2012 - Sun storm to hit with 'force of 100 bombs' (Nasa) | Hacker News Reader

2012 - Sun storm to hit with 'force of 100 bombs' (Nasa)

news.com.au

18 pointskeyle14 comments

When the next solar maximum arrives, this is what you do. You keep your eye on spaceweather.com. When a big X flare erupts there is an increased chance of aurora after a couple of days. When this happens and the chance of aurora looks good, go out around midnight and look for it. Usually nothing will happen; be patient. After a few times of going out at midnight and seeing nothing, you'll eventually get an aurora display you'll never forget. But get away from city lights.

I did this and watched the aurora on the beach on the Outer Banks of North Carolina. You can even see the aurora as far south as Florida or Mexico if the conditions are right.

Whoa! Seems like this article is a whole jumble of conflicting information starting with the title (Hit with the force of 100 bombs) whereas in the body of the article it says "the blast will have the equivalent energy of 100 million hydrogen bombs." and it doesn't say who made this claim (despite the HN title seeming to attribute to NASA). It sounds very dramatic to say "hit with" but if it's actually something that's happening on the surface of the sun that's a very misleading way to phrase it.

And then when I read articles elsewhere on the web it sounds like NASA back in 2006 was predicting a big storm in 2012 but now they're saying the calculations were wrong and it will actually be unusually small. http://thecosmicheart.blogspot.com/2009/11/no-more-2012-sola...

While admitting that News.com.au is my default site for online, Australia news, I must confess to a household saying we have based on News' local newspaper the Courier-Mail: "Is it true, or did you read it the Courier-Mail?"

I agree, and I posted this. They're ok at breaking news but rubbish at facts checking in depth.

From the article:

NASA has since rebutted those reports, saying it could come "100 years away or just 100 days"

Although that doesn't have quite the same ring to it as a 2012 disaster.

Not sure how that's considered a rebuttal? 100 days

Let's assume the event could happen anywhere between 100 days from now and 100 years from now. This gives us, roughly and without compensating for leap years for simplicity, a 36400 day span. 2012 will occupy 365 days of that span, or 365/36400 = ~1% of that period.

Basically, NASA made a blanket statement about a possible solar storm occurring at some date, and journalists are doing everything they can to force that date to be 2012 so they can play off of all of the apocalypse prophecies.

I wish more people had greater respect for Mayan astronomy. It took us decades to realize their estimation of the age of the universe was more accurate than ours.

From the actual linked NASA source [1]:

An international panel of experts led by NOAA and sponsored by NASA has released a new prediction for the next solar cycle. Solar Cycle 24 will peak, they say, in May 2013 with a below-average number of sunspots.

So it's not even 2012, it's 2013.

[1] http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2009/29...

Does anybody know if a solar storm of a sufficient magnitude would cause data loss on magnetic-based storage mediums safely grounded here on planet earth?

Yes. A solar storm of a magnitude sufficient to cause data loss on magnetic-based storage mediums would cause data loss on magnetic-based storage mediums.

Question was meant to be: would this predicted solar storm cause data loss?

If so, that seems like it would be a significant cause for concern.

December 21st, 2012.

No, srsly. It's astronomy.

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