Year 2012 -satya/dwapara Yuga

[Guest]

Raju,

Those CMEs flares etc are not a cause for worry as long as earth's magnetosphere remains intact. Earth has faced many direct hits with large CMEs and a person on ground perhaps merely noticed his TV channels becoming noisy. To date worst impacts have only caused some power outages and possibly some satellite damage due to EMP kind of effect.

The speed of CME/flare plasma seems daunting, but they are extremely dilute when they hit earth's magnetosphere. Those charged particles don't much penetrate earth's magnetosphere and are sent spiralling down earth's magnetic field lines creating aurorae. The x-rays, UV rays gamma rays etc also get absorbed or scattered. Thats why astronauts in earth orbit are safe from flares, while those outside the magnetosphere, say on moon could be in danger when facing a flare.

Also that picture from BBC is not correct. A typical CME expands to about 2000-4000 times earth size when it hits earth's magnetosphere. And it primarily just wraps around the magnetosphere and goes away. Magnetosphere just gets hammered and distorted causing a geo-magnetic storm, but not much lasting damage is done.