Tuesday, February 22, 2011

Why Should A Solar Storm Concern Me?

NASA
If a strong enough solar storm hits Earth you will not be able to read this blog because your internet will not be working.  Your cell phone and GPS won't be working either.  Your electricity will not be working because the power grid will also be shut down.  

For how long?  No one really knows.  Days, months, years?  However long it takes to repair & replace it.  Some estimate between 4-10 years and at a cost of $1-2 Trillion.  Although, in a catastrophe such as this...why would anyone care about worthless paper money more than just helping rebuild society for the greater good?

That giant fireball in the sky is 93,000,000 miles away and is very very large.  To get a better perspective on the size of the sun, let's compare it to Earth.  If you had a beach-ball and a grain of sand, Earth would be the grain of sand whereas the sun would be the beach-ball.  A solar storm consists of eruptions of charged particles and blobs of plasma from the sun which are hurled towards Earth at 530 miles per second.

The sun has a cycle where roughly every 11 years it goes from a period of low solar activity to a period of maximum solar activity.  Our star is starting to wake up and solar activity is ramping up with maximum activity predicted sometime around 2013.  A recent solar flare happened this past Tuesday reaching Earth on Thursday causing communications disruptions in Asia.

Do you have your bug-out-bag prepared?

-M

1 comment:

  1. Its crazy stuff!!

    Should make for an interesting next cpl years.

    ReplyDelete