http://weeklyworldnews.com/headlines/23038/sun-will-destroy-all-satellites-in-2013/

Someone brought this up in IJBM. Does anyone know the validity of this? Are they overblowing it and scaremongering? Discuss.

I'd be slightly more concerned about it if it weren't for the source. It can sit on the shelf next to Alien Bat Baby and Jesus Found In Baby's Freckle for things I'll remember to be worried about when more reputable media start reporting on them.

Do you have an actual news source that has a higher level of seriousness than The Onion?

2013? Not December 2012?

The real deal: http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2009/29may_noaaprediction/

It's fair to say that the OP overstated the case just a little bit...

Says a potential for $1-2 trillion in infrastructure damage, with 4-10 years to recover. That's a lot, but is by no means apocalyptic, and it's still merely a prediction, without any reliable means of determining what's actually going to happen.

Note the last line of the WWW article: "[as reported in Pravda]".

Oh wow, I probably should have googled their name or set my iPod to load images or something.

I'm curious as to how these assessments are done. I'm also curious as to whether or not the electronics can be sufficiently hardened to withstand any event that might be coming.

They're hardened against standard stellar radiation, to be sure, but we're talking potentially several orders of magnitude greater for a limited time. We've been in a prolonged calm cycle, apparently, which has had some rather awesome scientific benefits, including the ability to more clearly distinguish cosmic background radiation.

It's clearly impossible to add shielding to satellites already in orbit, but I suspect that they'll be building additional shielding for ones that are to be launched soon. Most likely the storms will simply accelerate the demise of older, aging satellites.

An uptick in the solar cycle could have benefits, though; it's likely to increase upper atmospheric drag, helping to pull down orbiting space junk.

True. Now we just need to work on the giant potato gun to get the newer satellites up into orbit.

Wait, why is the WWW even reporting this?

Why wouldn't they? Great story.

It's just... not up to the level I expect from them.

Snerk... hrrk... BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA.... oh man, you had me going there.

They changed their editorial policy a couple years back. Now they do much less make-it-up-completely and more take-a-real-story-and-blow-it-out-of-proportion. It made it a lot less readable.

It also creates a greater risk of confusion with actual news stories.

That too. When the cover stories are "Aliens endorse Dukakis for President", "Elvis is alive and well and living in Tempe trailer park", and "Man marries septuplet sisters" it's kind of difficult to mistake it for a real newspaper.

its like if ED was a news site.

I wouldn't worry about it too much, we'll all be dead in 2012.

I've seen the same thing reported in a serious science magazine, altho it gave the date as somewhere between 2011 and 2013. Sun's activity is cyclical, and seems to be increasing currently. There was an enormous magnetic storm that happened in the 1800s, which caused auroras to be visible in as far south as Spain and fried telegraph lines. Apparently something like that happens every 200 years or so, and if it would happen today it would destroy all satellites and fry most complex electronic devices on Earth.

It's a fact that there's probably going to be a spike in sunspot activity in starting sometime in the next 2 to 5 years. But no reputable scientist is saying that they know for sure when or how severe it will be. The estimates of the damage it will cause are just that— estimates.