Sun's Plasma Balls Could Wipe Out Human Civilization....

Natural News ^ | October 11th, 2009

[TaraP]

Natural fluctuations in the sun's atmosphere could cause it to fire a giant plasma ball at Earth, shutting down the planet's electric grids and leading to widespread social collapse, according to a report from the U.S. National Academy of Sciences (NAS).

Funded by NASA, the report draws attention to naturally occurring events known as coronal mass ejections (CME), in which a ball of plasma -- the charged, high-energy particles that comprise stars -- is fired from the sun. If such a ball strikes the Earth, it could produce rapid changes in the planet's magnetic field, leading to a surge of direct current in the long-range power lines that carry electricity through modern power grids.

Modern power grids are designed to carry electricity at extremely high voltage, making them especially susceptible to this kind of magnetic disruption. What they are not designed to do, however, is carry direct current. Transformers are particularly vulnerable, and sudden influx of direct current could cause the wiring inside the devices to melt. The NAS report estimates that within 90 seconds of a plasma ball hitting the Earth's magnetic field, power would be knocked out to 130 million people in the United States alone. The same effect is likely throughout the world.

A really large storm could be a planetary disaster," said power industry analyst John Kappenman.

In the First World, where everything from transportation to food and water distribution depends on electricity, this could create a humanitarian catastrophe.

"It's just the opposite of how we usually think of natural disasters," Kappenman said. "Usually the less developed regions of the world are most vulnerable, not the highly sophisticated technological regions."

According to the report, potable water would be one of the first losses in the event of such a disaster. Because water pumping relies on electricity, people would have access to tap water only for about half a day, until the amount already in the system ran out. High-rises, which rely on water being pumped to upper floors, would lose water immediately.

All electric-powered transport would stop at once, and automobiles could only run until they ran out of gas, since the pumps at gas stations also rely on electricity. This would quickly cause the shelves at stores to run bare, since the modern "just-in-time" delivery method relies on restocking shelves as they run out, with minimal storage inside shops themselves.

Backup generators at places like hospitals could only run until they ran out of fuel. According to the report, this translates into 72 hours of minimal care for only the most vulnerable patients. The absence of refrigeration would cause food and many prescription drugs to quickly spoil.

The NAS report notes that a technological meltdown on this scale might be impossible to undo. Pumping natural gas or oil requires electricity, and modern transport networks are required to keep coal plants supplied. Nuclear power plants automatically shut down if the power grid fails, and cannot be turned back on until the grid is back to normal. Very few spare transformers exist, meaning that new ones would need to be manufactured to replace most of the burned-out ones. Again, the lack of industrial infrastructure would make this a major challenge.

"We're moving closer and closer to the edge of a possible disaster," said Daniel Baker, chair of the committee that produced the report.

Although the scenario may sound fantastic and unlikely, scientists warn that there have been precedents. In 1859, a CME known as the Carrington event produced auroras as far south as the equator and caused severe disruptions to the world's telegraph systems. In 1989, a direct current overload in the power grid cut off electricity to 6 million people in Quebec province, Canada. And in 2006, a fluctuation in a small part of Germany's power grid caused a cascading power failure through the wider European grid.

[Sun]

Never underestimate me. :)

[YHAOS]

First 0bama, now this.

[dfwgator]

...a giant plasma ball ... shutting down the planet's electric grids ... leading to widespread social collapse

human sacrifice....dogs and cats living together.....mass hysteria!

[maine-iac7]

and what is this over Moscow?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r_CmrETYPKY

[ecinkc]

Secy. of State plans emergency trip To Sun, lock box in hand

film at 11

[HiTech RedNeck]

Lightning passing nearby also brings direct current surges into power systems. A direct hit will blast the transformer and require repairs, but less will usually simply trip a self resetting circuit breaker.

Also, Maxwell’s equations indicate that a direct current surge can’t keep up for very long — only as long as the magnetic flux passing through the loop is changing in monotonic increase or decrease.

[TaraP]

Spitzer Discovers Saturn's Largest Ring 10.07.2009 October 7, 2009: NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope has discovered an enormous and previously unknown infrared ring around Saturn. "This is one supersized ring," says Anne Verbiscer, an astronomer at the University of Virginia, Charlottesville. "If you could see the ring in the night sky, it would span the width of two full Moons." Verbiscer is co-author of a paper about the discovery to be published online tomorrow by the journal Nature. The other authors are Douglas Hamilton of the University of Maryland and Michael Skrutskie of the University of Virginia

[dragnet2]

A large coronal mass ejection could send this planet into the medieval ages extremely fast...Stars are bizarre, extremely dangerous, beautiful and almost supernatural in size and power. Even their existence nearly beyond comprehension.

[BenLurkin]

Roughly ...

Nicolas Cage and child live in a creepy farm house. His sister is a Christian who is trying to have him reconcile with his preacher father.

He finds mysterious manuscript written by a madwoman and begins having premonitions of fiery disasters — which then subsequently occur. At about the same time,the kids are hounded by strange people who keep handing them shiny black river rocks.

His last premonition is of global conflagration due to a large solar flare. It is confirmed to be coming scientifically. He reconciles with his father. The kids are taken by a space ship. He is left behind and — along with the rest of the world — is burned by the sun.

Kids are dropped off on another planet.

The end.

[InterceptPoint]

Shhhhhh. Don’t tell the U.N. about this. If they should get a hint that there is a potential giant plasma ball catastrophe on the horizon they will find a way to save us by adding a tax on energy and re-distributing wealth from you and me to the U.N. (This being the known solution to any problem.) Plus we would get to read about the predictions from scientists who use computer models to prove that giant plasma balls are man-made. Yikes. Don’t let it happen.

[BenLurkin]

I wish I’d thought of that!

[HiTech RedNeck]

This would consist of what, helium? Is there some way of telling if such a blast has been in earth’s past?

[oneolcop]

Now that’s global warming I could believe in.

[HiTech RedNeck]

The engineer in me wants to know how much time there would be between noticing such a flare heading Earth’s way and its actual strike. And how a space ship could be scrambled on such short notice.

[wastedyears]

Was the space ship a government secret?

[Landru]

"Natural fluctuations in the sun's atmosphere could cause it to fire a giant plasma ball at Earth, shutting down the planet's electric grids and leading to widespread social collapse, according to a report from the U.S. National Academy of Sciences (NAS)."

While ending once & for all the bullshit GloBull Warming crap, sending AlBore to the unemployment line.
Sounds like a happy ending to a fairy tale, doesn't it. LOL

"Funded by NASA..."

Good grief, the pandering's become so painfully obvious.

[Ancesthntr]

It is so easy to make fun of someone for being concerned about a possible disaster down the road...because, after all, such things happen so very rarely.

Except that IF this one happens, our highly technological, highly inter-dependent society will be destroyed. For lack of a few thousand transformers.

Oh, it DIDN’T happen before - the 1859 Carrington Event did occur, of course, but what kind of electrical infrastructure did we or anyone else have then? So a few telegraph systems - steam powered, mind you - went down for a while. They produced food the old fashioned way, with horses and plows - no electricity required. They pumped water manually (or with steam engines - rather robust in comparison to ultra-miniaturized microcircuits, wouldn’t you say?), and medical care sucked anyway (but did so without electricity or medications that needed to be refrigerated). In other words, people 150 years ago knew how to live in what we consider primitive conditions. We don’t, and even if we did, such technology wouldn’t support our population.

Look, we are 300 million in this nation, 6+ billion worldwide. Those figures (or anything close to it) are ONLY possible because of mass electrification, mass use of petrochemicals, mass use of fertilizers, etc. It is an extraordinarily complex machine, but not very robust compared to either a Carrington-type event or an EMP.

All we need to do is have some equipment in reserve, and a plan, and it won’t be a megadisaster, merely a disaster on the scale of several simultaneous Katrinas (which would be bad enough, to be sure, but our nation would survive). The cost would be far, far less than 1/10 that of the so-called stimulus bill, and would actually create jobs here.

But let’s ridicule the article, let’s not take a potentially civilization-busting event and turn it into a SNL skit.

BTW, I stand to make exactly nothing from any of the steps necessary to preserve civilization from this event - I’m not in any related business, nor is anyone in my family. This is just common sense, to invest a little in true disaster insurance - kind of like looking for Earth-busting asteroids. Very low probability, but extraordinarily high loss events, to be sure...but that’s not a gamble I wish to take.

[maine-iac7]

God's throwing spit balls.

And the meek shall inherit...(those who aren't dependent on the electric wire going to the road - without which you can't even flush.)

Maybe man's just got things screwed up beyond fixing and God ain't gonna let it keep going in this direction. Maybe He'll remind us who the REAL ‘World Leader’ is.

The Mayan Calendar and it's 21 Dec 2012 date does NOT spell the end of the world or everyone dying - but it is supposed to be the beginning of a new era.

Can't says as a screeching halt to the total domination plans of world leaders these days would be a bad thing. Just don't get caught in the cities - or close by - during the transition...

[TASMANIANRED]

Guess we better raise taxes so we can extinguish the sun.

[BenLurkin]

Sorry, I wasn’t clear. But no.

They were “aliens” — spirit like and quasi-angelic (disguised as people).