Sunday 4 March 2012

Solar Flare could frazzle world's circuits.

Solar flares (credit: SOHO/NASA/ESA)
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The Earth has a roughly 12 percent chance of experiencing an enormous megaflare erupting from the sun in the next decade, according to space physicist Pete Riley, senior scientist at Predictive Science in San Diego, California, writing n Space Weather on Feb. 23.

This event could potentially cause trillions of dollars’ worth of damage and take up to a decade to recover from, according to a 2008 report from the National Research Council.

The last gigantic solar storm, known as the Carrington Event, occurred more than 150 years ago and was the most powerful such event in recorded history.

Ref.: Pete Riley, On the probability of occurrence of extreme space weather events. Space Weather, 2012 [DOI: 10.1029/2011SW000734] (Source: Kurzweil)

Earth’s sun goes through an 11-year cycle of increased and decreased activity. During solar maximum, it’s dotted with many sunspots and enormous magnetic whirlwinds erupt from its surface. Occasionally, these flares burst outward from the sun, spewing a mass of charged particles out into space. (Wired.com)







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