solar (Page 14)

Just a few years after the last solar cycle ended, there is evidence that the next one, which is expected to be the biggest in 50 years, may have already begun. Sunspots, flares and coronal mass ejections disrupt radio and telecommunications, including cell phones, and if they become strong enough, they can be especially dangerous for astronauts. They can also have effects on the weather, if powerful enough. Large sunspots, which reduce the amount of solar heat reaching the earth, can cause cooling, while coronal mass ejections may have the opposite effect. Since several countries plan to travel to the moon in a few years, excessive solar activity could delay their trips.
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Scientists hope that thesolar windwill form a barrier that will protect us from solarradiation during the upcoming pole shift here on Earth. Whenthe poles reverse on Earth, which has happened many timesbefore, the magnetic shield that protects us from solarradiation is temporarily weakened. Mars wasn’t so lucky.

Astronomers report that Mars had extensive oceans (andprobably life) until 3.5 billion years ago, huge solarstorms of the kind that flared up in the fall of 2003 hitMars repeatedlly and sucked up all its water, leaving it adead planet.
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A few months ago, we posted several stories about huge solar flares. Since the sun periodically has cycles of sun spots, which disrupt cell phone communications and pose a hazard for astronauts on spacewalks, why should this be a problem? But the Earth’s magnetic poles are now in the process of flipping, which weakens the magnetic shield that protects us from the radiation sent out by these gigantic solar flares.
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We’re at the beginning of a ten-year-long cosmic dust storm and we don’t know what the consequences will be. The Sun’s magnetic poles have flipped, as they do periodically, so now some of the dust that floats around in our galaxy will be sucked into our solar system. The Sun used to act as a shield, protecting us from it. Cosmic dust bombardment in the past may have caused ice ages and mass extinctions. Stuart Clark writes in New Scientist that this data comes from DUST, an experiment on the ESA/NASA mission Ulysses, launched in 1990. ESA scientist Markus Landgraf found that three times more galactic dust is now entering the Solar System than during the 1990s. He doesn’t know how this will effect the Earth.read more