Official News page 6

REAL LIFE NEWS: WHEN WILL THE WORLD END?

by Hazed

If you're an apocalyptic conspiracy theorist then you probably think the world will end in 2012, thanks to an ancient Mayan proverb, plenty of scare-mongering websites and a recent Hollywood blockbuster.

But if you're a NASA scientist you might just think it'll all be over in 2013. Well, possibly.

"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," explained Richard Fisher, head of NASA's Heliophysics Division. "At the same time, our technological society has developed an unprecedented sensitivity to solar storms."

In other words, the solar cycle which has been quiet for a while is about to hot up again and solar flares could wreak havoc on electronic devices.

The 11-year cycle means we've been through "solar maximums" before, but we have never been so very dependent on electrical and electronic infrastructure. Even so, there have been some spectacular incidents in the past:

• In 1859, a "perfect space storm" shorted out telegraph lines in the US and Europe, causing numerous fires. The Northern Lights were visible as far south as Rome, Havana and Hawaii.
• In 1921, a solar storm induced ground currents that crippled the New York transit system.
• In 1989, the entire Quebec power grid was brought down by the same kind of ground currents and six million people were plunged into darkness on a cold Canadian night.

The solar cycle peaks in 2013, and this time there are far more things that could be affected. Satellites in orbit will be vulnerable so mobile phones, satnavs, TV broadcasts and so on could be put out of action, and of course we have far more power grids and other installations around the globe.

You can read more about the dire predictions, but also some of the things we could do to mitigate future problems, here.

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