by Terrence Aym

Created on: June 07, 2010

The sun has been worrying scientists for quite a while.

Back in the late 1990s its eruptions became increasingly violent until it spewed mammoth plasma streamers at an intensity and rate never observed at any other time in history. Earth's satellites were at risk as well as electrical power grids and all electrical communications.

Then the sun went quiet—abnormally quiet. Normal cycles of increased activity came and went with little or no sunspot activity. Around the globe sun watchers began to ask each other—a bit uneasily—what was wrong with the sun?

Their question is about to be answered. The giant is about to awaken from its abnormal slumber and scientists around the world, NASA included, are very concerned.

The director of NASA's Heliophysics Division, Richard Fisher, sheds some light on the growing worry: "The sun is waking up from a deep slumber, and in the next few years we expect to see much higher levels of solar activity. At the same time, our technological society has developed an unprecedented sensitivity to solar storms. The intersection of these two issues is what we're getting together to discuss."

Fisher echoes the growing worry amongst electrical engineers, computer experts, space application experts—even the Pentagon.

The warning shot has been fired

The solar space probe, Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) recorded one of the largest solar eruptions in years on April 19, 2010. Experts breathed a collective sigh of relief as the solar storm missed our planet by a wide margin. Some expressed the opinion that we dodged a major bullet.

How long we can continue dodging that bullet is a matter of speculation. The law of averages, however, leads the experts in heliophysics (the study of the properties of the sun) to suspect our days are numbered. The odds of avoiding a planet crippling storm are piling up against Earthlings and our fragile, susceptible technology underlying our civilization. As the sun awakes our risk increases.

Emergency measures to be discussed

At the Space Weather Enterprise Forum being held at the National Press Club on June 8th, some of the world's solar experts are gathering to decide how to protect our technology (and by extension, our civilization) from a rampaging, exploding sun.

Earth's necklace of orbiting satellites are particularly at risk. The suggestion has been made to place them in a 'safe-mode' that—theoretically at least—afford them some protection from the electrified plasma and energized

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