beetleking

Imam mahdi is coming???? http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/space/7923069/Nasa-scientists-braced-for-solar-tsunami-to-hit-earth.html

NASA: Solar storm to hit earth in 2013 NASA scientists predict a solar storm will hit the earth in 2013 mostly affecting electronic devices leading to a major catastrophe. The once-in-a-generation storm, caused by extremely high levels magnetic energy released by solar flares, "will disrupt communication devices such as satellites and car navigations, air travel, the banking system, our computers, everything that is electronic," says Richard Fisher, head of NASA's Heliophysics Division, quoted in a June 14 Daily Telegraph article. "Large areas will be without electricity power," says Fisher who emphasizes that the emergence of the storm is certain, though its degree of severity cannot be accurately foretold. The National Academy of Sciences warned two years ago that a strong solar storm could cause "twenty times more economic damage than Hurricane Katrina," which devastated US Gulf of Mexico coastal city of New Orleans in 2005, killing thousands and living an estimated damage of over $125 billion. According to Fisher, the storm, which will cause the sun to reach temperatures of more than 10,000 F (5,500 C), occurs "only a few times over a person's life." Every 22 years, according to the report, the Sun's magnetic energy cycle reaches its highest level as the number sun spots - or flares - peaks every 11 years. These two events, says Fisher, "would combine in 2013 to produce huge levels of radiation." In recent months, NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) has offered unique photos of sun spots, which release a vast amount of energy as they light up. http://www.presstv.ir/detail.aspx?id=131308&sectionid=3510208

This guys is shaytan :shaytan: JERUSALEM (AFP) — Israel should follow the example set by the United States when it brought Japan to its knees at the end of World War II, the head of an ultra-nationalist opposition party was quoted as saying Tuesday. "We must continue to fight Hamas just like the United States did with the Japanese in World War II," Avigdor Lieberman said, according to the website of the Jerusalem Post newspaper. Japan surrendered in 1945 after atomic bombs were dropped on the cities of Nagasaki and Hiroshima. Lieberman, who quit Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's coalition government last year, said Israel needed to "break the will" of Hamas in Gaza where more than 900 Palestinians have been killed in a war that began on December 27. "Israel won't be secure so long as Hamas is in power, and therefore we need to come to a decision that we will break the will of Hamas to keep fighting," he was quoted as saying during a speech at Bar-Ilan University, near Tel Aviv. Lieberman's comments, which were widely broadcast on radio stations in Gaza and circulated on text messages, drew a withering response from senior Palestinians. Mustafa Barghuthi, an independent lawmaker and former Palestinian information minister, said Lieberman's comments reflected the contempt felt by Israelis towards the Palestinians. "This shows one more time that Israel never learn lessons from the past and rather invokes one of the bloodiest massacres in history to be the fate of the Gazans. They don't have respect for human life", he said. Lieberman's right-wing Yisrael Beitenu party, which draws its core support from Israel's large Russian immigrant community, is tipped to emerge as the fourth largest party in elections due on February 10. http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5jQcI9FHWxEsA6tc4jY_geH7HvqQw

(CNN) -- Israel acknowledged Sunday that it edited recordings of what it said were anti-Semitic and anti-American radio calls by pro-Palestinian activists who tried to run the Gaza blockade and that it could not identify the origin of the broadcasts. The Israeli military released a 26-second recording Friday night in which a warning call to a ship in the flotilla was met with the reply of "Shut up -- go back to Auschwitz." After another voice reports that the convoy has the permission of Palestinian officials to dock in Gaza, a third voice responds, "We are helping Arabs going against the U.S. Don't forget 9/11, guys." But after the organizers of the aid convoy accused Israeli officials of manipulating the tapes, the Israel Defense Forces reported it had mistakenly identified one of the six ships in the activists' "Freedom Flotilla" as the source of the broadcasts. And it released a nearly six-minute recording of radio traffic that included those calls and several others, along with bursts of static and calls in other languages on the same channel. "So to clarify: The audio was edited down to cut out periods of silence over the radio as well as incomprehensible comments so as to make it easier for people to listen to the exchange," the Israeli military said in a statement posted on its Web site. And it added, "Due to an open channel, the specific ship or ships in the 'Freedom Flotilla' responding to the Israeli Navy could not be identified." Israeli commandos intercepted the convoy at sea on May 31 and stormed the largest vessel, the Turkish-flagged Mavi Marmara, killing nine people aboard. The ships were carrying humanitarian aid to Gaza, the Palestinian territory that has been blockaded by Israel since its takeover by the Islamic movement Hamas in 2007, and the deadly raid sparked international condemnation. Convoy organizers from Free Gaza said Israel "doctored" the recordings "in order to paint the flotilla passengers as anti-Semites." The group denied its vessels were the source of the broadcasts and said the Israeli accusations made "no more sense with the explanation." "All radio transmissions on the sea are heard by all captains," the group said. "Once again, Israel is caught in a lie trying to defend itself for the murder and mayhem it committed the morning of May 31, 2010." On the full recording, an Israeli warship hails one of the vessels in the flotilla to warn it was approaching a blockade zone and warned that "all necessary measures" would be taken to prevent it from docking in Gaza. After three warnings, Free Gaza activist Huwaida Arraf replied that the blockade was a violation of international law and that the convoy was carrying only humanitarian aid. "We do not carry anything that constitutes a threat to your armed forces," she says on the recording. http://edition.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/meast/06/06/gaza.flotilla.recordings/index.html

Now many people say that there is no god, because for that thing. What you think about this? Synthetic Genome Brings New Life to Bacterium Elizabeth Pennisi For 15 years, J. Craig Venter has chased a dream: to build a genome from scratch and use it to make synthetic life. Now, he and his team at the J. Craig Venter Institute (JCVI) in Rockville, Maryland, and San Diego, California, say they have realized that dream. In this week's Science Express (www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/science.1190719), they describe the stepwise creation of a bacterial chromosome and the successful transfer of it into a bacterium, where it replaced the native DNA. Powered by the synthetic genome, that microbial cell began replicating and making a new set of proteins. This is "a defining moment in the history of biology and biotechnology," says Mark Bedau, a philosopher at Reed College in Portland, Oregon, and editor of the scientific journal Artificial Life. "It represents an important technical milestone in the new field of synthetic genomics," says yeast biologist Jef Boeke of Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in Baltimore, Maryland. The synthetic genome created by Venter's team is almost identical to that of a natural bacterium. It was achieved at great expense, an estimated $40 million, and effort, 20 people working for more than a decade. Despite this success, creating heavily customized genomes, such as ones that make fuels or pharmaceuticals, and getting them to "boot" up the same way in a cell is not yet a reality. "There are great challenges ahead before genetic engineers can mix, match, and fully design an organism's genome from scratch," notes Paul Keim, a molecular geneticist at Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff. The "synthetic" bacteria unveiled this week have their origins in a project headed by Venter and JCVI colleagues Clyde Hutchison III and Hamilton Smith to determine the minimal instructions needed for microbial life and from there add genes that could turn a bacterium into a factory producing compounds useful for humankind. In 1995, a team led by the trio sequenced the 600,000-base chromosome of a bacterium called Mycoplasma genitalium, the smallest genome of a free-living organism. The microbe has about 500 genes, and researchers found they could delete 100 individual genes without ill effect (Science, 14 February 2003, p. 1006). But confirming the minimal genome suggested by those experiments required synthesizing a full bacterial chromosome and getting it to work in a recipient cell, two steps that have taken years because the technology to make and manipulate whole chromosomes did not exist. In 2007, Venter, Smith, Hutchison, and colleagues finally demonstrated that they could transplant natural chromosomes from one microbial species to another (Science, 3 August 2007, p. 632). By 2008, they showed that they could make an artificial chromosome that matched M. genitalium's but also contained "watermark" DNA sequences that would enable them to tell the synthetic genome from the natural one (Science, 29 February 2008, p. 1215). Figure 1 But combining those steps became bogged down, in part because M. genitalium grows so slowly that one experiment can take weeks to complete. The team decided to change microbes in midstream, sequencing the 1-million-base genome of the faster-growing M. mycoides and beginning to build a synthetic copy of its chromosome. Last year, they showed they could extract the M. mycoides natural chromosome, place it into yeast, modify the bacterial genome, and then transfer it to M. capricolum, a close microbial relative (Science, 21 August 2009, p. 928; 25 September 2009, p. 1693). The next step was to show that the synthetic copy of the bacterial DNA could be handled the same way. The researchers started building their synthetic chromosome by going DNA shopping. They bought from a company more than 1000 1080-base sequences that covered the whole M. mycoides genome; to facilitate their assembly in the correct order, the ends of each sequence had 80 bases that overlapped with its neighbors. So that the assembled genome would be recognizable as synthetic, four of the ordered DNA sequences contained strings of bases that, in code, spell out an e-mail address, the names of many of the people involved in the project, and a few famous quotations. Using yeast to assemble the synthetic DNA in stages, the researchers first stitched together 10,000-base sequences, then 100,000-base sequences, and finally the complete genome. However, when they initially put the synthetic genome into M. capricolum, nothing happened. Like computer programmers debugging faulty software, they systematically transplanted combinations of synthetic and natural DNA, finally homing in on a single-base mistake in the synthetic genome. The error delayed the project 3 months. After months of unsuccessfully transplanting these various genome combinations, the team's fortune changed about a month ago when the biologists found a blue colony of bacteria had rapidly grown on a lab plate over the weekend. (Blue showed the cells were using the new genome). Project leader Daniel Gibson sent Venter a text message declaring success. "I took my video camera in and filmed [the plate]," says Venter. They sequenced the DNA in this colony, confirming that the bacteria had the synthetic genome, and checked that the microbes were indeed making proteins characteristic of M. mycoides rather than M capricolum. The colony grew like a typical M. mycoides as well. "We clearly transformed one cell into another," says Venter. "That's a pretty amazing accomplishment," says Anthony Forster, a molecular biologist at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee. Still, he and others emphasize that this work didn't create a truly synthetic life form, because the genome was put into an existing cell. At the moment, the techniques employed by Venter's team are too difficult to appeal to any potential bioterrorists, researchers stress. Nonetheless, "this experiment will certainly reconfigure the ethical imagination," says Paul Rabinow, an anthropologist at the University of California, Berkeley, who studies synthetic biology. "Over the long term, the approach will be used to synthesize increasingly novel designed genomes," says Kenneth Oye, a social scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge. "Right now, we are shooting in the dark as to what the long-term benefits and long-term risks will be." As ever more "artificial" life comes into reach, regulatory agencies will need to establish the proper regulations in a timely fashion, adds Oye. "The possibility of misuse unfortunately exists," says Eckard Wimmer of Stony Brook University in New York state, who led a team that in 2002 created the first synthetic virus (Science, 9 August 2002, p. 1016). Venter says that JCVI has applied for several patents covering the work, assigning them to his company, Synthetic Genomics, which provided much of the funding for the project. A technology watchdog group, ETC Group in Ottawa, has argued that these actions could result in a monopoly on synthesized life (Science, 15 June 2007, p. 1557), but others are not worried. Given the current climate for granting and upholding patents of this type, says Oye, "it is unlikely that Synthetic Genomics will become the Microsoft of synthetic biology." "One thing is sure," Boeke says. "Interesting creatures will be bubbling out of the Venter Institute's labs." http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/328/5981/958

What do you think of the article :dry: The origins of a holy book Using ancient texts, scholars have begun an audacious effort to unravel the story of the Koran. What will they find? Later this spring, a team of scholars at Germany’s Berlin-Brandenberg Academy of Sciences will complete the first phase of what will ultimately be an unprecedented, two-decade effort to throw light on the origins of the Koran. The project, called the Corpus Coranicum, will be something that scholars of the Koran have long yearned for: a central repository of imagery, information, and analysis about the Muslim holy book. Modern research into Islam’s origin and early years has been hampered by the paucity and inaccessibility of ancient texts, and the reluctance of Muslim governments in places like Yemen to allow wide access to them. But, drawing on some of the earliest Korans in existence — codices found in Istanbul, Cairo, Paris, and Morocco — the Corpus Coranicum will allow users to study for themselves images of thousands of pages of early Korans, texts that differ in small but potentially telling ways from the modern standard version. The project will also link passages in the text to analogous ones in the New Testament and Hebrew Bible, and offer an exhaustive critical commentary on the Koran’s language, structure, themes, and roots. The project’s creators are calling it the world’s first “critical edition” of the Koran, a resource that gathers historical evidence and scholarly literature into one searchable, cross-referenced whole. Critical editions — usually books rather than websites — are a commonplace in academia. University bookstores do a brisk business in critical editions of the world’s best-known literary works, from “The Iliad” to “Hamlet” to “Das Kapital.” As labor-saving devices for scholars and teaching aids for students, they can be invaluable. Presenting a novel or manifesto or play in its historical context helps readers to see the ways it was shaped by contemporaneous events and local attitudes, how it was built from the distinctive cultural building blocks at hand. Embedding a work in critical commentary — and critical editions often include essays that are sharply at odds with each other — gives readers a sense of the richness of possible readings of the text. But the form takes on a special significance with holy books, where millions of people order their lives in accordance to what they see as divine language. Standard versions like the King James Bible or the regularized Cairo Koran (the version, first printed in 1924, that most Muslims have today) help to unite the faithful in one common reading of their holy book. A critical edition, on the other hand, by its nature, highlights the contingency of a text’s creation and gives readers the tools to interpret it for themselves. Among Koranic scholars, there’s a great deal of excitement about the Corpus Coranicum, which will help them make better sense of a text that — despite the fact that millions regularly recite from it and live their lives according to its precepts — remains something of a historical and theological puzzle.Continued... http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/articles/2010/03/28/the_origins_of_a_holy_book/?page=1 Continued... Continued... Continued...

I have a friend with the whole life was one difficulty after difficulty. First he lost his father's primary school age, after his father died, his younger brother die in cancer, and after that his second brother was killed, after that, his girlfriend died in a car accident, and even then his closest human cousin died. It was too much and my friend ended up suicide. I need to Islamic view from this... Is it fair that he would go in eternal hell? from this?

why does Allah occurred from all people all time and why Allah send Quran only in one place? Please can u answer logically?

Shakir... Men are the maintainers of women because Allah has made some of them to excel others and because they spend out of their property; the good women are therefore obedient, guarding the unseen as Allah has guarded; and (as to) those on whose part you fear desertion, admonish them, and leave them alone in the sleeping-places and beat them; then if they obey you, do not seek a way against them; surely Allah is High, Great. Why we have to punish a woman? Why the talk it not enough? Does this not violate women's Equal Opportunities? Can anyone answer logic answer?

Behold Muslims! Sunnia Shia wahab and others, all of these are haram!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 3:105. And be not like those who became divided and disagreed after clear arguments had come to them, and these it is that shall have a grievous chastisement

Let me ask you 4 questions and hope that you respond to these... 1. Do Allah live in heaven? 2. Are god inside from all his creation? 3. Are dogs and pigs dirty animals? 4. where Allah send jesus? (15) Have ye taken security from Him Who is in the heaven that He will not cause the earth to swallow you when lo! it is convulsed? (16) Or have ye taken security from Him Who is in the heaven that He will not let loose on you a hurricane? But ye shall know the manner of My warning.

Solar strom only shut off electricity and satelite... http://mondomondo.files.wordpress.com/2009/01/solar_storm.jpg :D Solar strom look like this, looks like a rose... 55:37 ), "When the sky is torn apart, so it was (like) a red rose, like ointment."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4_TzIUlaQok&feature=player_embedded if video dont work. here: News: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U-IxkwLx-6c&feature=player_embedded: Theory:

Please read these: :cry: 55:32Soon shall We settle your affairs, O both ye worlds! 55:33. O ye assembly of Jinns and men! If it be ye can pass beyond the zones of the heavens and the earth, pass ye! not without authority shall ye be able to pass! 55:34 On you will be sent (O ye evil ones twain!) a flame of fire (to burn) and a (flash of) molten brass: no defense will ye have: 55:37. When the sky is rent asunder, and it becomes red like ointment: If you're counting all of these (Then which of the favors of your Lord will ye deny? ) verse from 55 u got europen calender 2011- 2012, but I do not remember how it calculated. All the electricity goes off and all satelite goes off and big solar storm attack earth 2012 :cry: Video: http://www.youtube.c...player_embedded Video: http://www.youtube.c...player_embedded * Solar cycle 24 just got started a few days back. The sun announced it with a major solar flare (Big Flare Portends Beginning of Solar Cycle 24). Solar flares rise and fall on an 11-year cycle, and last year marked what scientists thought was the solar minimum. But through the beginning of 2009, the sun stayed unusually quiet. That changed yesterday, when a major sunspot appeared on the backside of the sun, where it was captured by NASA’s STEREO instrument. “This is the biggest event we’ve seen in a year or so,” said Michael Kaiser, research scientist with the heliophysics division at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center. “Does this mean we’re finished with the minimum or not? It’s hard to say. This could be it. It’s got us all excited.” People have been counting sunspots since Galileo first observed one in the early 17th century. Through the 28 cycles that have been well-documented, stretching from 1745 to today, the average cycle length has been 11 years, but shorter and longer cycles have been observed. (The polarity of solar storms also alternates, so technically, a full cycle is 22 years.) For unknown reasons, the current solar minimum has lasted longer than normal. “It’s been a long solar minimum, the longest and deepest one through the last hundred years, but not out of the extreme ordinary,” Kaiser said. * The next solar maximum is in 2012. Will we see Corona Mass Ejections (CME) like that of 1859? FirstScience.com reports : Scientists are finally beginning to properly understand a historic solar storm in 1859. One day, the storm, which was the most potent disruption of Earth’s ionosphere in recorded history could happen again. Newly uncovered scientific data of recorded history’s most massive space storm is helping a NASA scientist investigate its intensity and the probability that what occurred on Earth and in the heavens almost a century-and-a-half ago could happen again. In scientific circles where solar flares, magnetic storms and other unique solar events are discussed, the occurrences of September 1-2, 1859, are the star stuff of legend. Even 144 years ago, many of Earth’s inhabitants realized something momentous had just occurred. Within hours, telegraph wires in both the United States and Europe spontaneously shorted out, causing numerous fires, while the Northern Lights, solar-induced phenomena more closely associated with regions near Earth’s North Pole, were documented as far south as Rome, Havana and Hawaii, with similar effects at the South Pole. What happened in 1859 was a combination of several events that occurred on the Sun at the same time. If they took place separately they would be somewhat notable events. But together they caused the most potent disruption of Earth’s ionosphere in recorded history. “What they generated was the perfect space storm,” says Bruce Tsurutani, a plasma physicist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. To begin to understand the perfect space storm you must first begin to understand the gargantuan numbers with which plasma physicists like Tsurutani work every day. At over 1.4 million kilometres (869,919 miles) wide, the Sun contains 99.86 percent of the mass of the entire solar system: well over a million Earths could fit inside its bulk. The total energy radiated by the Sun averages 383 billion trillion kilowatts, the equivalent of the energy generated by 100 billion tons of TNT exploding each and every second. But the energy released by the Sun is not always constant. Close inspection of the Sun’s surface reveals a turbulent tangle of magnetic fields and boiling arc-shaped clouds of hot plasma dappled by dark, roving sunspots. What transpired during the dog days of summer 1859, across the 150 million-kilometre (about 93 million-mile) chasm of interplanetary space that separates the Sun and Earth, was this: on August 28, solar observers noted the development of numerous sunspots on the Sun’s surface. Sunspots are localized regions of extremely intense magnetic fields. These magnetic fields intertwine, and the resulting magnetic energy can generate a sudden, violent release of energy called a solar flare. From August 28 to September 2 several solar flares were observed. Then, on September 1, the Sun released a mammoth solar flare. For almost an entire minute the amount of sunlight the Sun produced at the region of the flare actually doubled. “With the flare came this explosive release of a massive cloud of magnetically charged plasma called a coronal mass ejection,” said Tsurutani. “Not all coronal mass ejections head toward Earth. Those that do usually take three to four days to get here. This one took all of 17 hours and 40 minutes,” he noted. Not only was this coronal mass ejection an extremely fast mover, the magnetic fields contained within it were extremely intense and in direct opposition with Earth’s magnetic fields. That meant the coronal mass ejection of September 1, 1859, overwhelmed Earth’s own magnetic field, allowing charged particles to penetrate into Earth’s upper atmosphere. The endgame to such a stellar event is one heck of a light show and more – including potential disruptions of electrical grids and communications systems. Back in 1859 the invention of the telegraph was only 15 years old and society’s electrical framework was truly in its infancy. A 1994 solar storm caused major malfunctions to two communications satellites, disrupting newspaper, network television and nationwide radio service throughout Canada. Other storms have affected systems ranging from cell phone service and TV signals to GPS systems and electrical power grids. In March 1989, a solar storm much less intense than the perfect space storm of 1859 caused the Hydro-Quebec (Canada) power grid to go down for over nine hours, and the resulting damages and loss in revenue were estimated to be in the hundreds of millions of dollars. http://socioecohisto...lar-storm-2012/ Imam al-mahdi is coming 2012'?

Interesting? :o all the electricity goes off and all satelite goes off :o Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4_TzIUlaQok&feature=player_embedded Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U-IxkwLx-6c&feature=player_embedded * Solar cycle 24 just got started a few days back. The sun announced it with a major solar flare (Big Flare Portends Beginning of Solar Cycle 24). Solar flares rise and fall on an 11-year cycle, and last year marked what scientists thought was the solar minimum. But through the beginning of 2009, the sun stayed unusually quiet. That changed yesterday, when a major sunspot appeared on the backside of the sun, where it was captured by NASA’s STEREO instrument. “This is the biggest event we’ve seen in a year or so,” said Michael Kaiser, research scientist with the heliophysics division at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center. “Does this mean we’re finished with the minimum or not? It’s hard to say. This could be it. It’s got us all excited.” People have been counting sunspots since Galileo first observed one in the early 17th century. Through the 28 cycles that have been well-documented, stretching from 1745 to today, the average cycle length has been 11 years, but shorter and longer cycles have been observed. (The polarity of solar storms also alternates, so technically, a full cycle is 22 years.) For unknown reasons, the current solar minimum has lasted longer than normal. “It’s been a long solar minimum, the longest and deepest one through the last hundred years, but not out of the extreme ordinary,” Kaiser said. * The next solar maximum is in 2012. Will we see Corona Mass Ejections (CME) like that of 1859? FirstScience.com reports : Scientists are finally beginning to properly understand a historic solar storm in 1859. One day, the storm, which was the most potent disruption of Earth’s ionosphere in recorded history could happen again. Newly uncovered scientific data of recorded history’s most massive space storm is helping a NASA scientist investigate its intensity and the probability that what occurred on Earth and in the heavens almost a century-and-a-half ago could happen again. In scientific circles where solar flares, magnetic storms and other unique solar events are discussed, the occurrences of September 1-2, 1859, are the star stuff of legend. Even 144 years ago, many of Earth’s inhabitants realized something momentous had just occurred. Within hours, telegraph wires in both the United States and Europe spontaneously shorted out, causing numerous fires, while the Northern Lights, solar-induced phenomena more closely associated with regions near Earth’s North Pole, were documented as far south as Rome, Havana and Hawaii, with similar effects at the South Pole. What happened in 1859 was a combination of several events that occurred on the Sun at the same time. If they took place separately they would be somewhat notable events. But together they caused the most potent disruption of Earth’s ionosphere in recorded history. “What they generated was the perfect space storm,” says Bruce Tsurutani, a plasma physicist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. To begin to understand the perfect space storm you must first begin to understand the gargantuan numbers with which plasma physicists like Tsurutani work every day. At over 1.4 million kilometres (869,919 miles) wide, the Sun contains 99.86 percent of the mass of the entire solar system: well over a million Earths could fit inside its bulk. The total energy radiated by the Sun averages 383 billion trillion kilowatts, the equivalent of the energy generated by 100 billion tons of TNT exploding each and every second. But the energy released by the Sun is not always constant. Close inspection of the Sun’s surface reveals a turbulent tangle of magnetic fields and boiling arc-shaped clouds of hot plasma dappled by dark, roving sunspots. What transpired during the dog days of summer 1859, across the 150 million-kilometre (about 93 million-mile) chasm of interplanetary space that separates the Sun and Earth, was this: on August 28, solar observers noted the development of numerous sunspots on the Sun’s surface. Sunspots are localized regions of extremely intense magnetic fields. These magnetic fields intertwine, and the resulting magnetic energy can generate a sudden, violent release of energy called a solar flare. From August 28 to September 2 several solar flares were observed. Then, on September 1, the Sun released a mammoth solar flare. For almost an entire minute the amount of sunlight the Sun produced at the region of the flare actually doubled. “With the flare came this explosive release of a massive cloud of magnetically charged plasma called a coronal mass ejection,” said Tsurutani. “Not all coronal mass ejections head toward Earth. Those that do usually take three to four days to get here. This one took all of 17 hours and 40 minutes,” he noted. Not only was this coronal mass ejection an extremely fast mover, the magnetic fields contained within it were extremely intense and in direct opposition with Earth’s magnetic fields. That meant the coronal mass ejection of September 1, 1859, overwhelmed Earth’s own magnetic field, allowing charged particles to penetrate into Earth’s upper atmosphere. The endgame to such a stellar event is one heck of a light show and more – including potential disruptions of electrical grids and communications systems. Back in 1859 the invention of the telegraph was only 15 years old and society’s electrical framework was truly in its infancy. A 1994 solar storm caused major malfunctions to two communications satellites, disrupting newspaper, network television and nationwide radio service throughout Canada. Other storms have affected systems ranging from cell phone service and TV signals to GPS systems and electrical power grids. In March 1989, a solar storm much less intense than the perfect space storm of 1859 caused the Hydro-Quebec (Canada) power grid to go down for over nine hours, and the resulting damages and loss in revenue were estimated to be in the hundreds of millions of dollars. http://socioecohistory.wordpress.com/2009/05/09/nasa-warns-of-super-solar-storm-2012/