Extreme Space Weather

Hold on to your cell phones buckaroos, for we may be headed for some wild sun activity in the next couple of years. This potential for a solar rebellion seems to be adding fuel to 2012 end of the world bonfire taking place on the Internet. I got interested in exploring this subject when my friend Magnolia told me about a TV show she saw about the potential doomsday scenario being brought to you by the sun! Man-o-live, even Jessie Ventura is jumping on “The Mayans were right after all” bandwagon! I also think the world could be coming to an end. Just not on December 21 2012. For only god knows when the time will end so all this speculation is useless.

Let me ask all you Christians out there, do you believe the Bible when it tells you that Jesus will return as a “thief in the night” or not? Is this not the bottom line? Good old Jessie may be pushing this new hype, because guess what? He is a TV host he gets paid to push hype! Before that he was a politician and before that he was Wrestler! So does this make him some kind of expert on sun flares?

So, off I go to seek out the experts within NASA and other authorities to find out what is the likely hood of having problems with sun flares. Well like most of the time when I go hunting for info on subjects like 2012, I find my self lost within the cyber jungle! For very quickly I discover that the true experts, the nerdy types that would not know how to say something in plane English if there life depended on it; only leave me dazed and confused!

Then there are those who act like they are still blazing on acid, or at least having some serious flash backs! I even have had some web sites throw all types of Bible codes at me and other tail chasing info. Like they say, opinions are just like belly buttons, everybody has one and there all filled with lent! (No, that is not the way I originally heard it, but I am trying to keep it clean around here).

Starting off with NASA, you will find that they must have come up with some pretty convincing evidence of increased sun flare activity, for they have been flashing some warning lights lately! However, most of the geek types at NASA are very careful in stating that yes, there may be some problems with satellites and other electronic gizmo going goofy because of solar eruptions. BUT IT IS NOT THE END OF THE WORLD! Okay that was not a direct quote and yet, if you know NASA like I know NASA, they might have even seen flying saucers doing doughnuts on the moon, but they are still going to down play it!

Please forgive me for being in a sarcastic mood, but I have just recently been playing email tag with a dude that thinks he is a REAL werewolf so it hard to take anything serious right now. However, what does NASA say about sun flares and other NASTY space weather? Quite a lot actually for I discovered they take this “space weather’ stuff very seriously. Even so, they have just started to under stand the “dynamics” of the sun and how it operates.

It is important to note, that NASA has invested “mucho Dinaro” to the study of the sun and how it effects the Earth. (For those who don’t know- mucho Dinaro means “much money” in English). Because of this fact, NASA has developed some pretty sweet toys designed to collect data from the sun and “ship” it back to the earth. One of these “toys” is unmanned space craft called Solar Dynamics Observatory which is a “Hubble like” space craft designed to take pictures and collect data from the sun. A mega amount of data, and is capable of observing the whole disk of the sun! How much data are we talking about here? 1.5 terabytes each day, that is like loading a half a million songs into an mp3 player, each and every day! In a lot of ways this space probe is like a Swiss Army Knife in space, for it has several devices with the Observatory its self. These are….

· AIA or Atmospheric Imaging Assembly, which is a collection of four telescopes that use ten different wave links.

· The Extreme Ultraviolet Variability Experiment (or EVE) is used to study Ultraviolet rays as they affect the Earth’s upper atmosphere. The reason that NASA wants to study this is because the sun’s ultraviolet rays can heat, expand and break apart the Atoms of this atmosphere. The problem is that scientist does not understand much about the process. They want to know how long the process takes and other variables.

· The Helioseismic and Magnetic Imagery (HMI). It is used for mapping solar magnetic fields. It can peek inside the sun to get a better understanding of what makes the sun tick! (I bet you did not even know the sun ticked did you)?

“First Light” is what they call the first time this craft processed info, which happened on March 30, 2010. It sent back some spectacular images that gave NASA a whole new perspective on the sun. Now, this study is known as Hoilphysics and this SDO project has also been dubbed “Living with a Star.” There are many other projects that NASA is involved with that are somewhat similar to this one however; this is the one that seems most likely to help solve some of the mysteries about the sun.

So let us cut to the chase, what does this mean to us hear on earth? Well there is good news and bad news concerning sun flares affecting life on earth in 2012. The good news is that most scientists do not think that there will be major sun flares and other bad space weather in 2012! The bad news is that most scientists think that it will happen before 2012! Maybe even before 2010 is up!

The reason is that we are headed into a “normal” eleven year span of increased sun spot activity. Even though this is said to be a normal, there is a team of scientist who are predicting that this cycle of sun spots will be up to 50% greater than the one of the last cycle. This team is lead by Mausumi Dikpati of the National Center for Atmospheric Research. Considering that during prior cycles there have been some problems with power grids and that sort of thing, the fact that this activity may increase considerably, have created reason for concern.

I will not attempt to get to technical, for the video I plucked from YouTube is much better at doing this than I am. What I will state is that we have had some interference from the sun before that has created a certain amount of havoc here on earth. One thing that saves our butts here on earth is our Ozone Layer that filters out the more severe ultraviolet rays from doing damage. The only problem is that this ozone layer has been severally damaged.

In fact, I remember watching a video that a friend showed me that demonstrated a digital image transmitted to earth from a satellite. It displayed the growth in the hole that has appeared in the ozone layer located over the North Pole. This video was created way back in 1990 and depicted a ten year time period and clearly proved that the hole in this protective filter had grown each year until it reached the size of THE CONTINENT OF NORTH AMERICA! Now let me remind you, that this was back in 1990! From what I am discovering from my online research that the year that has been the ozone hole has been the worst was 2006. The interesting thing is that now the hole seems to be shrinking in size! The reason for this is the fairly recent focus on not using products that do not damage the ozone layer.

I remember when I first moved from the California to the South and was blown away by the fact that contractors were using Styrofoam as a building material. The reason I was surprised by this is that in California, Styrofoam has been banded from producing any type of Styrofoam product. In California all Styrofoam is recycled. All of the technical details of why Styrofoam, Freon and aerosol screw things up WAY UP in the stratosphere just seems to make my brain itch! Witch I guess would be OK if I knew a safe way to scratch it. (By the way if any of you readers out there have any advice on how I could SAFELY scratch my brain, please let me know). Because of this, I will not try to get to scientific.

Moving on, I think it is now more important than ever to find ways to stop polluting our atmosphere in ways that damage the ozone layer. For considering the fact that we will probably be getting more space weather activity, (like sun flares) the best and cheapest way to try to prevent some of the dangers from happening, would be to “go green” This means to lean even further away from products that can affect the ozone. We should also make sure we take precautions when we go out into the sun, like warring sun block, sunglasses and hats.

Now backtracking just a bit, let us look at what may be done to protect our electronics from getting fried from a “space storm.” It is true, that not a whole lot can be done if we do not know when one of these sun outbreaks may happen. This is why NASA is spending so much time and money in trying to be able to predict when such things as space flares will happen. If they do find a way to predict these sun flares, then we could take precautions by putting electrical grids into a “safe mode.” Now if that does not work we can always do What the Aztecs and other cultures did to try to appease the sun and that was human sacrifice! (Just kidding).

Instead of panicking about what may happen, it best to find ways to prepare for such a cosmic tragedy as what is being predicted. I will now briefly look at the Bibles take on what God says what to expect from the sun. Revelation 16: 8-9 gets right to the point. I quote from the New Living Translation that reads: “Then the fourth Angle poured out his bowl on the sun, causing it to scorch every one with fire. Everyone was burned by this blast of heat, and they cursed the name of God, who had control over all the plagues.”

I find it really interesting that people pooh-pooh the Bible but, when some silly Physic on the internet makes a claim it is truth! If people would start to pay more attention to what has been revealed by the book of Revelation and Isaiah they may be blown away! Here is a passage in Isaiah 30: 26-27 that further states… “The moon will be as bright as the sun, and the sun will be seven times brighter-like the light of seven days in one!”

OK, so according to the Bible, the sun will have a major roll in what happens in the last days on Earth. Now there are people that are saying that there is this “Bible Coed” that if you decipher it, will prove that 2010 will be the end of time! Well just hold your horses there sunshine, for that goes against the statements that the Bible makes about when Jesus will return. For 1Thessalonians 5: 2 states that the seconded coming will be like a “thief in the night.” Also in Revelation Jesus says that he will return “unexpectedly as theft.” That to me would indicate that there will be no or little warning.

With all the information I have obtained on the possibility of receiving some future problems from the sun I could fill three or four Hubs. To be honest with you, I have no interest in doing so, for I have gotten pretty sick of the whole 2012 song and dance. This whole thing reminds me of Orson Wells “The War of the worlds” when people had become convinced that the Martians were really attacking!

So let us recap on what we have discovered…Number one, we may very soon start seeing some difficulty with satellites and maybe even problems on this planet with electric grids, cell phones and another such items. We also should be concerned about protecting our selves from skin Cancer. NASA is spending a lot of time and money trying to better understand the sun and how to avoid any potential disasters from accruing. The Bible even predicts that at the end of time, some nasty stuff will happen that will involve the sun. Then last but not least…Thank God that he has allowed me to become sceptical why I still keep my mind crack open out just enough so I do not suffocate. In other words…balance baby!