Earth Faces Attack From Man's Most Ancient Enemy: The Sun
Solar storm will wipe out civilization at noon.
http://www.cnn.com/2003/TECH/space/1....ap/index.html --
DENVER, Colorado (AP) -- Another spectacular eruption on the surface of the sun sent charged particles hurling toward Earth on Wednesday, and scientists said the cloud could significantly disrupt communications on Earth and may even hamper firefighting efforts in California.
"It's headed straight for us like a freight train," said John Kohl, a solar astrophysicist at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Massachusetts. "This is the real thing."
[...]
The cloud of charged particles from last week's eruption struck Earth "with only a glancing blow," Kohl said. It disrupted some airline communications.
But scientists observed one of the three biggest such explosions in 30 years shortly before 6 a.m. EST Tuesday. It produced a particle cloud 13 times larger than Earth and hurtled through the solar system at more than 1 million miles per hour.
