solar flares???
Thread Starter
Miss It.
Joined: Sep 2006
Posts: 4,420
Likes: 1
solar flares???
some guy came into best buy yesterday looking for a GPS. after like 30 min of just looking at about 8 different ones he turns to me an was like i dont even know why im going to buy one any way because of solar flares. and i was like 
im not going to lie i had no idea what he was talking about...he said in 2011 we are goin to have a solar flare that will stop all satellite activity suck has GPS all types of navigation for large airplanes etc etc etc...
then he was saying how the San Andreas fault was going to split open but that even that is not the worst one out there...the worst one is the fault that goes along the Mississippi river?
is there any truth to this...he was a very intelligent person that seemed legit and not just some loon off the street.
SUMMARY- he pretty much said that hurricane Katrina was just a little wake up call and there is going to be a lot worse coming and in our generation ( most of ours).
Any comments?
im not going to lie i had no idea what he was talking about...he said in 2011 we are goin to have a solar flare that will stop all satellite activity suck has GPS all types of navigation for large airplanes etc etc etc...then he was saying how the San Andreas fault was going to split open but that even that is not the worst one out there...the worst one is the fault that goes along the Mississippi river?
is there any truth to this...he was a very intelligent person that seemed legit and not just some loon off the street.
SUMMARY- he pretty much said that hurricane Katrina was just a little wake up call and there is going to be a lot worse coming and in our generation ( most of ours).
Any comments?
h:
BAZINGA!
Joined: Aug 2004
Posts: 21,613
Likes: 0
From: San Diego, CA
Solar Flares are sporadic and not forsee-able in the future I would say.
As for the fault lines, those can crack open at any time. There is a volcano on one of the Canary Islands that has an intriguing structure to it that has caused an extremely fragile design. To add to the crap it is on a fault line that is starting to be active. If the volcano erupts it will cause the western half of the island to fall into the ocean and would cause an 800', 400mph tidal wave that will strike Washington DC in 8 hours and wipe out the entire eastern coastline of North America.
I would be more concerned about that rather than solar flares, because those happen all the time.
As for the fault lines, those can crack open at any time. There is a volcano on one of the Canary Islands that has an intriguing structure to it that has caused an extremely fragile design. To add to the crap it is on a fault line that is starting to be active. If the volcano erupts it will cause the western half of the island to fall into the ocean and would cause an 800', 400mph tidal wave that will strike Washington DC in 8 hours and wipe out the entire eastern coastline of North America.
I would be more concerned about that rather than solar flares, because those happen all the time.
i like cheese
Joined: May 2005
Posts: 3,158
Likes: 0
From: Rancho Cordova :\
actually he could be right. he prolly read this http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2...ormwarning.htm
you watched that show too? pretty crazy that a water logged volcano near africa could hurt the east coast like that.
March 10, 2006: It's official: Solar minimum has arrived. Sunspots have all but vanished. Solar flares are nonexistent. The sun is utterly quiet.
Like the quiet before a storm.
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.
see captionThat was a solar maximum. The Space Age was just beginning: Sputnik was launched in Oct. 1957 and Explorer 1 (the first US satellite) in Jan. 1958. In 1958 you couldn't tell that a solar storm was underway by looking at the bars on your cell phone; cell phones didn't exist. Even so, people knew something big was happening when Northern Lights were sighted three times in Mexico. A similar maximum now would be noticed by its effect on cell phones, GPS, weather satellites and many other modern technologies.
Right: Intense auroras over Fairbanks, Alaska, in 1958. [More]
Dikpati's prediction is unprecedented. In nearly-two centuries since the 11-year sunspot cycle was discovered, scientists have struggled to predict the size of future maxima—and failed. Solar maxima can be intense, as in 1958, or barely detectable, as in 1805, obeying no obvious pattern.
The key to the mystery, Dikpati realized years ago, is a conveyor belt on the sun.
We have something similar here on Earth—the Great Ocean Conveyor Belt, popularized in the sci-fi movie The Day After Tomorrow. It is a network of currents that carry water and heat from ocean to ocean--see the diagram below. In the movie, the Conveyor Belt stopped and threw the world's weather into chaos.
see caption
Above: Earth's "Great Ocean Conveyor Belt." [More]
The sun's conveyor belt is a current, not of water, but of electrically-conducting gas. It flows in a loop from the sun's equator to the poles and back again. Just as the Great Ocean Conveyor Belt controls weather on Earth, this solar conveyor belt controls weather on the sun. Specifically, it controls the sunspot cycle.
Solar physicist David Hathaway of the National Space Science & Technology Center (NSSTC) explains: "First, remember what sunspots are--tangled knots of magnetism generated by the sun's inner dynamo. A typical sunspot exists for just a few weeks. Then it decays, leaving behind a 'corpse' of weak magnetic fields."
Enter the conveyor belt.
see caption"The top of the conveyor belt skims the surface of the sun, sweeping up the magnetic fields of old, dead sunspots. The 'corpses' are dragged down at the poles to a depth of 200,000 km where the sun's magnetic dynamo can amplify them. Once the corpses (magnetic knots) are reincarnated (amplified), they become buoyant and float back to the surface." Presto—new sunspots!
Right: The sun's "great conveyor belt." [Larger image]
All this happens with massive slowness. "It takes about 40 years for the belt to complete one loop," says Hathaway. The speed varies "anywhere from a 50-year pace (slow) to a 30-year pace (fast)."
When the belt is turning "fast," it means that lots of magnetic fields are being swept up, and that a future sunspot cycle is going to be intense. This is a basis for forecasting: "The belt was turning fast in 1986-1996," says Hathaway. "Old magnetic fields swept up then should re-appear as big sunspots in 2010-2011."
Like most experts in the field, Hathaway has confidence in the conveyor belt model and agrees with Dikpati that the next solar maximum should be a doozy. But he disagrees with one point. Dikpati's forecast puts Solar Max at 2012. Hathaway believes it will arrive sooner, in 2010 or 2011.
"History shows that big sunspot cycles 'ramp up' faster than small ones," he says. "I expect to see the first sunspots of the next cycle appear in late 2006 or 2007—and Solar Max to be underway by 2010 or 2011."
Who's right? Time will tell. Either way, a storm is coming.
Like the quiet before a storm.
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.
see captionThat was a solar maximum. The Space Age was just beginning: Sputnik was launched in Oct. 1957 and Explorer 1 (the first US satellite) in Jan. 1958. In 1958 you couldn't tell that a solar storm was underway by looking at the bars on your cell phone; cell phones didn't exist. Even so, people knew something big was happening when Northern Lights were sighted three times in Mexico. A similar maximum now would be noticed by its effect on cell phones, GPS, weather satellites and many other modern technologies.
Right: Intense auroras over Fairbanks, Alaska, in 1958. [More]
Dikpati's prediction is unprecedented. In nearly-two centuries since the 11-year sunspot cycle was discovered, scientists have struggled to predict the size of future maxima—and failed. Solar maxima can be intense, as in 1958, or barely detectable, as in 1805, obeying no obvious pattern.
The key to the mystery, Dikpati realized years ago, is a conveyor belt on the sun.
We have something similar here on Earth—the Great Ocean Conveyor Belt, popularized in the sci-fi movie The Day After Tomorrow. It is a network of currents that carry water and heat from ocean to ocean--see the diagram below. In the movie, the Conveyor Belt stopped and threw the world's weather into chaos.
see caption
Above: Earth's "Great Ocean Conveyor Belt." [More]
The sun's conveyor belt is a current, not of water, but of electrically-conducting gas. It flows in a loop from the sun's equator to the poles and back again. Just as the Great Ocean Conveyor Belt controls weather on Earth, this solar conveyor belt controls weather on the sun. Specifically, it controls the sunspot cycle.
Solar physicist David Hathaway of the National Space Science & Technology Center (NSSTC) explains: "First, remember what sunspots are--tangled knots of magnetism generated by the sun's inner dynamo. A typical sunspot exists for just a few weeks. Then it decays, leaving behind a 'corpse' of weak magnetic fields."
Enter the conveyor belt.
see caption"The top of the conveyor belt skims the surface of the sun, sweeping up the magnetic fields of old, dead sunspots. The 'corpses' are dragged down at the poles to a depth of 200,000 km where the sun's magnetic dynamo can amplify them. Once the corpses (magnetic knots) are reincarnated (amplified), they become buoyant and float back to the surface." Presto—new sunspots!
Right: The sun's "great conveyor belt." [Larger image]
All this happens with massive slowness. "It takes about 40 years for the belt to complete one loop," says Hathaway. The speed varies "anywhere from a 50-year pace (slow) to a 30-year pace (fast)."
When the belt is turning "fast," it means that lots of magnetic fields are being swept up, and that a future sunspot cycle is going to be intense. This is a basis for forecasting: "The belt was turning fast in 1986-1996," says Hathaway. "Old magnetic fields swept up then should re-appear as big sunspots in 2010-2011."
Like most experts in the field, Hathaway has confidence in the conveyor belt model and agrees with Dikpati that the next solar maximum should be a doozy. But he disagrees with one point. Dikpati's forecast puts Solar Max at 2012. Hathaway believes it will arrive sooner, in 2010 or 2011.
"History shows that big sunspot cycles 'ramp up' faster than small ones," he says. "I expect to see the first sunspots of the next cycle appear in late 2006 or 2007—and Solar Max to be underway by 2010 or 2011."
Who's right? Time will tell. Either way, a storm is coming.
Solar Flares are sporadic and not forsee-able in the future I would say.
As for the fault lines, those can crack open at any time. There is a volcano on one of the Canary Islands that has an intriguing structure to it that has caused an extremely fragile design. To add to the crap it is on a fault line that is starting to be active. If the volcano erupts it will cause the western half of the island to fall into the ocean and would cause an 800', 400mph tidal wave that will strike Washington DC in 8 hours and wipe out the entire eastern coastline of North America.
I would be more concerned about that rather than solar flares, because those happen all the time.
As for the fault lines, those can crack open at any time. There is a volcano on one of the Canary Islands that has an intriguing structure to it that has caused an extremely fragile design. To add to the crap it is on a fault line that is starting to be active. If the volcano erupts it will cause the western half of the island to fall into the ocean and would cause an 800', 400mph tidal wave that will strike Washington DC in 8 hours and wipe out the entire eastern coastline of North America.
I would be more concerned about that rather than solar flares, because those happen all the time.