Power cuts likely as Sun storm threatens national grid

Mon Jun 13, 2011 8:20 pm » by **Muchtyman**

'Controlled' power cuts likely as Sun storm threatens national grid .

Officials in Britain and the United States are preparing to make controlled power cuts to their national electricity supplies in response to a warning of a possible powerful solar storm hitting the Earth.

The most vulnerable parts of the grid are the hundreds of transformers connected to power lines many miles long that can experience sudden current surges during a geomagnetic solar storm, Dr Bogdan said. "It points to a potential scenario where large parts of either North America or northern Europe may be without power from between days or weeks, to perhaps months and, in extreme cases, there are estimates that it could last years .

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/scien ... 96748.html

Mon Jun 13, 2011 8:26 pm » by **Muchtyman**

'Major Result' on Sunspot Cycle to be Announced Tuesday

A photo of a sunspot taken in May 2010, with Earth shown to scale. The image has been colorized for aesthetic reasons. This image with 0.1 arcsecond resolution from the Swedish 1-m Solar Telescope represents the limit of what is currently possible in terms of spatial resolution

http://www.space.com/11936-sun-weather- ... eview.html

Mon Jun 13, 2011 8:30 pm » by **Thruster**

muchtyman wrote:'Major Result' on Sunspot Cycle to be Announced Tuesday

A photo of a sunspot taken in May 2010, with Earth shown to scale. The image has been colorized for aesthetic reasons. This image with 0.1 arcsecond resolution from the Swedish 1-m Solar Telescope represents the limit of what is currently possible in terms of spatial resolution

http://www.space.com/11936-sun-weather- ... eview.html

Sorry to drift off-topic, but that image looks like my ass-hole next morning after the Vindaloo Curry the night before.