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by Fred C. Wilson III
August 16, 2012
“I have no doubt that we will be successful in harnessing the sun’s energy…If sunbeams were weapons of war, we would have had solar energy centuries ago.”
-Sir. George Porter-
Reader did you know that the sun is 93,000,000 miles from Earth? The sun is roughly 100 Earth diameters. You can put 1,000,000 Earths inside the sun. Our star is composed of plasma hence no solid surface and it’s 10,000 degrees (1,500 Kelvins-solar measurements) hot. The solar core is 20,000,000 times hot! Each sun spot is roughly the size of our planet. WARNING: When viewing the sun please make sure that your telescope has a white light (common welders mask) solar filter end attachment or else bad things will happen: PERMINANT BLINDNESS OR DEATH! Another warning: Buying a solar filter is akin to purchasing a car or a computer; caveat emptor (buyer beware). Make triply sure your salespersons know their product and not trying to make a sale and nice commission regardless of blinding or killing you or a loved one. Getting suckered by pushy salespeople over a telescope deal ain’t like buying a lemon (defective automobile), a camera, or a sofa that break down once you get it home. You buy a bogus sun filter you’re dead if you’re ‘lucky.’ Blindness is far worse. I’m an amateur astronomer. I know my business.
Our sun is a G-type main-sequence star. It’s a near-perfect sphere much like a baseball, made of plasma aforementioned and 99.86% the total mass of our Solar System. ‘Old Sol’ (Sun) rotates faster at its equator than at the poles. The Sun takes approximately 255.6 days to rotate at its center but 33.5 days at its poles. Due to our constantly changing vantage point (Earth) the ‘apparent solar rotation’ from its equator is about 28 days. If you could travel there from Earth at light speed it’ll take you only 8 minutes and 19 seconds. Old Sol is 4.57 billion years old!
Reader if you follow the news like most people you’re knowledgeable about those recent unsettling solar occurrences. Solar flares those sudden, rapid and intense variations in solar brightness that occur when built up magnetic energy are suddenly released are as old as the sun. Most are harmless though some are disturbing and even dangerous. We are earthbound creatures yet totally dependant upon the sun for life. Whatever the sun does we’re involved for better or worse. According to an article by Richard A. Lovett of the National Geographic News, Solar storms hit us in three stages though not all of which occur in any given storm. “First, high-energy sun light, mostly x-rays and ultraviolet light, ionizes Earth’s upper atmosphere, interfering with radio communications. Next there are radiation storms that are potentially dangerous to unprotected astronauts. Finally a coronal mass ejection, or CME, a slower moving cloud of charged particles that can take several days to reach Earth’s atmosphere. When a CME hits, the solar particles can interact with Earth’s magnetic field to produce powerful electromagnetic fluctuations.” Our planet is surrounded by a protective atmospheric cocoon that filters out harmful solar rays.
A few years back screen star Nicolas Cage stared in the movie ‘Knowing.’ The movie was about what would happen to planet Earth is if an abnormally large solar storm struck. Our planet would be fried within seconds. Such a catastrophe would destroy us but so can nuclear war, biological war, and the Green House Effect the latter leveled planet Venus so pick your ‘poison.’ Let’s face it Reader anything can happen. When you’re ‘number’s up’ my suggestion is that you get your spiritual house in order with GOD then kiss your sorry butt good bye. (laughing!)
Reader like me you’re concerned about the ‘DE’ (Dollar Effect) and how major solar disturbances impact your wallet/
pocket book. Here’s how: All global positioning systems (GPS) aka cell phones, airplanes, and cars will go haywire-they’ll crash to an estimated tune of $13,000,000.00. By 2017 make that an estimated $1,000,000,000,000.00 and counting! If the ‘big one’ strikes you can forget about satellite communications functioning normally if at all. Remember reading/hearing about the massive crash of the electrical grid on the East coasts of our country and Canada some years back and the massive damage that caused? Giant transformers cost mega-$$$$$ to manufacture and repair. Think of your refrigerator quitting in the middle of a July heat wave and you just purchased a lot of food for you and your family and your electricity’s down for days. Try using your credit cards to buy stuff. Need money from your bank? Having heart surgery? You can forget about working your computer. Damages caused by solar mishaps can LINGER FOR YEARS before what once passed for normalcy is restored! Pretty scary stuff huh? Think what your cable network does during minor rain storms; it can shut down for hours! Factor this minor mishap to the 1,000th power and you get some idea of what I’m talking about.
In the history of recorded solar flares none tops the one Earth experienced in 1859. That was the ‘mother of all solar storms.’ Luckily for the folks back then fancy technological gadgets didn’t exist but even so havoc happened when the Carrington Super Flare struck: “On 1 September 1859, Carrington and Richard Hodgson, another English amateur astronomer, independently made the first observations of a solar flare. Because of a simultaneous ‘crochet’ observed in the Kew Observatory magnetometer record by Balfour Stewart and a geomagnetic storm observed the following day, Carrington suspected a solar-terrestrial connection. World wide reports on the effects of the geomagnetic storm of 1859 were compiled and published by Elias Loomis which support the observations of Carrington and Balfour Stewart.
“On September 1–2, 1859, the largest recorded geomagnetic storm occurred. Aurorae (arcane for Auroras) were seen around the world, most notably over the Caribbean; also noteworthy were those over the Rocky Mountains that were so bright that their glow awoke gold miners, who began preparing breakfast because they thought it was morning. People who happened to be awake in the northeastern US could read a newspaper by the aurora’s light.
“Telegraph systems all over Europe and North America failed, in some cases even shocking telegraph operators. Telegraph pylons threw sparks and telegraph paper spontaneously caught fire. Some telegraph systems continued to send and receive messages despite having been disconnected from their power supplies.” (Source: 10 Wikipedia reference publications) Reader I’ve approached my word limit; bye-bye until part two next edition. GOD bless.