HERE COMES THE SUN?

There has been a growing panic online for the last several days about the closure of the National Solar Observatory in Sunspot, New Mexico, by the FBI. On Thursday of last week the observatory was evacuated and the town’s post office shut down. A Blackhawk helicopter swooped in, FBI agents occupied the compound and began checking antennas. The local police force has not been informed what is going on and has been ordered to remain outside the perimeter.

The first I learned of it was on Reddit’s conspiracy sub, which I frequently read as it’s an incubator for Russian disinformation. A subscriber made a post claiming a “friend” at the observatory called him to warn that the sun had just burped out a large Coronal Mass Ejection headed for Earth, which would begin reaching us this week and likely burn us to death and boil the oceans.  The poster claimed the FBI swooped in to prevent the information from getting out and causing mass panic. As my last science class was high school physics, I did a bit of research and found his predicted outcome impossible. I did, however, check the space weather forecast and found there was a CME on September 7th that would begin impacting our atmosphere as a G2 solar storm beginning on September 11th. If you live in the Northern latitudes, you were lucky enough to have seen the Northern Lights as the CME impacted our ozone layer Monday and Tuesday night.

The FBI has not told local law enforcement the reason for the closure of the observatory and post office or when either would be reopened. The story migrated from the conspiracy subreddit to the front page of the news subreddit, where it is ranked as the number five story this morning. Adding to the story’s juiciness, the EU space weather sites, as well as those in China and Russia went down yesterday, which has a few people in a panic that the original poster might be onto something. My advice is don’t sweat it, we aren’t about to be burned off the Earth, at least not by a CME.

What I find interesting about the story is the other sites being temporarily knocked off the internet, which I believe was deliberate and related to hacking, not covering up an apocalyptic event. This is in line with Russian attempts to confuse and frighten the American public with disinformation. Some of you may recall a minor internet panic that the world was about to end last autumn as the stars supposedly aligned with some Bible verses from the Book of Revelations. Both incidents were of course dutifully reported by the British tabloids (Sun and Mirror) and faithfully linked by the Drudge report to scare the bejeezus out of the scientifically illiterate mass of Republican voters. You may also notice that both incidents came out as the Trump/Russia investigation heated up, probably as a means of distraction and to reinforce the narrative that Trump is somehow a god-like figure from the End Times, as some of the twisted religious figures around him proclaim.

Doomsday coverups are not part of the FBI mission; however, the FBI is in charge of domestic counter intelligence. You might have read that we have a problem with Chinese and Russian spies in the United States. The observatory in Sunspot literally overlooks Holloman Air Force Base and the White Sands Missile Range. Thus, the reports from El Paso’s KVIA-TV that the FBI inspected the antennae at the National Solar Observatory would seem to indicate that we are looking at an espionage investigation and not the end of the world. Why the secrecy? Because the FBI doesn’t comment on ongoing investigations. So chill, you aren’t going to die tomorrow, at least not from a Coronal Mass Ejection.

That said, the U.S. is woefully unprepared for a solar storm on par with the 1859 Carrington Event.  The 1859 solar storm was so powerful it knocked out power lines and burned the fingers of telegraph operators. If such an event were to happen today, it would knock out our grid, frying generators and plunging us into darkness, much like an EMP attack. Such an event would lead to mass casualties as our civilization is wholly reliant on electricity. The likelihood of such an event in our future is a near certainty but it is possible to defend against it by hardening our grid and generators with Faraday cages.  Such a defense would cost money but certainly much less than we gave away to the rich in the form of tax cuts this year.

If something like the Carrington Event or an EMP attack concerns you (and it should), write or call your Congressperson and demand they do something about it – their job is to allocate resources for our defense.  Our brain-dead Congress can be voted out of office but the sun is here to stay for the next 5 billion years.

Here Comes The Sun – The Beatles