About S. K. Sloan
Samuel K. Sloan's love of Star Trek brought him to Slice of SciFi, where he was Managing Editor from 2005-2011, and returned from 2013-2014 before retiring once again from scifi news gathering.
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Ah, the expert anchor at Fox is comparing the sun magnetic emissions to Y2K . . .
. . .should we really worry? Aren’t solar flares are like programming errors? Just because scientists are worried, can we really trust them? Sure, we’ve had two major failures of the power grid in the last 20 years which were directly attributable to solar flares, but since nothing happened on January 1, 2000 . . .
Yes we should worry, I think, but not panic. We have to hope for the best, but prepare for the worst. Better safe than sorry.
By the way, “Doomsday Scenario” in the title is greatly exagerated. This won’t be the end of the world…
Actually, except for the sun going nova, the world is likely not to end for at least another 6 billion years…but, there will be plenty of “end of the world as we know it” scenarios to come along until our sun finally burns its last.
What a dick (the host, not Dr. Kaku). “You can knock out my Blackberry…”. Idiot.
Add that lining up with the galactic center in the same year could play hell with a lot of stuff. Or not. We’ll see in 2012.
Given that scientists haven’t talked much about the issue of solar flares when the earths magnetic field flips (a process they reckon will take decades and create several polar funnels for solar radiation) I can’t see this being as big a disaster as they are trying to make out.
Maybe Mr Murdoch has just bought a load of shares in back up storage companies, dunno!
As for Doomsday, clearly only for the anchor, who feels he needs to let everyone know that he’s got a blackberry coz it clearly makes him special!
I think it’s a load of crap, but probably true, who the hell knows?
As far as the comparison between Y2K and the 2012 solar flare, they’re both considered “doomsday-ish scenarios,” but beyond that have nothing to do with each other. Part of the Y2K deal was that people believed that computers would screw up simply because it was not known if the programming in the computers would actually accept the “1” in “1999” changing to a “2” in “2000.” But back to real discussion and not correcting people who don’t know what they’re talking about 🙂 Our economy, communications infrastructure, and many other things our species uses on a daily basis (and for important information and work) is largely linked to satellites and the power-grids. If they are eliminated, even for a few hours or days, it could have catastrophic effects on our day to day living for weeks and potentially harm is in countless other (albeit, improbable and unlikely) ways. Do what you will, believe what you do, but come 2012 if you’re not prepared you are increasing your level of risk against the probably of the risk. If nothing happens, then everybody’s fine — if something happens, then those who prepared are the ones who receive the dividends of their work.
Obviously y’all haven’t seen the movie 2012. Earthquakes galore. Vocanoes erupting everywhere. Waves higher than Mt. Everest. We’re doomed I tell you, doomed…