Solar Storm (Compilation)

Stronger Solar Storms Predicted; Blackouts May Result

John Roach
for National Geographic News
March 7, 2006 The next 11-year solar storm cycle should be significantly stronger than the current one, which may mean big problems for power grids and GPS systems and other satellite-enabled technology, scientists announced today.

The stronger solar storms could start as early as this year or as late as 2008 and should peak around 2012.

“We predict the next solar cycle will be 30 to 50 percent stronger than the last cycle,” said Mausumi Dikpati, a solar scientist with the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado, yesterday in a telephone briefing with reporters.

The last cycle peaked in 2001.

Dark Energy

New evidence has confirmed that the expansion of the universe is accelerating under the influence of a gravitationally repulsive form of energy that makes up two-thirds of the cosmos

It is an irony of nature that the most abundant form of energy in the universe is also the most mysterious. Since the breakthrough discovery that the cosmic expansion is accelerating, a consistent picture has emerged indicating that two-thirds of the cosmos is made of “dark energy” – some sort of gravitationally repulsive material. But is the evidence strong enough to justify exotic new laws of nature? Or could there be a simpler, astrophysical explanation for the results?

Edge of darkness