Ready for the Sun ejects Tongue of Fire Again

In September 1859, the Sun throws one of the most devastating storms ever recorded in history. Solar eruption causes disruption of electricity and telegraph office (telegraph), and trigger a dramatic sky phenomena in Cuba and Hawaii.
"A similar storm is likely to recur," says Lika Guhathakurta, a scientist from NASA headquarters, as quoted from Space, July 23, 2011.
In fact, modern societies are highly dependent on tech systems such as power grids, satellite-based communications, and GPS. Everything is very vulnerable to storm the sun.
When the hurricane occurred in 1859 ago, the Sun was at the bottom of the cycle (solar activity moves up and down within a period of about 11 years). And the cycle could also serve as a reminder that powerful storms may occur. For information, in the year 2011 is the Sun also was in the low cycle.
According to researchers, the storm that occurred in 1859, telegraph messages and confusing mess of astronomers in tropical regions. However, the eruption with the same magnitude if it happens again will bring a much more serious impact.
Dead lights that spread across the world can happen for months. The technicians would be overwhelmed by replacing the damaged electrical transformers, for example. Aircraft and ships can not use GPS for navigation. Banking network will be disconnected. This will disrupt the world trading system.
According to research conducted in 2008 by the National Academy of Sciences, a giant solar storm will bring a greater economic impact than the 20 hurricane Katrina damage.As an illustration, Katrina caused economic losses of up to U.S. $ 80 billion or about Rp690 trillion.
    So, what can we do? For starters, researchers are now trying to predict and track storms more accurately Sun. The aim is that when a storm occurs, the Earth has been more prepared.
"We can now trace the development of solar storms in three dimensions like tracking a storm that occurred on Earth," said Michael Hesse, Chief of the Space Weather Laboratory, NASA."It makes us have some sort of warning alarms to protect power grids and other high-tech devices when solar activity was in a period of extreme," he said.
For instance, Hesse said, disabling certain transformers at the power plant for a few hours can prevent a regional power failure for several weeks. (Umi)


source : http://teknologi.vivanews.com

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