Watching the Heavens: The Supermoon and the Carrington Effect

Skygazers will have a lot on their minds this weekend...the "Supermoon" Sunday night ( when the moon reaches its "perigree" position) will give us a brighter, whiter moon ( ha! sounds like a commercial for a laundry detergent)--

Of course, the Supermoon may or may not be visible in your area due to cloud conditions..

I have always been amazed how many of my friends and acquaintances are far more interested in events in the night sky than I would have imagined.

Well, for some of them the appeal is somehow mystic; for others, just part of their enjoyment of nature, and for still others it is scientific.

For instance, I have an architect friend in Oakland CA who does volunteer work at the Chabot Space and Science Center. He helps with the space "missions" that schoolchildren regularly come to experience at the Center -- with the help of a lot of simulations and equipment that makes it all a little like playing at "Star Trek."

I just have to quote Wikipedia here about Chabot because it is so short and precise:


Chabot Space and Science Center, located in Oakland, California, is a hands-on center featuring interactive exhibits, a digital planetarium, a large screen theater, hands-on activities and three powerful telescopes. Wikipedia

So OK, the Supermoon is coming and you may well so " Oh, big deal," but 2013 is bringing us the closest in ages to another space effect that may have reason to bother you much more than that:

The Carrington Effect

In 2013, the sun will start reaching some new highs in solar flares and other mass ejections of particles, some of which will of course come right at the earth...

You have probably heard about this already, but just to remind you:

In 1859 an English astronomer named Carrington was shocked to see a celestial phenomenon wreak havoc on the telegraph systems of the day and also produce "light shows" in the sky all over the earth...he made the connection between the solar flares and what was happening....

The effect on the telegraph systems of the day was ...well, electrifying. Sparks flew everywhere, papers in telegraph offices were set on fire and of course the whole telegraph system went kerflooey.

Well, for some time we have been put on warning that we are just waiting for a repeat of this ( just as we will get hit by another meteorite eventually like the one that hit Siberia in 1908-- or rather, exploded in the sky right above it, an explosion of such force that it knocked down trees for hundreds of miles. That is, we will get whammied again if we cannot find a way to see this coming and maybe find a way to deflect it. I believe there has already been a movie or two, at least one for TV, about this....).

This isn't so much a doomsday scenario coming with the next Carrington effect as a total disruption of a lot of our energy grid (which may take months to fix) and , of course, knocking out satellite communications systems of all kinds.

This is more of a problem than ever because companies like Verizon have done their best to get rid of the copper cable system that supports landlines and push people more and more into using nothing but cell phones.

In one NASA study, the two urban centers which will be hit with the worst impact will be New York and Seattle...and the last thing New York City needs is a huge electrical outage and lack of cell phone and much internet service ( the disruption caused by Hurricane Sandy was surely enough to make people realize the potential for real chaos in all this).

Of course,  you must be asking, "hasn't anyone been making plans for this, seeing that everyone knows it is coming sooner or later?"

Well, just what plans have effectively been made for Climate Change and the rising of the ocean waters when the Greenland ice sheet melts? Thanks to people like a certain Senator from Oklahoma, who is the mouthpiece ( to put it kindly) for the petroleum industry and everyone who wants to deny Climate Change, very little has been done.  Not like it all is on the shoulders of the U.S., with China now adding its share of carbon emissions and other gases to hasten "The Inconvenient Truth".

According to my friend at Chabot, the U.S. military has been silently making preparations to safeguard our defense systems that would be endangered by another Carrington Effect...

I have another friend who lives in the Sonoran Desert in Arizona. He has a couple of computers that run constantly, and one that gives a running report on solar flares and other space activity.

While the Carrington Effect of course bothers him, he tells me what would really get us would be a SuperNova from a nearby galaxy. "The Earth would be toast," he tells me rather detachedly.

I guess the Carrington Effect is a REAL danger that people are choosing to ignore --preferring, as they so often do, to focus on rather far fetched doomsday scenarios ( such as the endless internet reportage about "Planet X" that was going to collide with the earth in--what was it, 2010? People were going wild about this...you should have seen some of the harebrained websites about how NASA was, of course, purposefully lying to the American people about the coming collision).

Well, NASA is not hiding anything in its reports about the coming Carrington Effect...

Just one internet link to show you what I mean --this is from National Geographic originally from 2011...things have changed somewhat since then but this is the least hysterical report I found

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2011/03/110302-solar-flares-sun-storms-earth-danger-carrington-event-science

I suggest you search the net on your own about this and please, try to stick to the more credible kinds of websites--their news is scary enough!!