Free Republic

Earth could suffer the worst solar storm in 165 years as six streams of plasma that erupted from the sun this week are set to make crash into our atmosphere tonight. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) revealed Friday that the worst-case scenario would be what happened during the 1859 Carrington event, which set telegraph stations on fire, cutting communications worldwide. In our modern-day society a geomagnetic storm - a major disturbance of Earth's magnetosphere- of that magnitude would cause widespread electrical disruptions, blackouts and damage to critical infrastructure.

“We only have 12 years to save the planet,” we may hear. “Man may only have 10 years left if we don’t ________” (fill in the doomsayer prescription). The truth, though, is that we don’t know if humanity has still one year or six months — or less. And this reality was brought home by something that occurred March 12. It was on that day, not two weeks ago, that there was a huge solar eruption. It was perhaps 100 times more powerful than the Carrington Event in 1859, which rendered inoperable a good part of the “Victorian Internet”: telegraph...

In 1859, a San Francisco eccentric proclaimed himself "Emperor of these United States." His colorful existence leads us all to consider how we see reality. Joshua Norton's life is history that deserves to be remembered.

NASA has shared a spectacular picture of the Northern Lights adorning the sky in Iceland - but warned that the "beauty and the beast" aurora could wreak havoc here on Earth. The image was captured by astronomer Juan Carlos Casado in 2016, and selected as NASA's Astronomy Picture of the Day on Sunday. It shows the aurora borealis over Thingvallavatn Lake in Iceland - a lake that partly fills a fault that divides Earth's large Eurasian and North American tectonic plates. "Admire the beauty but fear the beast," wrote Casado, in his picture caption. The beauty is the aurora overhead,...