy, never mind the fact that you need to mind an awful lot of space junk that we've put up there.

Electrical grids are easier to secure, by turning off transformers in areas that are going to be hit by the solar wind. You can also reduce the operating voltage of transformers or put lightning rods on cables to reduce the damage in case when energy from the power starts accumulating in them during the solar wind.

The main problem, is of course prediction. There is no way today to determine which side of the sun will produce the flare. The sunspot activity can give some clues to it, stressing "clues".

And while we're at it, the main reason why it is a problem now is because nobody during last 2 decades probably bothered to think about what a solar flare can do to growing satellite network. And now it's coming to bite them in the ass.

It won't be a "world end" scenario, but it can fuck up shit pretty bad. With most world economies being still fragile, a world-wide damage to information and power network across continent (or continents) may prove irreparable in short run, or take significantly longer than it would usually would. And in that case, you would have to deal with loads of unhappy people, electricity shortages and God-knows what else.

Solar storms occur almost every 10 years. According to scientists, the next one will be sometime in between 2012 and 2014, and it will be a pretty weak one. What does this mean? That we normal faggots won't even notice that it happens.

Would that really work? What do you mean by "safe mode"? Is it shutting down those satellites and transformers? You said there that "it can" protect electronics from damaging electrical surges. I am still not sure if it is true or if it would really work.

This seems to be, just like everything else like this, just an over-exaggeration of a problem.

Basically, it's another Y2K