The flares are the strongest unleashed in 2013 so far
The Sun has unleashed four colossal bursts of radiation in 48 hours.
On Tuesday, it released the biggest solar flare of 2013 so far, an intense burst associated with a huge eruption of particles.
When these eruptions reach Earth, they can interfere with satellites and communications systems on the ground.
The sunspots that spawned these flares are not directly facing our planet, but some Nasa spacecraft could be in the path of the solar particles.
An X-class flare is equivalent to a billion hydrogen bombs. We’re talking about a colossal amount of energy Dr Robert MasseyRoyal Astronomical Society
Increased numbers of flares are expected at the moment because the Sun’s normal 11-year activity cycle is approaching a peak of activity – known as a solar maximum – this year.
Dr Robert Massey, from the UK’s Royal Astronomical Society, told the BBC: “What’s interesting about these events is that you have them in quick succession.
“It really does say that we’re approaching this 11-year peak. We can’t say exactly when it’s going to happen, you can only work it out retrospectively.”
Despite this, the Sun had – up until the most recent events – been relatively quiet in 2013. Sunspot numbers had been below values in recent years and strong flares had been infrequent.
Eruptions such as this one in August last year, demonstrate the raw power of our parent star
The intense bursts of energy this week were all “X-class” flares – the strongest type.
These are assigned a number which gives more information about their strength: An X2 is twice as intense as an X1, an X3 is three times as intense, and so on.
The first of the recent flares, which was given an X1.7 designation, appeared at 0317 BST on Monday 13 May. That was followed by an X2.8-class flare at 1709 BST on the same day and an intense X3.2-class flare at 0217 BST on Tuesday.
These flares – the strongest solar activity of 2013 – occurred in the space of just 24 hours.
According to the Space Weather website, a fourth, X1-class flare was unleashed at 0252 on Wednesday.
“These are spectacular events, an X-class flare is equivalent to a billion hydrogen bombs. We’re talking about a colossal amount of energy,” said Dr Massey.
“The good news is that although these can cause problems – at worst – with power supplies and so on, there’s really no threat to us living on the ground.”
Footage from Nasa shows massive flares on the Sun’s surface
When intense enough, flares can disturb the Earth’s atmosphere in the layer where GPS and communications signals travel. This disrupts the radio signals for as long as the flare is happening.
Flares are associated with huge eruptions of matter from the Sun’s atmosphere – known as coronal mass ejections (CMEs).
These CMEs can be even more disruptive because they are capable of sending billions of tonnes of charged gas and other particles into space. When powerful eruptions reach Earth, the charged matter can blow out transformers in power grids as well as tripping electronics on satellites.
The so-called Carrington Event of 1-2 September 1859 shorted telegraph wires, starting fires in North America and Europe, and caused bright aurorae (northern and southern lights) to be seen in Cuba and Hawaii.
Nasa says its Stereo-B and Spitzer spacecraft may be in the paths of the mass of particles unleashed by these recent events. The operators of those science missions can choose to put their spacecraft into a “safe mode” to protect the electronics in onboard instruments from being tripped.
“It’s a really important area for economic reasons because if we don’t learn how to protect satellites and the equipment we depend on, there is a serious issue there,” said Dr Massey.
On July 22, 2009, the longest and brightest solar eclipse of the 21st century. The shadow from the eclipse was only visible on the ground in certain regions across the Pacific and Indian oceans. A mathematician from the Czech Republic and some of his colleagues were able to capture and composite 31 photographs from that day’s events. The wispy lines visible around the moon are actually the sun’s corona. Another solar eclipse of that magnitude is not expected until 2132.
The global ecological crisis demands radical changes in the way in which we use energy. Traditional renewable approaches such as solar, wind and biomass are attractive but can be capital and materials intensive, diffuse and intermittent. My own research and travel reveals an increasingly large number of experiments suggesting that we might be able to obtain clean and abundant energy from the vacuum or from low energy nuclear reactions (cold fusion).But these results fly in the face of conventional physics. “The resistance to a new idea”, Bertrand Russell said, “increases as the square of its importance.” Through the ages, perhaps no idea is more important or more maligned than that of perpetual motion or free energy. Inventors rarely lead easy lives, but those dedicated to the quest for free energy have met with especially great resistance. We look at the sagas of Nikola Tesia, T. Henry Moray, Bruce de Palma and Stefan Marinov as examples spanning this past century.This quest began far earlier, as revealed in this fascinating biography by John Collins. The time is the second decade of the eighteenth century and the place is Germany. Here Johannes Bessler, alias Orffyreus, built and demonstrated large wheels which he claimed could turn indefinitely. In one dramatic demonstration, a Bessler wheel was documented to have run continuously for four weeks.Collins correctly points out that the concept of perpetual motion has its semantic difficulties that can cause a premature dismissal from some critics. The relevant question to ask is, can we obtain energy from a mechanical free running device by the ingenious placement of weights with respect to the centre of gravity of the wheel to make it turn continuously? Collins believes this was Bessler’s secret, analogous to a windmill turning continuously in a constant wind. Regrettably he offers no definitive or quantitative analysis of how that mechanism might have worked successfully.Most modern free energy research goes well beyond the mechanical paradigm of Bessler’s time. Some are electromagnetic devices following Michael Faraday’s discovery in the 1830s that magnets placed on a wheel, when spun up to a threshold speed, can produce anomalous electricity that might lead to a continuous energy source, like a paddle wheel in running water.
Perpetual motion
During the 1990s, I visited the laboratories of over a dozen inventors worldwide of electromagnetic devices that appeared to produce more energy than went into them, as measured by traditional means. What we are seeing is energy coming from the vacuum of space, sometimes called zero-point energy, because it still exists at temperatures of absolute zero. I’ve seen many of these proof-of-concept demonstrations for myself. I wrote up the results of this journey in my 1996 book Miracle in the Void. Since then, many more books, scientific papers, articles, organizations and websites describe the prospects of new energy technologies that could reverse a permanent state of war and the gloomy spectre of irreversible climate change, the drastic pollution of our air, water and land, and the seizure of dwindling nonrenewable resources such as oil, coal, natural gas, uranium, forests, water, food, soil, minerals, wetlands, coral reefs, pristine diverse natural habitats and indigenous cultures.
Many of us with a scientific background have also investigated revolutionary concepts such as cold fusion with palladium cathodes (nonradioactive, room temperature nuclear reactions), sonoluminescence (acoustic cavitation, a cold fusion method), and special hydrogen and water chemistries, all of which are almost certainly producing significant clean excess thermal energy in the presence of catalysts. We have come to the conclusion, based on sound experimental science, that we could soon have a breakthrough energy economy, if we only allow these courageous researchers to move the technologies beyond their own laboratories. Unfortunately, that has not happened yet. The global controllers’ suppression of making available any practical device has been 100% airtight, in spite of numerous attempts to break through. Covert assassinations, threats, thefts, draconian laws prohibiting the patenting of such devices and lack of funding have all thwarted development.
This war perpetrated by elite corporations and the U.S. and other rich oligarchies against humanity and nature has only escalated over the past few years. The unfolding of these crimes provides a stark contrast to how things could be in a better world. We need nothing less than profound systemic change in our political, economic and social systems in order to have clean energy, and that must happen sooner than is comfortable for most of us. But our discomfort and disease coming from an imperiled biosphere would be far worse. We need a revolution, a peaceful transformation. Its centerpiece should be a clean energy solution revolution that could restore sustainability and sensibility to the world.
The Energy Solution Revolution is an urgent call for an energy revolution that would give us a quantum leap in environmental friendliness. Some parts are an updated compilation of essays written over the past several years that explore the prospects and implications of a future world of radically clean, cheap and decentralized energy. Does this possibility really exist or is it a scientific mirage? If it does exist, why has it been so suppressed for over a century since Nikola Tesla and others were inventing these things? Why do mainstream scientists, progressives and environmentalists totally ignore this possibility, even though it might save us all? What can we do to avoid the abuse or overuse of these technologies? Most importantly, how can we implement free energy when so very few of us are listening? We explore these questions in this book. It is a wake-up-call to transform planetary culture from one dominated by capitalistic self-interest, pointless wars, ecocide and dirty energy, into one where the bulk of humanity can at last come together with compassion for all creation–before it’s too late.
Problems and solutions to our energy problems are not technical. They are human. The evidence for new, breakthrough, “over-unity” energy is overwhelming, but we must realize that we are in the research phase of a research and development cycle, that we are on the toe of the profit curve that almost no venture capitalist yet wants to touch, and that so far, the inventors have been divided and conquered by the unmitigated greed of the existing energy lobby.
History teaches us that new energy research is both elusive and heretical, yet intriguing enough to be taken seriously.
Our challenges are therefore social, economic and political. We will see that, like thrashing dragons wanting to get one more drop of blood, we crave hydrocarbon and nuclear fuel in deference to those who wish to profit from our continuing use of dirty energy and who are doing everything they can to stop solution energy from seeing the light of day. We shall see that the pervasive use of carbon trading, biofuels, alternative hydrocarbons such as the tar sands of Alberta and oil shale of Utah, carbon sequestration at coal mines, the hydrogen economy, nuclear power, hybrid cars, air cars—even solar and wind–can only distract us from what we really need to do in the long run. We shall see that these “solutions” are just smoke and mirrors in the well-publicized energy sideshow. As journalist George Monbiot put it, the first way to keep from environmental and climate disaster would be to keep carbon (and uranium) in the ground. But then what?
Policymakers and an ignorant public are thwarting authentically clean energy at every turn, either by commission or by omission. As a sociological problem, the need for truly clean energy is perhaps the most urgent one our culture has ever faced. The Energy Solution Revolutionlooks into these dynamics of overcoming our denials and vested interests as we progress through this book. Given that both policymakers and the public commons have difficulty supporting solar and wind power, multiply that suppressive force by millions when it comes to the viability of new energy technologies to save the planet from almost sure disaster.
Almost every “expert” who presents the “renewable” alternatives limits his/her discussion to the known sources such as solar and wind, which are not really all that renewable. The public is deceived into thinking those are all there are or ever will be. The free energy possibilities are simply discarded at our risk and peril.
My journalist-colleague Keith Lampe has well expressed a scenario for our future energy choices. He suggests that existing “renewable” technologies such as solar and wind be implemented as first-generation energy, while we develop forthwith second-generation energy such as zero-point, cold fusion and advanced hydrogen technologies. Both options, he feels, need equal time, whether it’s in Congressional hearings or in public discourse. Looked at in this light, we can evolve an energy policy that makes sense, and could give us a much better chance to reverse climate change before it’s too late.
I agree with Lampe’s assessment, which was also the principal conclusion of my own studies, as expressed in my previous book Re-Inheriting the Earth (2003). It seems that, even for those skeptical about whether or not these advanced energy technologies are real, is it not wise to adopt the precautionary principle that we leave no stone unturned to uncover those energy sources which could really solve our paralysis of paradigm and save humanity and nature from almost certain destruction? We cannot afford to do less.
But we must also ensure that the technologies are regulated by responsible government and are never put to weapons use or overuse. That’s why social change must go along with introducing any radical new technology such as this one.
Each revolutionary new energy technology discussed in the book represents a potential quantum leap in our ability to have clean and cheap energy. In every case, using these sources can give all of humanity an authentically lasting new paradigm in our energy policies and practices, at first involving disruptive and seemingly magical concepts. They give us an opportunity to transcend humanity’s rampage on nature and give us a reasonable chance to have a truly peaceful, just and sustainable future on Earth—if we can take action soon and wisely.
We can research and vet all the energy options we want and we can even try to do this job honestly, but none of this will matter unless we can effect political action at many levels. We’re going to need to know the truth and find ways of acting on it constructively. We must search for a public context to introduce solution energy for all.
In my opinion, the prospects of free energy depend entirely on the success of an altruistic democracy that is longing to be born.
Interview with Brian O’Leary
Energy Solution Revolution – Part 1
Interview with Brian O’Leary Energy Solution Revolution – Part 2
Dr. Brian O’Leary is an author, pioneering physicist and former NASA astronaut. He has published ten international books on the frontiers of science, space, energy and culture. With his artist-wife Meredith, they founded Montesueños, a retreat center and botanical garden in the Ecuadorian Andes dedicated to finding deep peaceful and sustainable solutions to humankind’s war on nature and to implement these at local, regional and global levels of action. Please visit Dr. O’Leary’s websites atwww.montesuenos.org and www.brianoleary.info for more details.
Source: Prevent Disease Image credit
“Those who say it can’t be done should not interrupt those who are doing it.” – George Bernard Shaw Europe has built a “Solar Tunnel” to power its high speed trains.
Europe’s first “solar tunnel” is providing power to 4000 high-speed trains running between Paris and Amsterdam annually. The 3.6-kilometer (2.2-mile) tunnel, built to protect trains from falling trees as they pass through an ancient forest near Antwerp, is covered with solar cells and could generate 3.3 MWh of electricity annually. Thanks to Truth Beckons.
The flares are the strongest unleashed in 2013 so far
Eruptions such as this one in August last year, demonstrate the raw power of our parent star 
