On April 8, a front page article was published in the Wall Street Journal on the dangers posed by cyberspies to the U.S. electrical grid. According to senior intelligence officers who spoke with the Journal, “Cyberspies have penetrated the U.S. electrical grid and left behind software programs that could be used to disrupt the system.” No action has been taken so far to disrupt the electrical grid by China, Russia and other involved countries. In a time of war or national crisis, however, the electrical grid could be severely disrupted by foreign entities disrupting the electrical grid through the internet. The possibility of cyber attacks is considered very real by some sources. Missing entirely from the Wall Street Journal article, however, was any mention of a more likely threat to the electrical grid. A threat that led a prestigious panel of scientists with the National Research Council issuing a report in January 2009 warning of a catastrophic electrical grid failure – giant solar storms around 2012..

We have been contacted by the wife of an electrical engineer who has been officially briefed about a serious major threat to infrastructure in a few years' time. We believe this information is credible and important but the contact may now have been lost. Therefore we are publishing what we have - with many questions unanswered.

La agencia espacial estadounidense NASA detectó que el Sol ha entrado en un extraño proceso de quietud, con una ausencia de manchas en su superficie, y de intensidad en las llamaradas y las tormentas, según informa en su página web. La NASA había indicado en septiembre pasado que la presión promedio del viento solar -el torrente de partículas cargadas que embate la atmósfera terrestre y empuja los rayos cósmicos hacia los lindes del sistema planetaria- había caído un 20 por ciento desde mediados de la década de 1990. El astrónomo alemán Heinrich Schwabe determinó a mediados del siglo XIX que los ciclos se cumplían con bastante regularidad cada 11 años, y eso ha continuado así durante más de 200 años. Pero este año las bajas han sido tan persistentes como las del mercado de valores. Y aunque los expertos creían que se había tocado fondo en 2008, las gráficas han seguido cayendo. En todo el año 2008 no se observaron manchas solares durante 266 días, esto es el 73 por ciento del período, y por ello los expertos creyeron que el ciclo tocaba fondo y empezaría a reactivarse.

ASTRONOMÍA. Científicos norteamericanos advirtieron hace poco que el globo terráqueo sufriría en 2012 una poderosa tormenta solar, cuya capacidad devastadora sería mucho mayor a la que tuvo el huracán Katrina, y ningún ser humano se escaparía apenas a su impacto catastrófico. A medianoche del 22 de septiembre de 2012 aparecería un telón óptico colorido en el cielo sobre Manhattan, en Nueva York, Estados Unidos. En la región sureña como esta ciudad, pocas personas podrían ver este fenómeno fascinante de aurora polar. Sin embargo, el sentimiento agradable de la gente, generado de la contemplación de esta escena maravillosa, no duraría mucho, pues varios segundos después los focos eléctricos de esta zona empezarían a oscurecer y centellear y, de repente, volver a relucir de manera extraordinariamente brillante. Acto seguido, sucedería un apagón general.

Long scorned as “mysticism” and “parascience,” concern about the year 2012 has now surfaced in a mainstream NASA report on the potential impacts on human society of solar flares anticipated to peak in 2012.  The Obama administration and other national governments are not aggressively focused on contingency preparations for the 2012 solar flare impacts, or on introducing available anti-gravitic, new energy sources that would transform centralized high-power electrical grid systems into de-centralized, anti-gravitic and quantum process energy sources.  These new energy sources are less vulnerable to destructive solar storms, have no negative environmental impact, and could unleash unprecedented economic and social transformation.

A report issued by the National Research Council (NRC) in January 2009 has warned of the far reaching consequences of a solar storm hitting the Earth as the sun becomes more active during solar cycle 24 which began in 2008 and peaks around 2012. A March 23 article in the New Scientist discussed the significance of the NRC report which details how a solar storm could wipe out the electrical power grid causing massive disruption in the U.S. and around the planet.  The impact of the plasma energy directly bombarding the Earth during a solar storm could lead to electrical power stations being off line for weeks and months at a time, as overworked workers try to repair badly damaged electrical equipment. According to the NRC report, this would lead to “disruption of the transportation, communication, banking, and finance systems, and government services; the breakdown of the distribution of potable water owing to pump failure; and the loss of perishable foods and medications because of lack of refrigeration.” Imagine life without running water from a tap, no refrigeration for storing food, gas for your car, or mass transit due to the power grid being off line for months. Millions of Americans could subsequently die in such a scenario described by Michael Brooks author of the New Scientist article, “Space storm alert: 90 seconds from catastrophe.” Such disturbing scenarios are very possible according to the National Research Council report. Now is the right time for bold action to replace the outdated electrical power grid with a decentralized form of fuelless or 'new energy' generators that can be mass produced for homes, small businesses and essential services.

Surely the sun couldn't create so profound a disaster on Earth. Yet an extraordinary report funded by NASA and issued by the US National Academy of Sciences (NAS) in January this year claims it could do just that. Over the last few decades, western civilisations have busily sown the seeds of their own destruction. Our modern way of life, with its reliance on technology, has unwittingly exposed us to an extraordinary danger: plasma balls spewed from the surface of the sun could wipe out our power grids, with catastrophic consequences. The projections of just how catastrophic make chilling reading. "We're moving closer and closer to the edge of a possible disaster," says Daniel Baker, a space weather expert based at the University of Colorado in Boulder, and chair of the NAS committee responsible for the report.

The European Space Agency (ESA) and NASA today announced their preliminary selections for the instruments that will fly aboard ESA's forthcoming Solar Orbiter satellite, which will orbit the sun closer than ever before. The satellite, sometimes known as SOLO, will keep tabs on the sun and the space weather it creates from a cozy position next to our star—inside the orbit of Mercury and less than one-fourth the distance from Earth to the sun. (By comparison, NASA and ESA's currently operating Solar and Heliospheric Observatory, or SOHO, is positioned much farther out—roughly 99 percent of the way from the sun to Earth.) SOLO will also provide a rare glimpse of the polar regions of the sun.

Un reciente informe (un dossier de 145 páginas) realizado para la NASA y la ESA a traves de la Academia Nacional de Ciencias de EE.UU. corrobora las apocalipticas predicciones para el año 2012. El informe dice que se espera para el 2012 una tormenta solar que dara al traste con todos los sistemas vivos en la Tierra.

U.S. scientists worry we aren't ready for a solar space storm that could knock out our electricity, our cell phones, even our water supply. The chances of that happening are small, but it is a possibility as we move into an active period of solar storms. How do they know? Well, it's happened before. Back in 1859, a solar eruption resulted in telegraph wires burning up.

La noticia esta confirmada: el Mínimo Solar ha llegado. Las manchas solares han desaparecido. No hay llamaradas solares. El Sol se encuentra tranquilo. Como la calma antes de la tormenta. Esta semana un grupo de investigadores anunció que una tormenta viene en camino —la más intensa durante un mínimo solar en cincuenta años. La predicción fue hecha por el equipo dirigido por Mausumi Dikpati del Centro Nacional de Investigaciones Atmosféricas (National Center for Atmospheric Research ó NCAR). "El siguiente ciclo solar será de un 30 a un 50% más intenso que el anterior", dice ella. Si esto es correcto, en los próximos años se producirá un estallido de actividad solar apenas menor que el del histórico máximo solar de 1958.

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.