Special: Technology Tuesdays (on Wednesday): Defending against the Sun - Both Beautiful and Terrifying

Watch the movies 2012 and Knowing and you may just be thinking, "Haven't I seen this before?"

You're right.  You have.

Whether it's in the year 2012 or through (spoiler alert) advanced knowledge from other worldly beings, both movies say that the earth will perish thanks to the fiery flames of the sun - and this is meant literally.  Both movies say that violent eruptions from the Sun, a.k.a solar flares, will come speeding to Earth at alarming speeds and without warning and will destroy us all.

Rather than "Haven't I seen this before?" the perhaps better question to ask would be "How do we prevent solar flares from wreaking havoc on Earth?"

                                      A gigantic solar flare about to come right to Earth, but Earth's natual magnetic field protects us from the flare's destructive power all the time....we hope.  Image from a Montana State University article

Well, we are technologically sophisticated, but not enough to capture a solar flare when it leaves the sun and redirect to another part of space, but we do have a plan.

There is a space.com article from last month about NASA's new project aptly named "Solar Shield" that is aimed at giving power companies on Earth a warning of when a coronal mass ejection (the solar flare) will come slamming into Earth.  The warning is usually given a day or two in advance of actual impact.

The point of this early warning detection system is to limit the amount of damage done AFTER the solar flare ejects from the surface of the sun.  We cannot stop a solar flare from occurring in the first place, and we cannot stop a huge solar flare from destroying the earth, but we CAN limit the damage done by a certain sized solar flare that isn't big enough to wipe us all out.

This is extremely important and the Solar Shield project should get more praise and attention and media coverage.  This is not to say that a flare will happen any day now, but the more attention that comes the way of this project, the more the project will be pressured to be effective, and the less likely it will be that once a solar flare comes, power companies will be powerless to save power grids around the world that supply power to our cell phones, televisions, gas stations, airports, schools, hospitals, computers, supermarkets and just about every other thing you take for granted in life.  After all, technology and the power to supply it is what our society is literally built on today.

Take that away from us and we will be living the lives of those in 2012 and Knowing after the screen fades to black and the credits start rolling.  What's that?  You don't know what happens to the people after the screen goes dark?  Yeah, me neither.