Sun surges: Yet another apocalypic theory to worry about - Environment - Macleans.ca

Sun surges: Yet another apocalypic theory to worry about - Environment - Macleans.ca: "Every 11 years, for reasons that aren’t completely understood, our sun hits what’s called its solar maximum: an especially active period when sun spots, solar flares and “coronal mass ejections—these clouds of plasma that flow out of the sun at millions of kilometres an hour,” as astronomer Sten Odenwald puts it, are more likely to occur. The resulting streams of particles and pulses of electromagnetic energy create what’s called space weather, which can have all sorts of impacts here, throwing the Earth’s magnetic field into disarray and disrupting everything from GPS systems to the power grid. We’re now coming out of a quiet period for the sun, as it wakes up and moves toward the next solar maximum, expected in 2013, and experts say we should be preparing for the worst."