Severe Solar Flares NASA Predicts to Reach Earth

[Raineyrocks]

Does anyone believe this?  If so, what do you think will happen?  Will giant flames come shooting down to the earth and burn people alive?


http://www.theepochtimes.com/n2/content/view/37183/

Severe Solar Flares NASA Predicts to Reach Earth
By Lina Berezovska
Epoch Times Staff Created: Jun 10, 2010 Last Updated: Jun 10, 2010

NASA image of a solar flare erupting from giant sunspot 649. NASA is predicting to see much higher levels of solar activity of Solar Flares and Solar Storms erupting from the sun, in the next few years. (HO/Getty Images) )
Sleeping for eleven years, our hot giant star the Sun has begun to awaken and possibly exhale a massive solar storm in its yawn toward planet Earth. Meanwhile back in Washington, D.C., policy makers, government leaders, researches, and the public assembled at the Space Weather Enterprise Forum 2010 on Tuesday, June 8 to brainstorm what can be done to protect 21st century equipment against the sun.

"The sun is waking up from a deep slumber, and in the next few years we expect to see much higher levels of solar activity," said Richard Fisher in a NASA newsletter. Fisher is head of NASA's Heliophysics division. "At the same time, our technological society has developed an unprecedented sensitivity to solar storms. The intersection of these two issues is what we're getting together to discuss."

Solar flares vary in strength and in impact on the Earth's magnetic field. The flares are highly radioactive, although humans are protected from this radiation by the atmosphere. What suffers is technology. The heat from the flares can damage satellites and x-rays can disturb radio communications.

Perhaps the most dangerous type of flares for humans are the coronal mass ejections (CMEs) that occur during the most active period of the sun's 11-year cycle. This time the CME is set about for 2012.

A coronal mass ejection happens when the sun erupts gas from its corona, or its outer atmosphere, and carries a massive amount of radioactive material that can reach earth in three to five days.

In a report published two years ago by the National Academy of Sciences titled "Severe Space Weather Events—Societal and Economic Impacts," researchers predicted that our sophisticated technology is vulnerable to a severe solar storm. In a worst case scenario, developed countries with high-tech cities could face blackouts, and devastating financial costs twenty times the size of the economic damage of the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.

For now, all NASA and the authorities at the Space Weather Enterprise Forum can only advise the private sector, air travel industry, and everyone in the electric power business to take special precautions for the future when a colossal solar storm surges through the Earth.