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NASA Space Science

NASA Confirms Solar Storm Near 2012 344

An anonymous reader writes "`This week researchers announced that a storm is coming — the most intense solar maximum in fifty years. The prediction comes from a team led by Mausumi Dikpati of the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR). "The next sunspot cycle will be 30% to 50% stronger than the previous one," she says. If correct, the years ahead could produce a burst of solar activity second only to the historic Solar Max of 1958.`

`Dikpati's forecast puts Solar Max at 2012. Hathaway believes it will arrive sooner, in 2010 or 2011.`

Anyone familiar with the Mayan Calendar? December 21, 2012 (13.0.0.0.0 in the Mayan Calendar) Coincidence?"
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NASA Confirms Solar Storm Near 2012

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  • by Bruce Perens ( 3872 ) * <bruce@perens.com> on Wednesday March 21, 2007 @09:21AM (#18427699) Homepage Journal
    Get ready for those long-distance ham radio contacts when the ionosphere goes crazy, and conditions generally improve even when it's not crazy! And now that there's no more Morse Code test, we'll see a lot of people who were stuck on VHF before on the HF bands.

    Looking at auroras will be cool too. Be sure to reserve the left seat on US to Europe red-eye flights, I've seen amazing aurorae out that window, nothing that you could see from the ground.

    Bruce

  • Re:Oh nooo!!! (Score:1, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 21, 2007 @09:45AM (#18427965)
    It is no coincidence, the Mayas kwew what they were doing. However, 21 of Dec 2012 is not the destruction of the earth, but the main point of a worldwide change which we can have the chance to be part of.
    These changes in the sun's weather are produced by the central sun in our galaxy, and this date in 2012, will be like a new birth for mankind and our blue planet.
    In the years preceeding this event, we will see how the old-age fight between good and evil will reach its peak. We need not to be afraid though, because if we are worthy to move beyond this date, our bodies are already being transformed, purified, ready for a jump in dimension.
    Millions are those fighting for a better world, and the end of times, which the Mayas and Jesus (Mat 24) spoke about are in front of us. I am personally looking forward to that day, in which everything that was lost or stolen from our past will be given back, and we will know as a race, our duty in this universe, evolving our way into infinity. FP.
  • Re:Sweet! (Score:3, Interesting)

    by brain1 ( 699194 ) on Wednesday March 21, 2007 @09:47AM (#18427981)
    Wonder how high the maximum usable frequency will rise to? Worldwide QRP on 6 meters? 2 meters? Can't wait.
  • by zyl0x ( 987342 ) on Wednesday March 21, 2007 @09:49AM (#18428015)
    Supposed "remote viewer" Major Ed Dames [wikipedia.org] has not-so-accurately predicted such a solar flare. He calls it the "Killshot" and says it will end most life on the planet.

    And naturally he is selling the secrets of how to survive this solar flare on DVD for the low low price of $24.99. Still, it's interesting to see a psychic's claim being backed by scientific observations.
  • by Shivetya ( 243324 ) on Wednesday March 21, 2007 @09:50AM (#18428019) Homepage Journal
    climate I would be curious what side effects they think this will have on our world other than electromagnetic issues?

    Does sunspot activity correspond to an decrease in the amount of radiation hitting the earth? If we are at a low point now for sunspots will their increase be truly noticable?

    I am only wondering as some scientists have put forward the idea that the sun's activities plays a much greater role in our environment than many give it credit for.

    So will an increase in sunspot activity affect us? ( I have no idea, hence I am asking from people who do)
  • This article [nasa.gov] from NASA JPL is very informative on the subject.

    The researchers found some clear links between the sun's activity and climate variations. The Nile water levels and aurora records had two somewhat regularly occurring variations in common - one with a period of about 88 years and the second with a period of about 200 years.

    I think we need to take a look at the hysteria. It is turn our attention away from what we can do to better this planet. And, the idea of carbon offsets just makes people feel better for their polution levels.

    Global Warming has become the new Medieval Church and anyone who does not walk a precise line on the message faces the New Inquisition.

    We do need to live more green, more clean, and more simple. But, the public won't buy off on that message if we keep tying it to the Holy Church of Global Warming Hysteria. If we can show more immediate effects of living green and clean the public will follow.

    We need to separate those whose real agenda is socio-economic change from the environmental argument. They aren't really interested in the environment, anyway. We need to remove the scammers, like the "carbon offset" (unregulated, uncertified, non-verifiable) companies to improve public perception.

    We need to substitue Ed Beagley Jr. for Al Gore. Ed lives, breathes, talks, and walks the environment. Al Gore, while talking about it, still jets around the world, when he could use his own invention, the Internet, to show up at appearances, he maintains a house in Tennessee that uses 20 times the amount of energy as his neighbors, he is a glutton who preaches about the wonders of a diet.

  • Re:Oh nooo!!! (Score:2, Interesting)

    by neomunk ( 913773 ) on Wednesday March 21, 2007 @10:27AM (#18428515)
    Interesting post, and consistent with the information I've seen on the subject.

    One little thing that sprung to my mind a few years ago as I was reading about the Mayan calendar and it's legendary implications mixed with Christian end-time lore is the fact that the apocalypse, if information from both sides is taken into account, should have started in late 2005. Mind you, (by my understanding of Christian theology) things won't get noticeably horrible until 3 1/2 years in, sometime around June 2009.

    Of course, that's assuming that the December 2012 date is the final culminating event of the whole ordeal. The end-times scenarios seem similar in their implications to me, but I'm no Theologian, just interested in the topic.

    It's really an interesting thing to think about, the unification of creation and it's subsequent re-unfolding.
  • Astrology (Score:1, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 21, 2007 @10:33AM (#18428581)
    Even wierder - since 1952 RCA has used the positions of the planets (i.e., astrology) to predict sunspots and their effects on the long range HF radio
    communications net they maintain for the Dept. of Defense across the Pacific. There is some correlation between the positions of the planets and the
    intensity of sunspots - i.e., there is a real world correlation between astrology and the sunspot cycle and the aurora strength, etc.

    With regard to the Mayan calendar: don't assume that they had a cyclic view of things in all regards. I recall that one of the ancient civilizations (Sumer?) experienced a social collapse because they had one of those "chiseled in stone" calendars and folks started predicting the end of the world a few centuries
    before the end of the calendar - and it became a self-fulfilling prophecy as everybody in the society got wierded out 'cause they didn't know how to turn the
    page on the calendar, to the extent it lead to a social collapse.
  • Re:Oh nooo!!! (Score:2, Interesting)

    by tompaulco ( 629533 ) on Wednesday March 21, 2007 @10:59AM (#18428953) Homepage Journal
    According to the Bible, no one can know the exact dates of Jesus' second coming, not even Jesus himself knows. There is considerable debate about whether the tribulation will be pre-rapture or post-rapture, but suffice it to say that no one, including the Mayans, can know when the end of the world will be, if Jesus himself does not know.
    Of course, if Christianity is wrong, then all bets are off and maybe the Mayans do know when Jesus is coming. But then we have a Paradox.
  • Re:Sweet! (Score:3, Interesting)

    by brain1 ( 699194 ) on Wednesday March 21, 2007 @12:07PM (#18429867)
    You know, now that I think about it, there wasn't a lot of VHF/UHF gear for amateur radio back then during that huge solar max. Mostly old surplus, vibrator power supply, VHF trunk-mounted FM wideband business radios recrystalled for 2M. 70cm was largely unexplored territory. Forget everything above that, unless you happened to have a military surplus klystron laying around somewhere. 1296 MHz and above was hugely experimental and the average amateur couldn't touch the gear to play around with those bands.. So, this is really the first time we as amateurs get to explore ionospheric reflection propagation at those high frequencies. Exciting. Only sour note is that a lot of birds out in space are going to have myriad problems. Surface charging, solar panel deterioriation, charged particles ripping through circuitry. Ugh. Only the RAD-hardened military stuff will get through relatively unscathed. We'll see, but I wouldn't want to be one of the operators of those birds. 73
  • by peter303 ( 12292 ) on Wednesday March 21, 2007 @01:09PM (#18430873)
    nuf said
  • Re:Oh nooo!!! (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Shadowlore ( 10860 ) on Wednesday March 21, 2007 @06:07PM (#18435563) Journal
    You don't consider the cultivation of livestock a human activity? Seriously?
    Maybe he's part of the IPCC which also doesn't consider it to be so.

    In a sense they are right. Cow gas and cow belches are not human activity. Yes mankind has increased the numbers of them.

    And the key difference is political impetus and control. Seriously, bovine contribution to GW is approximately 11% greater than human industrial outputs. But you won't see the AGW disasterbators saying we need to reduce the number of cows, or put cows under collection facilities, etc.. Why not? Because for most of the AGW disasterbators it isn't about the environment or the science. It is about control and forcing people to live a lifestyle the AGW disasterbators want them to.

    The AGW proponents say it is our industrial output (particularly cars and the "carbon footprint"), but don't talk to the media about the other sources -even when said sources are greater in GWP. The worst moment for AGW proponents was when the founders of the notion said they needed access to government to get them to change the laws to make people do things. It's been downhill since then.
  • by seandiggity ( 992657 ) on Wednesday March 21, 2007 @08:03PM (#18436893) Homepage
    Obviously it's a coincidence, if it's accurate. But it'd be nice to kill such a rumor with historical information anyway. Seems like it would be difficult to accurately compare our current calendar with the Mayan one and pinpoint down to the day.

    Anybody know if that measurement is wrong given the disparity between the Julian/Gregorian calendars in the West (or the history of our current calendar system in general)? Maybe that date is really November 24th (or whatever) in the earliest "modern" European calendar system. I remember reading somewhere that there's only been a unified calendar in Europe/the British colonies for about 250 years.

    I'm not interested enough to research, but maybe there are slashdotters out there who know a lot about this subject...

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