The question here folks is, "when," and not if... We keep on getting lucky but as the Earth's magnetic shield weakens it's just a matter of time before a "SOLAR KILL-SHOT" will knock our electrified world back into the dark-ages

For the first time in many years, there are 6 numbered sunspot groups on the face of the sun. Credit: SDO/HMI

Solar Cycle 25 is at its fledgling stage and is predicted to be very quiet, (a grand solar minimum). NASA has predicted Solar Cycle 25 will be the quietest solar cycle since the years 1650, to 17oo which is called the Maunder Minimum and is also known as "the mini ice age.". Many experts are also predicting Solar Cycle 25, (which will last for roughly eleven years) will bring record cold and other extreme weather to the planet causing an even more difficult period for crops and agriculture.

This month we have witnessed some horrendous weather on the planet with record-breaking floods, heat, droughts, and wildfires, and June 2021 was the warmest June  ever recorded. 

All the above is being blamed on "climate change," which of course it is, however, our weather is driven by a jet stream, and the jet stream pushes and pulls high and low weather systems which drag with them heat or cold, wet or dry. NASA claimed as long ago as 1958, that changes in the solar orbit of the earth, along with alterations to the earth’s axial tilt, suggested solar activity was responsible for fluctuations in our planet's weather. In the year 2000, NASA did publish information on its Earth Observatory website about the Milankovitch Climate Theory, revealing that the planet is, in fact, changing due to extraneous factors that have absolutely nothing to do with human activity. But this information has yet to go mainstream, see the report on Earth Observatory Coincidently, Milankovitch died in 1958.

However, it's not "global warming!" The planet may well have recorded its hottest June ever but May was one of the coldest ever for the northern hemisphere. 

This week alone, parts of South Africa Australia, and Brazil have suffered record-breaking cold and snow. The severe cold currently gripping much of the Southern Hemisphere is thought to be because low solar activity is weakening the jet streams.

Whether solar activity is weakening the jet stream or not, I don't know, I'm no expert but the jet  streams have been acting very strange recently and are indeed responsible for most of the crazy weather our planet has been witnessing recently.

But here is the caveat, Solar Cycle 25 has so far, in its short life often been punching above its weight!

According to Spaceweather.com, a CME might sideswipe Earth's magnetic field later today. NOAA forecasters say the glancing blow could spark minor G1-class geomagnetic storms. A minor G1-class storm is nothing to worry about, however, recently our star has been anything but quiet.

NASA and ESA satelites have been observing a very unstable farside of the Sun since July the 12th with multiple CME's exploding away from the farside of our star, indicating a large explosive sunspot group could be turning toward Earth.

On July the 19th Spaceweather.com reported that the southeastern limb of the sun was seething with activity see gif below. During the late hours of July 19th, Earth-orbiting satellites detected multiple long-duration solar flares as glowing masses of plasma and magnetic arches surged into view. NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory recorded the action:

The source of the turmoil is one or more sunspots hidden behind the limb of the sun. They won't remain hidden for long. The sun's rotation is turning the 'spots toward Earth, and we should be able to see them in the next day or two. 

The eruptions of July 19th also hurled a CME into space: The storm cloud will not hit Earth. Future CMEs might, however, as the underlying blast site rotates in our direction later this week.

A few days earlier an explosion on the farside of the sun was so powerful, we could feel it here on Earth. It happened on July 13th. The debris emerged in a circular cloud known as a ‘halo CME‘:

Above: The July 13th CME imaged by SOHO coronagraphs

When space weather forecasters first saw this explosion, there was a moment of excitement. It appeared to be heading directly toward Earth. However, data from NASA’s STEREO-A spacecraft indicated otherwise. The CME was heading directly away from us–a farside event.

Now for the interesting part: Although the explosion occured on the farside, separated from Earth by the massive body of the sun, it still peppered our planet with high-energy particles. The Energetic and Relativistic Nuclei and Electron (ERNE) detector onboard SOHO recorded a surge in radiation not long after the CME appeared.

On July the 3rd sunspot AR2838 fired off the first X-class flare of Solar Cycle 25 it was the first x-class flare recorded since september 2017 and took the experts by surprise, it had come out of the blue.

A Solar Killshot

Had the two massive solar eruptions on the far side of the sun had been facing Earth this week our civilsation would have been in deep trouble. Acording to Ben Davidson of Suspicous Observers, the massive solar eruptions were capable of causing electrical armageddon here on Earth and sending out technalogical world back to the stone age.

The massive CME, (coronal mass ejection, solar flare) called the Carrington Event, which happened back in 1859 was so strong it set fire to telegraph poles and buildings as well as giving telegraph operators electric shocks.

The peoblem for us in 2021 is we don't have the same strong and safe magnetic field protecting our planet as we did back in 1859.

Experts claim, a repeat of the Carrington event frying our technological world of today would destroy our elctrical based civilisation. Earth's magnetic shield is fading rapidly, we are down by about 25% in protection which is why monitoring the action of our sun is the very utmost of importance.

If those far side blasts earlier this week had been facing earth there would have been a good chance of witnessing a total melt-down of the global grid system. Thete would be no factories to fix the broken parts, no trucks or veichles to deliver food, medicine etc, all technology, banking systems and data bases would be gone in the blink of an eye. Tap water would become instantly a thing of the past, supermarkets would run out of food, modern farming and agriculture would collapse, no more telephones, police, hospitals and a question which no one can honestly answer, what would happen to the thousands of nuclear stations around the world, without  pumps to cool the reactors, surely they would all go into meltdown?

There would be no coming back from a massive solar flare. The chaos and panic would outway any posotive organised response. As I mentioned early in this article, Solar Cycle 25 is still in its fledling stage but solar activity is expected to 5-to-10 fold in the coming 3 years and Earth's magnetic field isn't getting stronger.

A Near Miss: A sign from Heaven... 2012 the year the world was supposed to end almost did!

If an asteroid big enough to knock modern civilization back to the MIDDLE AGES appeared out of deep space and buzzed the Earth-Moon system, the near-miss would be instant worldwide headline news. Eight years ago, Earth experienced a close shave just as perilous, but most newspapers and the tv media didn't mention it. The "impactor" was an extreme solar storm, the most powerful in as much as 150+ years. "If it had hit, we would still be picking up the pieces," says Daniel Baker of the University of Colorado.

The powerful coronal mass ejection (CME) tore through Earth's orbit on July 23, 2012. Fortunately, Earth wasn't there. Instead, the storm cloud hit the STEREO-A spacecraft. "I have come away from our recent studies more convinced than ever that Earth and its inhabitants were incredibly fortunate that the 2012 eruption happened when it did," says Baker. "If the eruption had occurred only one week earlier, Earth would have been in the line of fire and would have suffered "insurmountable damage to its electronic infrastructure."

Extreme solar storms pose a threat to all forms of high-technology. They begin with an explosion--a "solar flare"—in the magnetic canopy of a sunspot. X-rays and extreme UV radiation reach Earth at light speed, ionizing the upper layers of our atmosphere; side-effects of this "solar EMP" include radio blackouts and GPS navigation errors. Minutes to hours later, the energetic particles arrive. Moving only slightly slower than light itself, electrons and protons accelerated by the blast can electrify satellites and damage their electronics. Then come the CMEs, billion-ton clouds of magnetized plasma that take a day or more to cross the Sun-Earth divide. Analysts believe that a direct hit by an extreme CME such as the one that missed Earth in July 2012 could cause widespread power blackouts, disabling everything that plugs into a wall socket. Most people wouldn't even be able to flush their toilet because urban water supplies largely rely on electric pumps. Full story

To make matters worse, geologists have been expressing concerns about the magnetic field that shields Earth from deadly solar radiation. In 2019, when the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration was forced to update its World Magnetic Model a year early after finding that the magnetic north pole was rapidly moving out of the Canadian Arctic and toward Siberia.

The US National Aeronautics and Space Administration is tracking an immense, growing, and slowly splitting "dent" in the Earth's Magnetic field. The area, known as the South Atlantic Anomaly, is situated in the southern hemisphere between South America and the southern Atlantic Ocean off the coast of southwestern Africa. According to recent NASA monitoring and modelling, the area is expanding westward and becoming weaker and expected to completely split into two separate cells, each spanning thousands of kilometres across, very soon. Full story

The question here folks is, "when," and not if...

Spaceweather 2021

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