Solar anomalies

Links on changes in the heliosphere, magnetosphere, nemesis, and the transit of our solar system in the galaxy. May be related to 2012.

• Magnetic Polar Shifts Causing Massive Global Superstorms

Superstorms can also cause certain societies, cultures or whole countries to collapse. Others may go to war with each other.

(CHICAGO) -NASA has been warning about it… scientific papers have been written about it… geologists have seen its tracesin rock strata and ice core samples… Now "it" is here: an unstoppable magnetic pole shift that has sped up and is causing life-threatening havoc with the world's weather.

• One EMP burst and the world goes dark

There is talk of catastrophe ahead, depending on whom you believe, because of the threat of an electromagnetic pulse triggered by either a supersized solar storm or terrorist A-bomb, both capable of disabling the electric grid that powers modern life.

We can easily EMP-proof our own installations (if we had any that is :-/ ) as it's not very expensive and doesn't require anything too specific, but the Sun's radiation is more difficult to protect equipment from than Nuclear-EMP, because the minimum wave-length the Faraday cage must cater for is only a fraction of a mm compared to a few mm for Nuclear-EMP. The main difficulty is in getting power and comms safely through, and to ensure that entry is a double door that only allows one to be open at a time so that spontaneous entry and exit of personnel never breaks the continuity of the cage. --nad 00:54, 29 October 2010 (PDT)

• Enormous Ring Is Developing On The Sun

What is this strange ring that has been developing on the Sun during 16-Oct? Sunspot 1112, located in the southeast quadrant, has been the source of a giant filament that is currently stretching 400,000 km across the surface of the Sun.

• Incoming Cosmic Rays Hit Record High (Wired Sci)

"The Earth was pummeled with record-setting levels of cosmic rays in 2009. Measurements from NASA’s Advanced Composition Explorer (ACE) and other spacecraft found that more high-energy particles from galactic space penetrated the inner solar system in the last few years than at any other time since the beginning of the space age.

The spike is almost certainly due to several weird aspects of the most recent solar minimum, and could be the start of a new normal for cosmic ray levels."

• The Nemesis Conjecture: Is an Unseen Binary Companion of the Sun Sending Comets Towards Earth?

"WISE began scanning the sky on January 14, and NASA recently released the mission’s first images. The mission will map the entire sky until October, when the spacecraft’s coolant runs out. Part of the WISE mission is to search for brown dwarfs, and NASA expects it could find one thousand of the dim stellar objects within 25 light years of our solar system. "

It is interesting to know that NASA has spent money looking for our Sun's companion - just in time for 2012. But it's more interesting to note that the WISE satellite has an operational life of only eight months. Are they not going to try anymore after 2013 for some reason? Personally, I think the 26-million-year mass extinction cycle must have very little to do with 2012, given the vast scale of the cycle. According to the Mayan calendar, the great cycle that ends civilizations takes about 5125 years, whereas the Hindu Vedas say that four 'Yugas' take about 24,000 years. I think that's the scale NASA should be looking at.

• The Global Coherence Monitoring System

Changes in the earth’s magnetic field are associated with changes in brain and nervous system activity; performance of athletic, memory and other tasks; sensitivity in a wide range of extrasensory perception experiments; synthesis of nutrients in plants and algae; the number of reported traffic violations and accidents; mortality from heart attacks and strokes; and incidence of depression and suicide. It’s interesting to note that changes in geomagnetic conditions affect the rhythms of the heart more strongly than all the physiological functions studied so far.

There is also evidence in some cases that people’s brainwaves can synchronize with the rhythm of the electromagnetic waves generated in the earth’s ionosphere. When people say they "feel" an impending earthquake or other planetary events, such as weather changes, it is possible that they may be reacting to the actual physical signals that occur in the earth’s field prior to the event.

• The Geomagnetic Apocalypse - And How to Stop It (Wired)

• The Sun Also Surprises (NY Times)

A large solar storm can rain energy down on the earth, overpowering electrical grids. About once a century, a giant pulse can knock out worldwide power systems for months or even years.

• Huge solar flare jams radio communications