Pure tripe masquerading as science
From that reputable source in the UK,
The Sun:
2013 - Solar flare could turn sky red, wipe internet and paralyse earth
A giant explosion of energy from the Sun could paralyse Earth in just three years' time, scientists warned yesterday.
They fear a huge solar flare is due to erupt in 2013 - causing blackouts and global chaos.
The once-in-a-century disaster could see power grids crash, communication systems collapse, planes grounded, food supplies hit and the internet shut down.
Everything from home freezers to car sat navs would be affected.
The booger eating moron who is promoting this scary story is England's Defence Secretary Liam Fox. From Dr. Fox:
The talks, organised by the Electric Infrastructure Security Council, heard that the Sun will reach a critical stage of its cycle in 2013.
Totally unfounded and if you look at the fscking Science, you will see that the latest solar cycle was three years overdue and it is very slow to ramp up. The solar flux (the energy it emits) should be in the hundreds and just checking now, I see it is 81. (the little graphic to the right in the blogroll)
Yes, there have been two significant flares -- one in 1859 and one in 1989. The timing of these events is 100% coincidental. There is no known 100-year solar cycle that spawns huge events. If there was, we would have historical record of blood-red skies every hundred years. We do have record of these events but they are very far and few between.
A surge of magnetic energy in its atmosphere is likely to trigger radiation storms which cause massive power surges.
This wonderfully shows Dr. Fox's total blithering incompetence.
"radiation storms???"
I mean seriously, WTF. The charged plasma from the Coronal Mass Ejection will hit the ionized gasses in the outer reaches of our atmosphere and they will cause them to fluoresce (aurora). There will also be an induced charge in any conducting material. Similar to an EMP but ongoing and not just an instantaneous pulse.
Such a phenomenon occurs only once about every 100 years.
Bullshit -- see a few lines above.
The last big flare, in 1859, smothered two thirds of the Earth's skies in a blood-red aurora. Such scenes could occur again, causing cloud storms in major modern cities such as London, Paris and New York.
Again, see above -- if these happen every hundred years, where is the historical record of the blood-red aurora. We have several hundred years of very reliable scientific record and two thousand years of decent anecdotal record. If you look and correlate between the different cultures (Middle East, Scandinavia, China, etc...) you will only find two or three events where the aurora are mentioned in all of these cultures.
In 1989, a more common smaller solar flare took out power stations in Quebec, Canada.
Boy Howdy it sure did. That was an industry-wide wakeup call and our equipment today is shielded a lot better. Materials science has come a long way too and the transmission equipment is built out of stronger stuff.
I find it amazing that a paper the size of the Sun didn't have a competent Science Editor who could have reviewed this stupid bit of bad journalism. If we do not give these idiots a voice, they will eventually go away.
Posted by DaveH at September 21, 2010 7:50 PM