Killer Solar Flares and Rogue Comets, Oh My
They Aren’t Going to Be Harming Us
Earth is NOT doomed. Yeah, I know this is going to come as a complete disappointment to the folks who insist the universe is out to get us via the auspices of giant killer solar flares and rogue comets. It ain’t gonna happen. Lucky for all of us, the universe is sticking to the laws of physics.
Let’s start with the so-called giant killer solar flares. Yes, increased solar activity, including flares and coronal mass ejections (outbursts from the Sun), is a concern. This is because we’re heading into a period of maximum solar activity (something the Sun goes through periodically), and we are expecting more solar flares and coronal mass ejections.
This is pretty much normal for the Sun, despite some of the screaming headlines on conspiracy theory Web sites about “mysterious” solar flares and what they supposedly mean for mankind.
In reality, solar activity is not mysterious. It’s not confusing scientists, nor is it being directed by aliens (yes, I saw that on a Web site). Solar activity is part of what our star does. Solar physicists (the experts on solar activity) are really starting to understand some of the mechanisms of solar flares, for example, thanks to solar-observing satellites such as SDO, STEREO, and SOHO. But, giant killer solar flares? Those are a product of overworked imaginations of people who don’t understand the basic principles of physics and the Sun. For one thing, there isn’t enough energy in the Sun to power a monster fireball that could hang together long enough to travel 150 million kilometers between the Sun and Earth.
Sure, solar flares can be strong enough to create space weather disturbances that can stimulate auroral displays above our poles. All that means is that the energy transfer from Sun to Earth is strong enough to excite gases in our upper atmosphere, which causes them to glow. This happens a lot, and not just on Earth. Aurorae have been seen on such planets as Jupiter and Saturn, for example. Same principle at work there, too.
In some cases, the space weather can mess a bit more with our upper atmosphere, which affects some of our technology—such as telecommunications and GPS signals. (For more information about space weather, visit the Space Weather FX Web site at MIT. It contains a series of very nicely produced videos (if I do say so myself) about the effects of space weather. Very timely and very educational.) Studying solar flares is an important step in understanding the whole Sun and the cycles it goes through, and I, for one, look forward to seeing what astronomers learn about our star during this next solar cycle.
The other great story that’s been making the rounds among the “we’re gonna die” crowd is about Comet Elenin. It is (or was, actually) a perfectly harmless comet making a swing past the Sun (as many comets do). A few folks got all hot and bothered by their own misconceptions about the comet’s orbit and they worried that all kinds of disasters would occur on or to Earth, all caused by the comet. I read some of these…ummm… pseudo-scientific rants. To be honest, I never could figure out what the fuss was about. And some of the uneducated hyperbole was… laughable.
As it turns out, there never was anything to be worried about. Comet Elenin came as close as 72 million kilometers to the Sun and never got closer than about 34 million kilometers to Earth. For reference, the Sun and Earth are 150 million kilometers apart; Venus and Earth are close as about 38 million kilometers apart when they are closest to each other in their orbits. So, Elenin was never in any danger of smacking into us. It faced far more danger from its close approach to the Sun.
As it passed near the Sun, Elenin broke up into a traveling collection of ice chunks and bits of dust. It’s now scattered along its former orbit. According to Don Yeomans, the comet expert at the Near-Earth Objects Program Office at Jet Propulsion Lab in California, about two percent of new comets passing by the Sun break up like this. This is because most comets are made up of ice, rock, dust and other stuff that are all held together in a loosely bound conglomeration that can be easily disturbed by the pull of gravity from a nearby planet or the Sun. This is all perfectly natural and nothing to be worried about.And, trust me, comets can’t screw with Earth’s axis or change our magnetic fields or do any of the stuff that they’ve been accused of by some of these pseudo-scientists.
Look, the solar system is an interesting place scientifically. We continue to explore it and learn more about it. Everything we learn is from observations and the applications of basic scientific laws. The more we look, the more we discover, quite simply because we keep creating better and better tools with which to study the cosmos. This is great, and it’s what science is all about: figuring stuff out from the evidence in front of us, using scientific principles to do so.
Science doesn’t make the solar system weird or mysterious or frightening or alien. People with a vested interest in having you believe (and the operative word here is “believe”) their untested, unscientific assumptions about things they don’t quite seem to understand may drive a few folks to read ranting Web sites. I’m sure it feeds the egos of those people who have books to sell or tales to tell. But, it’s really not the way that sane, rational people view the cosmos. And, it’s certainly not the way science works. The universe is grand and wonderful enough without making up inane stuff about it.
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I can’t see this article being featured on BIN
Theres too much common sense and not enough doom……
good article, but the sun can KINDA kill us with it’s solar powers.. look up the solar storm of 1859. power lines and telegraph lines caught on fire due to the magnitude of the CME. taking 18 hours instead of 3-4 days to reach us. anything electronic we have today, would be rendered useless until it can be rebuilt. imagine a world with no power for months…. imagine we humans playing along with eachother for survival haha.. who am I kidding we would be barbaric within a week tops… now to think about it im not sure whats more dangerous.. the sun, or us? sometimes I wished the flares would kill us.. a quick death seems better then a hellish one.
good work…but a lot of the things your stating as fact are opinion. Just like the doomers, your just sitting on the other side of the boat. ANY given day, could a comet or asteroid smack into the planet there’s simply no way to know. Sure you can call out ELENIN…NOW…after the fact. But before it passed our planet there really was NO way of knowing. I did not see it hitting the planet or being a dwarf star, but there simply is no way to know. As far as the sun causing destruction, it is my OPINION, that the sun is tied into the earth core, seismic events, and strange happenings on Earth and in our atmosphere. There is ALMOST enough evidence to prove it all, they just haven’t said it. The solar flares KILLING us immediately, unlikely, but possible. Solar flares knocking our power out and basically leaving us in the 1800′s is imminent, when is the question you should be asking, not if. All in all good work, but you should avoid criticizing someones tactics, when your using the same tactics, like I said just from the other side. It’s fact that the Carrington Event took place, it is FACT that it will happen again. Sitting around crying about it going to happen someday does us no good, I agree. But to try and convince people to completely dismiss real threats that are really there, is just as decieving as a doomer. take care!
What the author mentions for the most part is accurate, but what she fails to add is facts about today’s tech driven society verses previous ones. Yes solar activity is cyclical but what is not cyclic is our constant advance towards a completely wired society. CME’s posed no threat to previous times in history when there wasn’t an electrical grid. With China building the US grid every 5 years we are orders of magnitude more sensitive now. I have yet to find a truly balanced article where the author has no axe to grind here on BIN. This author, like the many before her presents a good one-sided argument. How about exercising some intellectual honesty?
Let me also add that our planet has been struck by rocks before and will certainly be again. With the near complete distrust for nearly every government agency, particularly NASA, NOAA and the like, most people who are awake figure for every one near earth object they tell us about there are at least a dozen others that they don’t, and between doomers, naysayers and disinfo agents, people don’t know what or who to believe. Anxiety about the future is thick and palatable, between the economy, religious and ethnic differences, and natural and man-made disasters it is a miracle more people haven’t gone bezerk.
Matrix makes a good point about the solar storm of 1859. It caused considerable communications disruption even in that low-tech culture, today an equivalent occurrence would be devastating!
The Elenin debacle did have me very worried. I made sure my family and friends were informed and prepared. My son-in-law now has emergency packs in all his cars ‘just in case’.
From a prophetic time-table Elenin had me baffled. Nothing significant was supposed to happen before 2018 when the events of the fifth seal culminate. Now I feel like Rabbi Akiba for altering my beliefs rather than dismiss Elenin.
(Rabbi Akiba removed 240 years from the Hebrew calendar because he thought Simon bar Kokhba was the messiah. Instead of accepting Yahshua who was right on time, he altered the calendar to make Simon bar Kokhba appear to be the messiah. This 240 year deficit has never been corrected, so the Jewish calendar is short by 240 years.)