NOT ENOUGH TROUBLE IN THE WORLD - HOW ABOUT A CME?-77

Not enough to be concerned about what with ISIS in Iraq, Ansar al-Sharia in Benghazi, Boko Haram in Nigeria, and Al-Qaeda in Afghanistan and elsewhere (this is beginning to sound like the Billy Joel song “We Didn’t Start the Fire – with the lyrics of “Belgiums in the Congo”, “Trouble in the Suez”, “The Russians in Afghanistan”, and “The Ayatollah in Iran”); not to mention Hamas vs. the Israelis in Gaza, the prospect of a nuclear armed Iran, Russia in Ukraine, as well as our completely porous Southern border? Well, I have a bonus (in a manner of speaking) for you. How about a Coronal Mass Ejection (CME)? It has just been reported that one occurred on July 23, 2012. So what is the problem or in this case a near problem? Simply this: If the CME had occurred one week previously, then the earth would have been in its direct path. As it was it missed the earth. This CME was the most powerful one observed in more than 150 years. What would have happened if the earth had been in its path? Likely one of the greatest disasters in the history of the world since humans evolved. The Black Death of 1348-49 caused by plague resulted in the deaths of an estimated 75 million people worldwide. In Europe it is postulated that 33% of the population died and it took Europe 150 years to recover its population. Given that the world population was circa 370 million then compared to almost 7 ¼ billion now a similar plague would be more deadly now than then. Just so, this solar storm would have affected more people now. First however, allow me to explain what a CME is. There are four states of matter: solid, liquid, gas, and plasma. Examples of plasma are lightening and sparks - air or other gases that become ironized. A CME is plasma that is ejected from the sun during solar storms. Plasma is the most abundant form of matter in the universe because most stars are in a plasma state. If directed at earth it interacts with our magnetosphere and that is just the beginning. This event begins as an explosion, a “solar flare”, x-rays and extreme UV radiation reach Earth at near light speed, ionizing the upper layers of our atmosphere. Then comes the CMEs, billion ton clouds of magnetized plasma that take a day or more to cross the Sun-Earth divide. If we had indeed been in the direct path of that solar storm then even those low information people would have been affected, especially the young ones who do not appear to be paying attention to anything; social, political, historical, or current events - only their own narrow interests. This would be one instance where they would pay attention. Their iPhones, iPads, and iPods, which appear to be grafted onto their hands, would not function anymore. Many satellites would be rendered floating pieces of junk in space. Power and communication grids on earth would be fried, causing many people a bit of inconvenience, one might say. Air-conditioning, heating, power equipment, severely curtailing of water supplies. Think of what the loss of computers would do to government, commercial businesses, hospitals and other medical facilities. You name it – modern life depends upon on a reliable electrical power supply. Scientists at NASA estimate that fixing the damage would cost in excess of $2 trillion. And that is just for starters when you think of all the devastation for commerce, transportation, agriculture, food stocks, fuel and water supplies, medical facilities, national security, and daily life in general. It is staggering to contemplate. Ironically perhaps, the 3rd world countries would be the least affected for obvious reasons. What is the evidence for this scenario? Two fold actually. By chance there was a solar observatory spacecraft, STEREO-A that was in the path of this CME so myriad data were collected. It did not get destroyed because it was designed to operate outside the Earth’s magnetosphere. Inside the Earth’s magnetosphere strong electric currents can be generated by a CME strike. Out in interplanetary space, the ambient magnetic field is much weaker, so those dangerous currents are missing. Another factor that made this CME potentially especially dangerous and destructive was that it was preceded a couple of days before by another one which cleared a path, much like a snowplow, for this one to travel faster and with more energy. In addition, in the past there was a previous CME that did strike the earth directly. In September 1859, in what was called the Carrington Solar Storm (check it out on the internet), the earth was in its direct path. What happened? Some things, but not a great deal which was destructive owing to that time not being in the electronic age. Telegraph pylons on poles were seen sparking starting a few fires in telegraph offices and giving telegraph operators electric shocks thereby disrupting normal operations. Some telegraph systems continued to send and receive messages despite having been disconnected from their power supplies. The Northern Lights were observed as far south as Queensland, Australia; Cuba; Hawaii; The Bahamas; and Jamaica. There was enough light in some places to easily read newspapers out-of-doors at night. The light appeared to cover the whole firmament, apparently like a luminous cloud with the light greater than that of the full moon. In 1859 English astronomer, Richard Carrington saw the instigating flare himself. In the days that followed his observation a series of powerful CMEs hit earth head-on with the potency not felt as observed before or since. According to a study by the National Academy of Sciences the July 2012 storm was, in all respects, at least as strong at the 1859 event, the only important difference is that it missed the Earth. If the earth were to experience a CME beamed directly at us then perhaps the dire and completely erroneous predictions of the loony biologist and author, Paul Ehrlich, in his 1968 book The Population Bomb where people would be starving by the hundreds of millions by the 1980’s owing to massive overpopulation relative to the food supply (an expedited version of the Malthusian Catastrophe), might come true for a completely different reason. In February 2014 physicist Pete Riley of Predictive Science Inc. calculated there was a 12% chance that the earth will be hit directly by a CME in the next 10 years. For reasons of advanced age I likely will not be overly affected by that, but it might give the younger folk pause.