Potential Super Solar Storm 2012

Potential Super Solar Storm could damage Earth's magnetic shield in 2012.A recurrence of the 1859 solar superstorm would be a cosmic Katrina,causing billions of dollars of damage to satellites,power grids and radio communications.Space storms are created when the Sun erupts,sending charged particles racing outward,an expanding bubble of hot gas called plasma.The solar superstorm of 1859 was the fiercest ever recorded.Auroras filled the sky as far south as the Caribbean,magnetic compasses went haywire and telegraph systems failed.Ice cores suggest that such a blast of solar particles happens only once every 500 years,but even the storms every 50 years could fry satellites,jam radios and cause coast-to-coast blackouts.The cost of such an event justifies more systematic solar monitoring and beefier protection for satellites and the power grid.The authors have reconstructed what happened in 1859,based in part on similar (though less intense) events seen by modern satellites.UTC is Coordinated Universal Time basically,Greenwich Mean Time

The problem begins with the electric power grid."Electric power is modern society's cornerstone technology on which virtually all other infrastructures and services depend.Yet it is particularly vulnerable to bad space weather.Ground currents induced during geomagnetic storms can actually melt the copper windings of transformers at the heart of many power distribution systems.Sprawling power lines act like antennas,picking up the currents and spreading the problem over a wide area.People on the ground are generally safe even in the worst space weather.But technology could be in trouble when the next super storm hits

Solar Storms explained by Michio Kaku