Getting Ready for the Next Big Solar Storm
June 21, 2011: In Sept. 1859, on the eve of a below-average1 solar cycle, the sun unleashed one of the most powerful storms in centuries. The underlying flare was so unusual, researchers still aren’t sure how to categorize it. The blast peppered Earth with the most energetic protons in half-a-millennium, induced electrical currents that set telegraph offices on fire, and sparked Northern Lights over Cuba and Hawaii.
This week, officials have gathered at the National Press Club in Washington DC to ask themselves a simple question: What if it happens again?
“A similar storm today might knock us for a loop,” says Lika Guhathakurta, a solar physicist at NASA headquarters. “Modern society depends on high-tech systems such as smart power grids, GPS, and satellite communications–all of which are vulnerable to solar storms.”
She and more than a hundred others are attending the fifth annual Space Weather Enterprise Forum—”SWEF” for short. The purpose of SWEF is to raise awareness of space weather and its effects on society especially among policy makers and emergency responders. Attendees come from the US Congress, FEMA, power companies, the United Nations, NASA, NOAA and more.
to read more, go to: http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2011/22jun_swef2011/
(TheWeatherSpace.com) — A heatwave is building out in the Southwestern part of the country and this will be followed by the start of the monsoonal moisture chances.
Many U.S. presidents during their terms were seriously interested in UFOs and extraterrestrial intelligence issues, and some of them even had a chance to make contact with aliens. We turn to the recently declassified archives of ufology. Let’s start with 1948, when President Harry S. Truman summoned his Assistant Robert Landry to the Oval Office.
The Sun appears to be calming but that does not necessarily mean cooling on Earth