mmm, I wonder how this will play out...

If we have trouble getting on, or loose our power grid over the weekend this could be the reason.

Scientists around the world will be watching closely as three eruptions from the Sun reach the Earth over Thursday and Friday.

These "coronal mass ejections" will slam into the Earth's magnetic shield.

The waves of charged solar particles are the result of three solar flares directed at Earth in recent days, including the most powerful since 2006.

The biggest flares can disrupt technology, including power grids, communications systems and satellites.

Goto:

BBC News - Solar flare eruptions set to reach Earth

 

Good thing it's cloudy and rainy here today then, haven't seen the sun all week.

 

I can forget about my tan over the weekend...

 

Well, it's been snowing here since yesterday - so I guess we have a "snow shield" to protect us so far!

 

And here I always just blamed it on the poor campus internet connection....

 

If you want sun and heat? then come to Austin. We got to about 79 today, were cloudy most of the time and were supposed to have (but thankfully didnt) drizzle.

 

and here I was walking around without a coat, excited that it was in the upper 50s. heh.

 

I haven't had a coronal mass ejection for 2-3 yrs now. ..There's a joke in there somewhere.

 

Isn't our world ruled by the Sun?... Man has little effect on our temperatures. Transferring wealth in the name of global warming is a scam....See: Al Gore. It is an awkward truth.

 

Ill gladly trade you temps if it were possible? Id rather be somewhat uncomfortable cold that irritatingly hot and sweaty--already. ;-))

 

Dont even get me started on THAT twit. If I got started now? I would not get any sleep id be so irritated thinking about the -------- who has now made many millions off of idiots with his fad.

 

Most Gladly! You're welcome to have the snowstorm we're bound to get eventually as well. heh.

 

here's a link to NASA's info on CMEs:

NASA's Cosmicopia -- Sun - Solar Activity - Coronal Mass Ejections

Their building isn't too far from where I work at GSFC

 

While that is true, the sun is our heat source. However, our sun is in the last years of the solar minimum which has lasted longer than others during this past century. There was one this length at the change of the 18 and 19 Century, and that prompted the "Little Ice Age", at the turn of the 19 and 20 Century the lengthy minimum prompted a set of record colds and crop failures, this one (the third in our historical measurement era), we have set heat records. What has changed since the end of the 1700s? We humans have increased our fossil fuel use.

We probably do have something to do with the change of our climate patterns, even if we haven't caused it all on our own; "fouling our own nest" is still dumb as a bag of hair. Even pigs will defecate in as far away a place from where they sleep and eat if given the room, why we don't clean up our own sty is beyond me. Even if we didn't "cause" it, we are clearly contributing to the alteration, and that is all we can control. Let's stop arguing about "what caused it", and do what we can to at least slow it down, the accelerating of it isn't a good idea.

 

Not much chance of me seeing the Northern Lights last night; it was pouring down.

 

.

 

I am sorry I allowed this thread to drift off into climate change, that wasn't the original direction at all. This is to point out that this weekend we may see communication disruptions, not just beautiful "Northern Lights" if our sky is clear. A massive ejection literally destroyed our primitive communications system in 1859, when all that was strung up was copper wire, powered by low voltage DC. Think what something like that would do today with our space based relay stations, our digital storage which is vulnerable to EMP, and the fact that so very much of the global economy depends on rapid communications.

I simply hope the good old sun isn't getting ready for another "burp" of this nature since most of the world's economy was still agricultural not communications based. The telegraph going out won't stop the crops from coming in, but a melt-down today might very well stop everything if you don't live on a farm.

Goto:

Solar Superstorm - NASA Science

If you want to worry about something, there is a good one.

 

I don't worry about that kind of thing. Not like I could stop it. I am as prepared as a person in my situation can be I guess, for an event like this.