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Photo by Handout/Getty Images
September 11, 2014
There’s
a storm coming and battening down the hatches is not going to do much. That’s
because this particular storm is a massive solar flare that will strike the
Earth sometime tomorrow or Saturday. The sun let off an X class flare, the most powerful
type, yesterday and it looks like it could be a doozy.
Solar
flares are caused when a large mass of charged particles build up on the
surface of the sun and are then released all at once. This particular flare was
caused by a massive storm on the sun and is actually the second large flare
released this week. The first wason Tuesday. This particular flare
is traveling toward us at about 2.5 million miles per hour, which sounds fast
but it’s only really at a medium pace in space terms.
But
what does it mean for us earthbound folks? Well, probably not much other than
some possible interruptions of a few high frequency radio transmissions. No end of the world as we know it, no
precursor civilization having to reawaken 80,000
year old technology to save us,
no questionable fruit drinks harnessing its power to be unleashed
later.
What
we will have, however, is a chance to watch it online. The Slooh Space
Telescope will broadcast it on their website, so that’s pretty neat. Well, unless it knocks
out the communications. Then that’s irony.
“There’s
been a giant magnetic explosion on the sun,” said Tom Berger, director of the Space Weather
Prediction Center. “Because it’s pointed
right at us, we’ll at least catch some of the cloud.” But he also added that
most of it will go over the North Pole, sparing us from a repeat of the Carrington
Event, and we all remember
that one.
In
other words, no need to worry. No sacrifices to the sun gods, no worrying about, well, whatever it is these guys are worried about. Sit back and enjoy the show,
after all, we haven’t had an apocalypse in, like, a year, so we’re about
due anyway.
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