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  • CME Event Could Look Like Start Of World War 3

    CME Event Could Look Like Start Of World War 3

    “Let’s talk about a very dangerous event, an event that might in your lifetime happen here on planet earth,” says space scientist and YouTube star Anton Petrov. “I don’t want to scare you too much but this is something you should be familiar with. So let’s talk about this unusual event known as a geomagnetic storm. This event might cause World War 3. Here is why actually it is a very potential threat to our planet.”

    Anton Petrov, the host of a popular YouTube channel with nearly 600,000 subscribers and over 142 million video views, tells us in his latest video that we should all be very worried about a massive geomagnetic storm that will definitely happen in our lifetimes:

    EMP Will Annihilate Technology In Just A Few Hours

    What exactly are these geomagnetic storms and why are they so dangerous? You may have already heard of the so-called Carrington event that happened back in 1859. In a nutshell, it was such a powerful solar storm that even back then when we just started using the Telegraph for a first attempt at long-distance communication the actual paper that was used in the Telegraph was set on fire.

    This was an extremely powerful event that if it happened today would most likely have a huge impact on most of the modern technology. It would very likely wipe almost all of the data and destroy a lot of, if not all of, the devices that we have on the planet. They are not EMP protected or are not protected from the electromagnetic pulse. Some of the military technology might survive but most of the civilian technology will probably be completely annihilated within only a few hours.

    The Scary Part: CME Events Are Pretty Common

    Here is the scary part. There have been a lot of recent studies that decided to focus on trying to estimate how often such events occur. Even though the Carrington event happened about 150 years ago these events could have been a lot more common than we thought. For the past few months, I’ve been collecting a few papers on the subject to see what scientists have discovered in the last year or so.

    What exactly are these events and how do they even form? All of this starts on the surface of our Sun. Magnetic lines form on the Sun’s surface and these lines actually have a tendency to then snap. In other words, once in a while, these magnetic loops have a tendency to reconnect and this magnetic reconnection can then lead to a release of a tremendous amount of so-called coronal mass.

    Very Powerful CME Barely Missed Earth In 2012

    These CME events, or coronal mass ejection events, are pretty common. The Sun is essentially a sphere where they can go in any direction around the solar system. But once in a while, if we’re really unlucky, they will point at just the right direction at where Earth is going to be. In other words, when this CME is headed toward Earth it can, unfortunately, intersect with our planet and then cause a lot of disturbance on the surface.

    Interestingly, a few years ago in 2012, a very powerful CME occurred that was headed right at our planet but missed us by just a little bit. The so-called solar storm of 2012 could have been the next Carrington event had it crossed our planet but we got really lucky and it didn’t. It just missed us. Since then scientists have been very active at trying to establish how often these events occur and are trying to come up with some sort of a way of avoiding certain damage that will occur when they do come here. The problem today is that most of our technology is completely unprepared for this and because of our reliance on technology and the lack of these very powerful events we have so far been pretty lucky.

    Another very powerful event occurred back in 1989 in my home province of Quebec in Canada. I was too young to remember what exactly happened but according to my parents, it was a pretty serious event with essentially most of the province being completely in the dark because of the geomagnetic storm. It completely wiped the electric grid of the whole province. This event was so powerful that a very large Aurora was visible very far south, even in places like Florida. This very powerful event also had a lot of effect on various satellites. It also affected some of the computers that were already used back then.

    CME Event Could Look Like Start Of World War 3

    More terrifyingly, this event also caused a very large blackout of communications across the planet. This is actually one of the scariest parts of these geomagnetic storms. A typical CME would ionize our atmosphere so much that you would not be able to have any kind of electromagnetic communication anywhere. The radio communication would cease to operate. It could also lead to the failure of various cooling mechanisms inside nuclear reactors.

    This is actually one of the scarier parts. Imagine, you have no communication and all you nuclear technology is failing and satellites are either failing or are completely unresponsive. Well in some sense, this really looks like someone is about to start World War 3. I’m pretty sure that countries like China that are not even used to seeing this would panic completely. With a complete lack of communication and understanding of what’s happening a country might accidentally push that red button and start another world war.

    Telecommunications Could Be Wiped Out

    The effects of a typical CME don’t even end there. A typical CME would also affect our ozone layer, decreasing it quite dramatically. It would also significantly increase various types of radiation in the upper atmosphere, turning flying or being in space into a very dangerous endeavor. If you are in an airplane, if it doesn’t crash obviously, you might experience a tremendous amount of radiation that you would not experience otherwise.

    In the last decade, so much of the technology is essentially interdependent with telecommunication and with space technology. There are a lot more satellites today and a lot more rocket launches happening every year. All of this is in a sense a bubble that’s forming that could be completely wiped overnight by a CME which nobody is prepared for. The computers that we use, smartphones, and very likely all of our bank accounts would most likely not operate for at least a few days, possibly weeks, and possibly be completely wiped entirely.

    It’s Going To Happen A Lot Sooner Than You Think

    My hope lies in the idea that one day we will realize that it’s going to happen and start making things a little bit more EMP proof. It’s going to happen and possibly a lot sooner than you think. Some of the recent studies including one of the most comprehensive ones in the last few months decided to investigate the frequency of potential CMI’s and find out the average frequency for an extremely powerful storm.

    They found a perfect opportunity to study these at the Royal Observatory in Greenwich in England that’s been active for a very very long time with data of up to 150 years. Scientists also looked at another famous and active observatory in Melbourne, Australia that has a similar amount of data available. The most important thing about these two observatories is their location is actually antipodal. What this means is that they are almost exactly on the opposite sides of the earth.

    Scientists Expect A “Great Event” To Happen Every 25 Years

    By being on two opposite sides, it allows us to study the magnetic effects in a lot more detail and essentially create a very interesting and very accurate magnetic index of our planet. They refer to this as the aa index. By using this index, the scientists behind the paper identified several events in the last 150 years when the magnetic emissions coming from our Sun were a lot higher than they were otherwise. In other words, other potential Carrington like events.

    Unfortunately, what they discovered is that we can expect a great event to happen at least once every 25 years. However, a Carrington like event would only happen every 150 years or so. Such a great event would be only a little bit weaker than a typical Carrington like event suggesting that we might still have a few years in reserve before such an event occurs. But here’s the thing, even a great event would be enough to destroy and severely disrupt modern communication.

    A Great Event Should Occur In The Next 10 To 15 Years

    In the last few years, we’ve been really ignoring the fact that our Sun can be occasionally extremely active. As a matter of fact, in the last decade or so, our Sun basically spoiled us. The magnetic emissions and various solar emissions were so low that we almost forgot that it can even happen. Judging by their predictions, a great event should definitely occur in the next 10 to 15 years which is kind of troubling. Other similar studies confirm the results as well.

    There was another study from Japan that discovered a similar finding including identifying several events that we ignored simply because the technology just didn’t exist yet. There were several major events back in 1921 and in 1872 all which were comparable to a Carrington event as well. Interestingly, some of the scientists even started discovering these reports of solar storms from various archaeological evidence and by looking at the written records by advanced civilizations that lived in the past.

    Modern Technology Can Be Wiped Out By An EMP

    For example, the Assyrian civilization kept a very detailed analysis of everything including the night skies and they’ve had several observations of these very powerful electromagnetic storms that resulted in the Aurora which could only be explained as another CME event. In other words, human civilization has always experienced these events but back then it wasn’t really a big deal. Now it’s a much bigger deal.

    A lot of our modern civilization depends on the technology that can be completely wiped by a typical electromagnetic pulse. This is something that we definitely need to take seriously. More studies of our Sun are needed and we need to start thinking about how to protect our technology from a potential coronal mass ejection that could come our way and disrupt our life once and for all.

    Need To Prepare – EMP Event Could Happen Anytime

    Now today, we have several studies that do focus on trying to analyze the Sun and predict some of these emissions but we’re still not there yet. We need to have more satellites observing the Sun and more studies trying to understand how these CME’s work. Luckily, the Parker Solar Probe that’s slowly coming closer and closer to the Sun is going to provide a tremendous amount of data that will help us with this.

    But remember, these events happen really quickly. By the time that it occurs, it’s going to give us almost no time to prepare and to protect our technology. We need to be ready in advance. This, of course, includes creating technology that is ready for these events. It also includes trying to create satellites that will not fail if a CME occurs. Most importantly, modern banks need to have a lot of backup systems in order for all of us not to suddenly become bankrupt overnight.

    It’s also very important to just be aware that these events happen if suddenly you find yourself in a complete blackout and not being able to communicate with anyone. CME’s and events like the Carrington event do happen a lot more frequently than we initially thought. Most of the scientists agree that these events will definitely occur in our lifetime, possibly 10 years, maybe 15, but they could happen even sooner.

    CME Event Could Look Like Start Of World War 3 Says Anton Petrov

  • Scientist Warns of Possible Space Weather Disasters

    For the past few months the sun has been blasting out a series of massive solar flares. The behavior is in line with predictions for the current solar maximum – a period every 11 years when greater solar activity can be measured due to a shift in the sun’s magnetic poles.

    Though this year’s flares and coronal mass ejections (CMEs) haven’t put humanity’s satellite network at risk, some researchers believe that future space weather events could do just that.

    University of Colorado Space Physics Professor Daniel Baker this week gave a presentation at the 46th Annual Fall Meeting of the American Geophysical Union. The topic of the presentation was a warning to societies of the real dangers that intense space weather could cause. Using the example of a large solar ejection that missed Earth in 2012, Baker warned that a storm of that size that hits our planet could knock out satellites and power grids while putting astronauts in the International Space Station at risk.

    “My space weather colleagues believe that until we have an event that slams Earth and causes complete mayhem, policymakers are not going to pay attention,” said Baker. “The message we are trying to convey is that we made direct measurements of the 2012 event and saw the full consequences without going through a direct hit on our planet.”

    The 2012 CME that Baker refers to was the most powerful CME ever recorded with modern technology. The storm managed to reach the Earth’s surface in just 18 hours – less than half the time average CMEs take to reach the planet.

    “I liken it to war games — since we have the information about the event, let’s play it through our various models and see what happens,” said Baker. “If we do this, we would be a significant step closer to providing policymakers with real-world, concrete kinds of information that can be used to explore what would happen to various technologies on Earth and in orbit rather than waiting to be clobbered by a direct hit.”

    Baker also refers to solar events in 1859 and 1989 as signs of what could happen. The 1859 event, known as the Carrington storm, caused an aurora that could be seen from the Arctic to Central America and caused fires in telegraph offices. In 1989 a solar storm left millions of people in Quebec without power for hours.

    (Image courtesy NASA/SDO)

  • Comet ISON Moving Closer to Sun for Thanksgiving

    Many are preparing to draw closer together on Thanksgiving, and that includes space interaction as well. Comet ISON, which has more popularly been referred to as the “comet of the century” is currently continuing on the pathway to approach the sun’s vicinity. The closest encounter will be on November 28th, which just happens to also be Thanksgiving. The comet is anticipated to scrape close to the sun, just barely missing an impact by 730,000 miles. That may seem far, but is relatively close by space standards. There are present debates raging over whether the comet will sustain the energy force inherent from such a close encounter.

    Comet ISON even has an app, called Cometwatch, dedicated exclusively to potentially tracking the progress of the comet. Though the comet will draw closest on Thanksgiving day, stargazers may want to continue watching. Current estimations project that the comet will appear to be the most luminous in December. Comet ISON was discovered through the use of International Scientific Optical Network (ISON) by two relatively inexperienced Russian astronomers (Vitali Nevski and Artyom Novichonok) in September of 2012. The comet is officially named C/2012 S1 (ISON).

    According to Alan MacRobert, who is the senior editor for Sky & Telescope magazine, the comet may prove to be a glorious spectacular in the sky, or the event may be virtually almost unrecognizable. “We might witness a nice, long-tailed comet visible to the naked eye that will leave millions of people with fond memories for a lifetime. Or maybe it will be a small comet for sky hunters using binoculars and a good map of its position. Or it might yet break up and vanish,” he said.

    [Image Via Wikimedia Commons]

  • NASA Launches IRIS to Study Sun’s Atmosphere

    NASA Launches IRIS to Study Sun’s Atmosphere

    After being delayed for one day over a power outage at Vandenberg Air Force Base, NASA‘s Interface Region Imaging Spectrograph (IRIS) spacecraft was successfully launched on Thursday evening. The satellite will help researchers on Earth study the sun‘s lower atmosphere.

    “Congratulations to the entire team on the successful development and deployment of the IRIS mission,” said Gary Kushner, IRIS project manager at the Lockheed Martin Solar and Atmospheric Laboratory. “Now that IRIS is in orbit, we can begin our 30-day engineering checkout followed by a 30-day science checkout and calibration period.”

    Following its 60-day commissioning phase, IRIS will begin studying how the sun’s surface heats up and moves as it travels through its lower atmosphere. NASA stated that this region of the sun, located between the photosphere and corona, “powers” the solar atmosphere, producing solar wind and ultraviolet radiation. Researchers believe that researching this region can help to better predict solar weather, which can affect both Earth and its surrounding satellites.

    The IRIS was launched using a Pegasus XL rocket strapped to an Orbital L-1011 carrier aircraft. At 7:40 pm, at an altitude of 39,000 feet over the Pacific Ocean, the rocket was released from the plane and fired off into orbit. The launch can be seen in the video below, captured by NASA.

  • NASA Video Shows Sun’s Rise in Activity

    NASA Video Shows Sun’s Rise in Activity

    The sun. We see it nearly every day, and yet most of us spend a considerable amount of time trying to keep it out of our eyes or off our skin.

    NASA, on the other hand, has been staring straight into the sun for years now. The agency launched the Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) in 2010 to capture images of the sun, which it does every 12 seconds in 10 different wavelengths. Scientists are using the SDO to learn more about the sun and to improve predictions for solar flares and coronal mass ejections, which can affect satellites orbiting Earth.

    In the three years since its launch, the SDO has observed the sun as it ramps up to “solar maximum,” which is the peak of the star’s 11-year solar activity cycle. To demonstrate this increase in the sun’s activity, NASA this week released a video that puts together many of the images taken by the SDO. The time-lapsed video shows two images of the sun per day for three years. It also has some nice background music (“A Lady’s Errand of Love” by Martin Lass).

  • NASA Telescope Finds Evidence of Solar Braiding

    NASA Telescope Finds Evidence of Solar Braiding

    NASA this week announced that it has found the first clear evidence of energy transfer from the sun’s magnetic field to its corona. Called “solar braiding,” the process was only a theory until these new observations.

    The evidence comes from the highest resolution images of the sun‘s corona ever taken. The photos were taken by NASA’s High Resolution Coronal Imager (Hi-C) telescope.

    “Scientists have tried for decades to understand how the sun’s dynamic atmosphere is heated to millions of degrees,” said Jonathan Cirtain, Hi-C principal investigator and a heliophysicist at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center. “Because of the level of solar activity, we were able to clearly focus on an active sunspot, and obtain some remarkable images. Seeing this for the first time is a major advance in understanding how our sun continuously generates the vast amount of energy needed to heat its atmosphere.”

    Cirtain and his colleagues assert that the new findings could lead to better predictions for space weather, since the sun’s magnetic field drives solar eruptions that can reach the Earth and potentially disrupt satellites.

    The Hi-C telescope is a sub-orbital satellite that flew for only 10 minutes in July 2012. During that time, it took 165 photos of an active region of the sun’s corona. New optics grinding and surface polishing techniques were developed for the Hi-C’s mirrors. The telescope’s resolution is around five times that of the one aboard NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO), which already takes amazingly high-definition pictures of the sun.

    “The Hi-C observations are part of a technology demonstration that will enable a future generation of telescopes to solve the fundamental questions concerning the heating of the solar atmosphere and the origins of space weather, “said Jeffrey Newmark, sounding rocket program scientist at NASA Headquarters.

    (Image courtesy NASA)

  • NASA Shows Off Its 4K Sun Images

    NASA Shows Off Its 4K Sun Images

    There’s a cost associated with being an early adopter, and it’s not just the higher prices. New media formats consistently outpace the rate at which content creators can adapt to the new formats. As a result, early adopters pay exorbitant sums for tech to display boring demo footage for months before ESPN finally updates its broadcast technology, which happens coincide with the release of the second, better generation of devices.

    With HDTV, customers were often left watching nature footage and landscapes. With the 4K TV revolution just starting, TV manufacturers are going to need some content that shows customers what they’re missing with their crappy 1080p displays. Luckily, NASA has a suggestion.

    Astronomers at NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) for some time have been using an Atmospheric Imaging Assembly (AIA) and Helioseismic Magnetic Imager (HMI) to take ultra high-definition images twice as large as anything seen on the displays at this year’s Consumer Electronics Show (CES). Every second.

    As of last month, the SDO had taken 100 million images. NASA bragged that if they were watched at 30 frame sper second there would be enough footage to watch eight hours a day for nearly four months. That’s a lot of staring at the sun.

    It’s unclear whether NASA is actually promising 4K content for showrooms or whether the agency just used the excuse of CES to show off its SDO photos. Either way, more SDO images and video, mostly of solar eruptions and flares, can be found on NASA’s SDO website.

    (Image courtesy NASA/GSFC/SDO)

  • Solar Eruption Rang in the New Year, Shows NASA Video

    While people across the world were celebrating or preparing to celebrate the arrival of the year 2013, the sun was putting on a New Year’s show of its own.

    On December 31, a massive solar eruption twisted up from the surface of the sun, propelled by swirling magnetic forces. The eruption extended around 160,000 miles out from the surface of the sun, or 20 times the diameter of the Earth. It lasted from 10:20 am to 2:20 pm EST.

    Luckily for fans of space images, NASA‘s Solar Dynamic Observatory was not on holiday. The observatory caught the event in ultraviolet light. The video below shows the event from its explosive beginning to its serene finale, when wisps of plasma “gently” fell back to the sun’s surface. Every image in the video is 36 seconds apart.

    (Image and video courtesy NASA/SDO/Steele Hill)

  • Close Star Could Have up to Five Planets

    A new study by an international team of scientists has discovered that the star Tau Ceti may have five planets orbiting it. Tau Ceti is the 20th closest star to the sun, and the nearest star to have sun-like properties. The star has the same spectral classification as the sun, with a mass 78% that of the sun’s. It lies only about 12 light-years from Earth.

    The study, published in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics, estimates that the five planets have masses between two and six times that of Earth. This makes it the lowest-mass planetary system yet discovered. One of the planets, with a mass of about five times that of Earth, lies in the habitable zone of the Tau Ceti system, the smallest planet yet found in the habitable zone of a sun-like star.

    The habitable zone of a star is defined as the area around a star where a planet could have liquid water on its surface. Just because a planet lies in the habitable zone of a system doesn’t mean it is Earth-like, however. Both Mars and Venus are within the habitable zone of our solar system, though their atmospheres don’t allow for liquid water.

    “We are now glimpsing for the first time the secrets of our nearest companion stars and their previously hidden reservoirs of potentially habitable planets,” said Paul Butler, an astronomer at the Carnegie Institution for Science. “This work presages the time when we will be able to directly see these planets, and search them for water, carbon dioxide, methane, and other signposts of life.”

    Astronomers used a new technique to detect the planets, applying “intensive” modeling to data collected from over 6,000 observations of Tau Ceti. The research team was able to find signals half the size of what was previously possible, increasing the sensitivity of small planet searches and discovering Tau Ceti’s satellites.

    “We pioneered new data modeling techniques by adding artificial signals to the data and testing our recovery of the signals with a variety of different approaches,” said Mikko Tuomi, who led the team from the University of Hertfordshire. “This significantly improved our noise modeling techniques and increased our sensitivity to find low mass planets.”

    Tau Ceti was chosen, say the astronomers, because it was though Tau Ceti had no planets and would be a good benchmark for the new technique. The researchers suggest that due to Tau Ceti’s close proximity, the atmospheres of the newly discovered planets could be analyzed in the near future.

  • Massive Solar Eruption Spotted by NASA Observatory

    NASA announced this week that a coronal mass ejection (CME) erupted on the sun early Tuesday morning. The phenomenon can send solar particles flying into space, some of which can affect electronic systems in satellites orbiting Earth. The particles can reach Earth one to four days after the eruption.

    A CME is not a solar flare, and occurs when the solar atmosphere confined where magnetic fields are closed releases bubbles of gas and magnetic fields. The one spotted this week erupted from the sun as speeds of 450 miles per second, which NASA stated is slow to average for a CME. The eruption was seen by the Solar Terrestrial Relations Observatory (STEREO) spacecraft.

    CME’s can also create a geomagnetic storm, which occurs when a CME interacts with the Earth’s magnetic field in a certain way, causing solar wind particles to hit the atmosphere over the poles. This causes a rapid drop in the Earth’s magnetic field strength, which lasts for around six to twelve hours.

    NASA stated that CMEs of the type seen this week “have not usually caused substantial geomagnetic storms.” They have, though, put on a light show with auroras near the Earth’s poles. NASA predicts that this week’s CME is “unlikely to cause disruptions to electrical systems on Earth or interfere with GPS or satellite-based communications systems.” The National Weather Service’s Space Weather Prediction Center currently predicts a relatively minor geomagnetic storm on Wednesday, with possible weak power grid fluctuations.

    (Image courtesy NASA/STEREO)

  • UFO By The Sun Gets More Proof It’s Real

    Two weeks ago I reported on a story about the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) spotting a possible UFO next to the Sun. NASA, as usual, blamed it on some smudge, or left over cosmic rays that leave a streak in an image. Youtube user rob19791 has a much different idea about whats going on and he has some video to try to prove his accusations.

    This guys main contention is that when Nathan Rich, lead ground systems engineer in the NRL’s solar physics branch said that “The streaks in question are consistent with energetic particle (proton) impacts on the CCD, something which is apparent in just about every image.” It can’t be true due to the length of the sighting. The object which, if real, is approximately the size of planet Earth, seems to be in orbit around the sun.

    Now this is where it gets interesting. After this video went semi-viral, SOHO went offline. NASA had this to say:

    “SOHO went into ‘Emergency Sun Reacquisition’ mode on Friday May 4, 2012, caused by a false trigger of the Coarse Sun Pointing Attitude Anomaly Detector. We are working on the recovery of the spacecraft to normal mode.”

    Did the satellite really go down? Or was it taken down until they can figure out what that massive thing is? Doesn’t NASA understand that when they do this kind of thing, it raises questions?

  • “Deathstar”-Like Object Discovered Near Sun

    A NASA video showing a mysterious black spherical object hovering near the sun has set off a firestorm of web speculation this week, prompting guesses as to how it was formed and where it came from. Of course, the resemblance to the Deathstar is only coincidental, but many people are wondering if perhaps it isn’t something from another planet/universe rather than something that is easily explained.

    The object in question appears to be black in color and is perfectly round, with a long “twister tail” which connects it to the sun. According to TheWest.com, NASA claims that there is a very reasonable explanation for the anomaly: it appears to be a filiment, which is a “large, bright feature extending outward from the Sun’s surface. [Filaments] are anchored to the Sun’s surface in the photosphere, and extend outwards into the Sun’s hot outer atmosphere, called the corona.”

    One thing that remains a mystery even to NASA scientists, however, is why the sphere is cooler than the sun’s energy, which is why it appears so dark in relation to the sun. Also, it is strange for a filiment to retain such a distinct shape. Normally, they are formed by a violent burst of energy rather than a controlled form such as a sphere.

    Occasionally word will spread of strange things found by NASA and speculation as to what they might be varies wildly, but there is always an explanation behind it. However, the fact that NASA is being vague about what this could be is more than enough to keep people guessing…and hoping.

    (image)@stoolpresidente
    David Portnoy    New Post: I Want This Deathstar To Be Real So Bad I Can Taste It – Dailymail – An orbiting Nasa space telescope capt – http://t.co/4ghC2cLU(image) 4 hours ago via Barstool Sports ·  Reply ·  Retweet ·  Favorite · powered by @socialditto

    NASA, who recently changed their successful Tweetup program to NASA Social, has almost 2 million followers on Twitter. That’s a lot of speculation.

  • Solar Storm 2012 Not So Bad: No Power Outages Yet Reported

    We warned you yesterday of a coming solar storm, one of the largest to hit Earth in several years. Some forecasters predicted that the storm–about 10 times more powerful than the solar winds that usually reach us–could cause power outages and disrupt satellites and other technologies, as well as increase the frequency and visibility of the Northern Lights. So far so good, though. Officials have not reported any problems since the storm reached our planet at about 6 o’clock this morning, EST.

    The earth got lucky, absorbing the brunt of the solar winds along its northern axis. “If it had been southern,” reports the Associated Press, “that would have caused the most damaging technological disruption and biggest auroras.”

    The lack of power outages may be subject to change, though. “We’re not out of the woods,” National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration scientist Joe Kunches told the AP. “It was a good start. If I’m a power grid, I’m really happy so far.” The sun still has a bit left in it, and if the earth’s orientation to the winds shifts later, we could still encounter some disruption today.

    Until then, though, we’ll keep writing. And if the storm does happen to disrupt your power, your communication, or your chi flow, let us know once the power’s back on.

  • Sun Covering Up its Page 3 Girls for Apple?

    Yesterday, the Sun’s iPad app made headlines because it was reportedly somehow able to sneak nudity past Apple’s app approval process, which is notoriously strict (even with cartoon nudity). This led to speculation around the blogosphere that Apple would make exceptions for newspapers when it comes to nudity.

    Page 3 Girls from The SunAfter reaching out to the Sun, Lorraine Goode with Sun Online tells WebProNews, "Please note the page 3 women will be wearing a bikini. There isn’t any nudity."

    As reports have shown, there has in fact been nudity, so I take this to mean that this will cease.

    Apple has been heavily criticized for having a puritanical double standard. Reports indicated that Apple had eliminated apps containing women in bikinis and even workout clothes in the past. It had even axed an app for a beachwear retailer that sells bikinis, though it later reinstated it. Meanwhile, apps from publications like Playboy and FHM, as well as the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue were allowed to remain. The Sun, apparently belongs alongside these publications.

    Granted, there is much more content to The Sun, than this questionable section. People for the most part don’t appear to be upset that such an app is allowed in the App Store, but that Apple seems to have a double standard when it comes to this type of content.

  • Oracle’s Sun Microsystems Acquisition Approved by EU

    Update: The European Commission has reportedly approved Oracle’s acquisition of Sun Microsystems. Now the deal only needs approval from Chinese and Russian regulators.

    Original Article:     Oracle is acquiring Sun Microsystems for $7.4 billion in cash at a rate of $9.50 per share in cash.

    Safra Catz"We expect this acquisition to be accretive to Oracle’s earnings by at least 15 cents on a non-GAAP basis in the first full year after closing," Oracle President Safra Catz said in a statement. "We estimate that the acquired business will contribute over $1.5 billion to Oracle’s non-GAAP operating profit in the first year, increasing to over $2 billion in the second year. This would make the Sun acquisition more profitable in per share contribution in the first year than we had planned for the acquisitions of BEA, PeopleSoft and Siebel combined."

    The two companies have long been partners – for over 20 years as Sun Chairman Scott McNealy pointed out. And now Oracle will own Java and Solaris.

    Jonathan Schwartz"This is a fantastic day for Sun’s customers, developers, partners and employees across the globe, joining forces with the global leader in enterprise software to drive innovation and value across every aspect of the technology marketplace," said Sun CEO Jonathan Schwartz.

    "From the Java platform touching nearly every business system on earth, powering billions of consumers on mobile handsets and consumer electronics, to the convergence of storage, networking and computing driven by the Solaris operating system and Sun’s SPARC and x64 systems," he added. "Together with Oracle, we’ll drive the innovation pipeline to create compelling value to our customer base and the marketplace."

    The acquisition is expected to close sometime this summer. Sun’s board of directors has unanimously approved it.