We've talked about solar storms and the ways they might affect our brains before (although in a halting sort of research-light way).
Well, here's something to get that tinfoil hat all polished nice and bright. Perhaps literally....
According to NASA, we have just entered the calm before the storm.
This week researchers announced that a storm is coming--the most intense solar maximum in fifty years. The prediction comes from a team led by Mausumi Dikpati of the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR). "The next sunspot cycle will be 30% to 50% stronger than the previous one," she says.
When will all this radiation be hitting our fragile, blue planet?
Like most experts in the field, Hathaway has confidence in the conveyor belt model and agrees with Dikpati that the next solar maximum should be a doozy. But he disagrees with one point. Dikpati's forecast puts Solar Max at 2012. Hathaway believes it will arrive sooner, in 2010 or 2011.
So, yet another 2012 event.
The last time solar activity was this intense, the Northern Lights were visible in Mexico. That was in 1958. Sputnik had just been launched.
Now, we all rely on satellites and trans-oceanic cables to do business, chat with friends, pay our bills, buy food, post paranoid fantasies on this thing called "the Internet"....
Interesting, too, to think of the solar max back then launching the '60s. All them hippies and that. I have no idea what mechanism might be responsible for solar radiation affecting young people's brains, but, y'know, it's fun to think about. |
