Media Appearances

Should we be concerned about solar storms in 2012? Heliophysicist Alex Young from NASA Goddard Space Flight Center sorts out truth from fiction.

Given a legitimate need to protect Earth from the most intense forms of space weather – great bursts of electromagnetic energy and particles that can sometimes stream from the sun – some people worry that a gigantic “killer solar flare” could hurl enough energy to destroy Earth. Citing the accurate fact that solar activity is currently ramping up in its standard 11-year cycle, there are those who believe that 2012 could be coincident with such a flare.

But this same solar cycle has occurred over millennia. Anyone over the age of 11 has already lived through such a solar maximum with no harm. In addition, the next solar maximum is predicted to occur in late 2013 or early 2014, not 2012.

The Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) spacecraft captured this image of a solar flare as it erupted from the sun early on Tuesday, October 28, 2003. This was the most powerful flare measured with modern methods.

Most importantly, however, even the biggest solar flares are not powerful enough to physically destroy Earth.

This is not to say that space weather can’t affect our planet. The explosive heat of a solar flare can’t make it all the way to our globe, but electromagnetic radiation and energetic particles certainly can. Solar flares can temporarily alter the upper atmosphere creating disruptions with signal transmission from, say, a GPS satellite to Earth causing it to be off by many yards. Another phenomenon produced by the sun could be even more disruptive. Known as a coronal mass ejection (CME), these solar explosions propel bursts of particles and electromagnetic fluctuations into Earth’s atmosphere. Those fluctuations could induce electric fluctuations at ground level that could blow out transformers in power grids. The CME’s particles can also collide with crucial electronics onboard a satellite and disrupt its systems.

In an increasingly technological world, where almost everyone relies on cell phones and GPS controls not just your in-car map system, but also airplane navigation and the extremely accurate clocks that govern financial transactions, space weather is a serious matter.

But it is a problem the same way hurricanes are a problem. One can protect oneself with advance information and proper precautions. During a hurricane watch, a homeowner can stay put . . . or he can seal up the house, turn off the electronics and get out of the way. Similarly, scientists at NASA and NOAA give warnings to electric companies, spacecraft operators, and airline pilots before a CME comes to Earth so that these groups can take proper precautions. Improving these predictive abilities the same way weather prediction has improved over the last few decades is one of the reasons NASA studies the sun and space weather. We can’t ignore space weather, but we can take appropriate measures to protect ourselves.

And, even at their worst, the sun’s flares are not physically capable of destroying Earth.

CREDIT: Karen C. Fox & NASA Goddard Space Flight Center

[Narrator] On the first of August 2008 a rare and awe-inspiring event will take place, a total solar eclipse. Skies over Canada, Greenland, Russia, Mongolia, and China will darken, as the sun is completely blocked out by the moon. Over the centuries, these striking events have inspired countless inquiries and questions, so we posed some to our resident eclipse experts. 

[Fred Espenak] A solar eclipse takes place whenever the moon passes between the Earth and the sun and some portion of it’s shadow passes across the Earth’s surface. 

[Alex Young] One of the important things is as many people have probably heard growing up, you should never look at the sun directly because it would damage your eyes. And the same thing is true during an eclipse; the only time when it is actually safe to look at the sun is exactly at totality. So otherwise you need to either have special glasses with a filter or you can have a filter on a telescope or if you have a telescope that projects the image on to a screen or even you can make a pinhole camera that projects the image on to a screen.

[Fred Espenak] During a total eclipse it give scientists a rare opportunity to make direct measurements of the sun’s corona with all types of instruments and measure it at different wavelengths, measure it at different frequencies, once a second, twenty times a second, a hundred times a second, with different size telescopes, which are always improving.

[Alex Young] Soon we’ll be launching, at the end of this year, something called the Solar Dynamics Observatory, which is going to give us an unprecedented view of the sun, in a whole bunch of different wavelengths all at the same time and very fast. So we’re very excited about that. 

[Narrator] The August first solar eclipse promises to be a stunning event. 

And while only people in a small area of the world will be able to see the eclipse in person, viewers all across the globe can watch the event on NASA TV and online at www.NASA.gov.

CREDIT: NASA Goddard Space Flight Center