Earths Thermosphere Suffers Large Collapse, dang!

[James Bond]

http://gizmodo.com/5588968/earths-upper-atmosphere-suffers-record-collapse

Well, this doesn't sound good: NASA just announced that the Earth's thermosphere, an upper layer of the atmosphere, collapsed. It's the biggest contraction in 43 years and scientists have no idea what's going on. I don't feel safe anymore.

John Emmert, lead author of the paper that announced the finding, reassures all of us with:

"Something is going on that we do not understand"
Apparently, thermosphere collapses do happen every so often, especially during periods of solar inactivity. But the magnitude of the collapse is what puzzles scientists, since it's two to three times greater than any sort of explainable activity.

The thermosphere is pretty far away from us, closer to where Earth meets space, so it's not exactly time to panic but when science can't explain it, I can't help myself. The world is so ending in 2012. [Space via MSNBC]

 

[Locut0s]

Umm all this means is that the thermosphere's volume greatly contracted. They don't know the exact reason for it but it's not thought to be any type of catastrophy or anything. They know that the thermosphere contracts greatly during solar minimums, and we are in a particularly strong one now. They can't explain all of it and some have theorized that CO2 may be playing a role.

 

[dank69]

Incoming Nemesis post in 3...2...1...

 

[FelixDeCat]

The sky is falling?

 

[James Bond]

The MSNBC article is a lot more thorough and less fear provoking

 

[TXHokie]

Shields are failing!!! Take evasive action!

 

[Squisher]

They say it happens during solar inactivity and all I've been reading about lately with regards to solar activity is that it is more inactive than it's ever been. I'm surprised that they're surprised.

 

[dainthomas]

They say it happens during solar inactivity and all I've been reading about lately with regards to solar activity is that it is more inactive than it's ever been. I'm surprised that they're surprised.

The part blaming CO2 explains it all. This will be used as yet another justification for the scam that will tank the economy.

 

[zinfamous]

The sky is falling?

I don't know how we can conclude anything else from this!
D:

 

[DesiPower]

2012 baby!! yay!!

 

[SlitheryDee]

Solar inactivity? I thought we were blaming increased solar activity for global warming a while back? Or is solar activity independent from solar radiation?

 

[Jeff7]

They say it happens during solar inactivity and all I've been reading about lately with regards to solar activity is that it is more inactive than it's ever been. I'm surprised that they're surprised.

Of course the whole solar inactivity thing is itself quite unusual. I'd rather not have it come back to life in a state of utter insanity, considering that our power grid would likely be literally cooked to death if a CME happened to hit us directly. 🙂

In terms of cosmic events affecting Earth, that's one of those things that doesn't seem to be a very rare thing. The only reason the last one in the 1800s (Carrington Event) didn't completely screw us all over was because our progression was sufficiently slow by several decades - telegraph lines were all we had, and there were problems such as sparking small fires. Now we've got a massive power grid which doesn't really care for huge induced DC currents appearing all over the place.


Oh well, now back to your thermospheric programming, already in progress.