Dr. Lopez, a Distinguished Professor at the University of Texas El Paso and author of "Storms from the Sun," explains how solar flares and coronal mass ejections threaten satellites, airline passengers flying polar routes, and even cell phone communications. He details the unusual double peak of the current solar cycle and discusses the connection between solar magnetic activity and Earth's climate, referencing the Maunder Minimum and its correlation with the Little Ice Age.
The conversation turns to the risks facing future manned missions to Mars, where astronauts would have no atmospheric or magnetic field protection from radiation. Art and Dr. Lopez also examine Earth's weakening and wandering magnetic field, the possibility of a pole reversal, and whether increased solar output may be contributing to observed global warming alongside human activity.
Key Moments
Hoagland's two-hour NASA call: Richard C. Hoagland reports a two-hour conference call with NASA's Mars Exploration head scientist Dr. Jim Garvin, prompted by Peter Gersten's threatened lawsuit over unfulfilled Cydonia imaging requests.
Brookings Report and the chilling effect: Hoagland says Garvin acknowledged that pre-emptively telling scientists what they can or cannot talk about has a 'chilling effect' on the entire process, framing the anomalist community as a voice that must now be included in NASA's dialogue.
The sun has legs: a giant prominence: Solar physicist Dr. Ramon Lopez describes the spectacular July 1, 2002 prominence captured by SOHO at the L1 Lagrange point - a fiery extrusion roughly the size of dozens of Earths erupting off the limb of the sun.
The 1859 Carrington event and aviation radiation: Lopez recalls the March 31, 2001 X-flare that went off-scale and forced recalibration, then the 1859 'doozy' that drove auroras down to Havana, Cuba - and warns that pilots and flight attendants accumulate enough radiation that the EU now caps annual exposure.