The sun’s storm activity waxes and wanes according to an 11- to 13-year sunspot cycle. That the next solar maximum, when storms are most frequent and powerful, will climax (probably) in three years is what gives the 2012 phenomenon its veneer of scientific validity. Although scientists reject the idea that a solar storm—or anything else for that matter—is about to start the earth abruptly turning in the opposite direction, many have their own worries about the coming maximum. The sun cycle’s supposed quiet period has actually been quite active, leading to questions about how it will behave at maximum. And as Laurence Joseph, a skeptical science writer and author of Apocalypse 2012, notes, “the cycle we’re now in is like the one that led to the Carrington event.”
That six-day solar storm of 1859—the most powerful ever recorded—brought down telegraph systems worldwide. Something like another Carrington event would now strike a civilization far more electricity-dependent. Joseph points to a study by the National Academy of Sciences entitled “Severe Space Weather Events.” The NAS notes that electricity makes everything else work; if we lose it for long enough, “water distribution will be affected within hours; perishable foods and medications lost in 12-24 hours; loss of heating and air conditioning, sewage disposal, phone service, fuel re-supply and so on.” A worst-case scenario would see giant solar flares frying the transmission grid sufficiently as to leave more than 130 million North Americans without power, perhaps for years.
Even so, despite the suffering that would result, it would hardly add up to the extinction of humanity. And the solution, according to Joseph and many experts, is relatively simple: a series of large-scale surge protectors placed at strategic points along the electrical grid. The cost? About $300 million to $500 million, chump change, Joseph says, in the age of billion-dollar bank bailouts.
Despite its recent rumblings, fear of 12-21-12, as it’s often styled, can hardly be blamed on our local star. Or even on the Mayans, who had virtually nothing to say about the day after—most scholars assume they expected to do what we do when the desk calendar reaches Dec. 31: start a new one. But it says a lot about what 2,000 years of half-expecting Armageddon has wrought in what was once Christendom, and about our fascination with numerology. A decade ago, for everyone who feared computer chaos as the clock ticked down to 2000, many more were simply in thrall—all those numbers turning over together had to mean something. But 9/11 notwithstanding, life hasn’t changed much. The sun still rises, and in the east too. But maybe a few surge protectors would be prudent.
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