Been having a few issues the last couple of months with our hot water system. It is a real bugger with an 8 week old baby. Today the Power Company sent their man around.

We got into a great discussion regarding the solar flares video I had just seen on the site I tweeted about a couple of days ago. < www.terravivos.com > (copy and paste people).

The video which is embedded in the article below discusses the solar storm cycle of 11 years, due to reach the peak of it's cycle in 2012. The video is an interview with an astro-physicist / scientist. Very intriguing, and well worth a watch for anyone that intends to be around on the planet around the peak of the next cycle. There is talk of the sun sending out massive solar flares, with the potential to fry our power grids, and by fry that is a literal use of the word. Time to get prepared for a great suntan??

Last year Nasa send out a probe to study the sun. Perhaps this probe is in response to the solar flare threat. Perhaps not. Hard to know. I will find out though........ Anyway, we got talking about the solar flares, and low and behold, on the news tonight is an article about the "latest pictures from the sun"........ very interested in seeing what the mainstream media has to say about all of this........

Footnote: All the TV had to say was that Nasa's probe is called the Solar Dynamics Observatory and is sending back images 10 times the quality of HD TV, and it went live today with the first set of pictures being released to the media. They showed some pretty pictures but that was that.

Here we go - check this out. Straight from the mainstream US Media.

To learn more about the project (which I will summarise a little more at a later time so check back here) is < http://sdo.gsfc.nasa.gov/ >take a look if you have a few spare minutes. I will get more into the mission and see what is up, and whether it impacts the solar storm conversation.

And some more about solar flares from the terravivos.com website (which is well worth a look)

Solar flares affect all layers of the solar atmosphere (photosphere, corona, and chromosphere), heating plasma to tens of millions of kelvins and accelerating electrons, protons, and heavier ions to near the speed of light. They produce radiation across the electromagnetic spectrum at all wavelengths, from radio waves to gamma rays. Most flares occur in active regions around sunspots, where intense magnetic fields penetrate the photosphere to link the corona to the solar interior. Flares are powered by the sudden (timescales of minutes to tens of minutes) release of magnetic energy stored in the corona. If a solar flare is exceptionally powerful, it can cause coronal mass ejections.

X-rays and UV radiation emitted by solar flares can affect Earth's ionosphere and disrupt long-range radio communications. Direct radio emission at decimetric wavelengths may disturb operation of radars and other devices operating at these frequencies.

Solar flares release a cascade of high energy particles known as a proton storm. Protons can pass through the human body, doing biochemical damage. The proton storms are produced in the solar wind, and hence present a hazard to astronauts during interplanetary travel. Most proton storms take two or more hours from the time of visual detection to reach Earth's orbit. A solar flare on January 20, 2005 released the highest concentration of protons ever directly measured, taking only 15 minutes after observation to reach Earth, indicating a velocity of approximately one-half light speed.