Solar Storm: Disaster Predicted in 2012-2013

A lot of news item recently concentrated on the 'End of World' theory of the various prophets, spiritual leaders and media groups. A bit of suspesion emerges whether these are all true or spam? Its better to have a serious look once. Yes! scientists at NASA, USA has been warning the governments for the serious implication of the Solar Storm predicted to be cyclic event to immensely affect the earth.

NASA recently warned of a collision between modern society and the upcoming solar maximum.
Approximately every 11 years the sun peaks in activity while dotted with sunspots that often eject solar flares with damaging radiation and particles into space. If hurled in the direction of the Earth, the planet endures or suffers consequences ranging from beautiful displays of the aurora as they shimmer in the night sky, to very severe Electromagnetic radiation to the point of knocking out electrical power grids. The later is of most great concern to NASA as they meet to discuss the potential devastation and to recommend new tools to forecast such events as we approach the new solar maximum in 2012.

From the NASA Science News
“The sun is waking up from a deep slumber, and in the next few years we expect to see much higher levels of solar activity. At the same time, our technological society has developed an unprecedented sensitivity to solar storms.”

What would be impact?
(a) Outer Space: Solar storm can damage the electronic equipments and satellites including the communication, navigation and exploratary objects in the outer space. This would be difficult to save incase of severe storm. This would have very negative impact on the transport and communication sector on the earth.
(b) Earth Surface: Severe heat and sudden surge of storm would damage on the electricity supply infrastructure on a large scale. Most the effect till coming few months would not be unknown. On going researches are focussing on for preparing the mitigation plan.

In India, we are yet to see any serious activity concerning this event predicted and varified from scientists in US and Europe. We need to have tie up with international space weather prediction program to have clear assessment of the situation. We need to assess the impact this can have on the human life and health.