The internet is buzzing with 2012 doomsday predictions, but an expert at Nasa has blown a hole in at least one of the scenarios - that a giant solar flare will fry Earth and all things on it.
Dr Alex Young, a heliophysicist at Nasa's Goddard Space Flight Center, said we don't need to worry about the sun for another few billion years - and certainly not in 2012.
He said: 'We understand the sun well enough, with all the technology and all the science - and all of the many spacecraft we have that are monitoring it 24 hours a day, seven days a week - to know that this super storm that is going to wipe out the earth simply isn't going to happen.'
Sun king: Heliophysicist Dr Alex Young says dire warnings of a killer solar flare are exaggerated, saying 'this super storm that is going to wipe out the earth simply isn't going to happen'
He said that, apart from a nasty skin burn on a hot summer's day, there was very little to fear from our 'active star'. There simply isn’t enough energy in the sun to send a killer fireball 93 million miles to destroy Earth.
And, while solar flares and coronal mass ejections are currently increasing on the surface of the sun, this is a normal cycle.
Indeed, anyone over 11 years of age has already lived through at least one of these cycles.
Dr Young said: 'This up-and-coming solar cycle, roughly 2014, is not really going to be significantly different to the next one and the next one, or the previous one.
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