Tuesday becomes fry day: Solar Tsunami coming

Again is BuckBokai ducking the strict science-fiction sports paradigm, but since this may be the final missive before huge swathes of the interwebs go down today, I figured you deserved some warning of the incoming tsunami.

That’s solar tsunami, boys and girls, a gen-yoo-ein coronal mass ejection that’s targeted directly at Earth. It seems that this weekend, some partying astronomers notices a little Earth-sized sunspot on the sun which proceeded to unleash a massive solar flare aimed directly at … well, us.

According to Andrew Hough over at the Telegraph – British telecommunications could be particularly screwed, by the way; where’s the Doctor when you need him? – something hot is coming:

Images from the SDO hint at a shock wave travelling from the flare into space, the New Scientist reported.

Experts said the wave of supercharged gas will likely reach the Earth on Tuesday, when it will buffet the natural magnetic shield protecting Earth.

It is likely to spark spectacular displays of the aurora, or northern and southern lights.

“This eruption is directed right at us,” said Leon Golub of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.

The Telegraph went on to note:

Scientists have warned that a really big solar eruption could destroy satellites and wreck power and communications grids around the globe if it happened today.

NASA recently warned that Britain could face widespread power blackouts and be left without critical communication signals for long periods of time, after the earth is hit by a once-in-a-generation “space storm”.

BuckBokai supposes that this means should you go outside today for a game of blernsball or whatever, put on the sunscreen. SPF 50,000 or so should do it.

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