After a much desired vacation, well rested and ready for business, our Sun is back to work and the next couple of years may be very exciting ones here on earth.
In a statement from NASA dated June 4 th 2010 from a meeting held in Washington DC:
“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. 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.”
The consensus of the attendees of this meeting was that the economic damage from solar storms could be 20 times the damage done by Hurricane Katrina. CME (Massive Coronal Mass Ejection or Solar Eruption) striking the earth will knock out many, if not all, the high tech systems that we have come to rely on.
Some of these systems would include the satellites, that are responsible for communication and GPS ( Global Positioning System), financial systems around the world that rely on computers, electrical grids could be shut down. Society would be plunged back in time a hundred years.
In order to prepare for a solar flare or storm the government relies the expertise of two agencies, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and National Aeronautics and Space Administration. NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) has been tasked with the responsibility of monitoring space weather, with the aid of NASA spacecraft. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration maintains the Space Weather Prediction Center in Boulder Colo. What is really interesting is NOAA’s websites where you can check for updates on space weather,the Space Weather Advisories- Advisory Outlooks website and Space Weather Now site .
