Building or purchasing an Emergency Survival Kit is one thing we all know we should do. Well now may be a good time to act, as one of the next few Coronal Mass Ejections could hit earth head on. It could revert our Electronics Age back to the Stone Age!
The Behemoth sunspot that has been labeled 1302, and tracked closely by the NASA Solar Dynamics Observatory, has been emitting some high powered CMEs. Emergency Survival Action may become necessary in the days ahead. The latest of these huge CMEs, a M8.6 and M7.4 flares exploded from the suns surface on September 24th, 2011, and an even larger one on the 25th an M8.8. The good news is that the blast only delivered a glancing blow to the Earth's magnetic field on September 26th, 2011.
Is your Emergency Survival kit in good order? You may need it in the days ahead, as sunspot 1302 continues to unleash more of the gigantic eruptions. We have been lucky so far, as this sunspot has been mostly pointed away from us. This condition however, is rapidly changing, as the earth continues it's journey orbiting the sun, we will be entering a more direct path in front of these eruptions. According to NASA scientist sunspot 1302 is still growing and shows no immediate signs of quieting down.
Our more modern society didn't really pay too much attention to solar storms until the Carrington Event of 1859. This was an enormous coronal mass ejection (CME) that carried enough electromagnet energy to overwhelm the Earth protective magnetic field and knock out the only real technology of the time, the telegraph system. The electromagnetic energy carried enough of a punch to shock some of the telegraph operators, and even start fires in some cases.
In March of 1989, a solar storm much less intense than that of 1859 caused a major power grid in Canada covering an entire province to go down for nine hours. It damaged transformers in Quebec, New Jersey, and Great Britain, as well as causing more than 200 power anomalies across the USA. Then in 1994, two communications satellites suffered major malfunctions, disrupting radio, television, and other communications due to a solar storm. Another storm triggered a regional blackout in southern Sweden and may have damaged transformers in South Africa, in October of 2003.
The Earth won the roulette spin, on April 19th, 2010. One of the most massive eruptions in years was observed by NASA's SDO, but fortunately we were not in the line of fire this time. Again on August 1st 2010, the sun emitted a C-class solar flare that spewed a coronal mass ejecting in our direction. The CME impacted with our magnetic field on August 3rd. This one was only strong enough to provide a brilliant aurora seen down to about the 45th parallel. On Valentines day 2011, a M6.6-category X-ray irradiance magnitude blast was unleashed from our sun.
Scientist are predicting that these solar storms and CMEs will continue in strength and frequency through 2012 and into 2013. So take a moment and imagine life without electricity for days, months, or even years if we get hit by a huge CME head on. Now consider how inexpensive it is to assemble or purchase an Emergency Survival Kit. So don't wait any longer get your Emergency Survival kit in order today!
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