The Vancouver Sun from Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada • 8

CANADA WORLD 1 1 B7 SATURDAY, AUGUST 17, 2013 DKEAKING NEWS: VANC0UVKRSUN.COM A SPACE FROM PAGE 131 Earth in the crosshairs? H-'-k fr' 'va 't- -IV I 1 NASASDOTHE ASSOCIATED PRESS FILES 23, 2012 captured by the Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO), can create havoc on earth by frying power and telecommunications the Carrington Event short-circuited the world's telegraph system. "Anyone who has seen auro-rae knows they look like serpents," the Finnish scientist told New Scientist this week. The conclusion is that the Earth was hit by a huge mass of charged particles ejected from the Sun. This was far from a one-off: such flares probably happen every few centuries or so. In late August and early September 1859, the Earth was hit by a smaller flare that had equally dramatic effects.

Named the Carrington Event, after the astronomer who documented it fully, the solar storm caused Califomian Gold Rush miners to be woken in their tents by the bright northern lights. Aurorae were seen as far north as Queensland in the southern hemisphere and as far south as Washington in the northern. But there was also a chilling foretaste of what would happen if such an event were to repeat itself today. For the surge of charged particles had a dramatic impact on the nascent telegraph systems of the world. Telegraph wires were short-circuited, copper cables melted and some operators were given bad electrical shocks.

There was no domestic electricity, no telephones and no radio. If a rerun of the Carrington Event were to happen tomorrow, it would be cataclysmic: power lines would melt, electrical sub-stations would catch fire, half the world's telephone grid would be knocked out, telecoms satellites would go down and the Internet would be crippled, perhaps for a year. Just repairing the power lines would take weeks. In June, a joint U.K.-U.S. study, led by insurers Lloyd's, estimated that a superstorm of this magnitude would cost the world 2.5 trillion (about $4 trillion), and tip the planet into depression.

Yet when it comes to such threats from space, we suffer from profound short-sightedness. Asteroid strikes, for example, are seen as the stuff of bad Hollywood films or at least they were until Feb. 15 this year, when the Russian city of Chelyabinsk was blasted by a meteor that exploded about 16 kilometres overhead. The blast, comparable to a small nuclear weapon, caused havoc on the ground, smashing windows and injuring more than 1,000 people, some seriously. A hundred and five years earlier, Tunguska, also in Russia, was hit by an even bigger rock, or comet, that could have flattened Moscow or London if its trajectory had been only slightly different As well as being shortsighted, we are also ignorant.

Solar storms in particular are poorly understood. Some are high-energy yet do little damage; other, more modest eruptions can cause chaos, such as the 1989 flare that knocked out the power grid in Eastern Canada. It is now thought that the biggest such as the 775 event may be the result of huge comets colliding with the Sun. According to David Eichler, an Israeli physicist at Ben Gurion University, a "sungrazer" comet 80 kilometres wide hitting the CIATHE ASSOCIATED PRESS FILES real dry bed in Groom Lake, Nev. It also describes some cool planes, though none of them are saucer-shaped.

George Washington University's National Security Archive used a public records request to obtain the OA history of one of Area 5 Ys most secret Cold War projects, the U-2 spy plane program. National Security Archive senior fellow Jeffrey Richelson first reviewed the history in 2002, but all mentions of the country's most mysterious military base had been redacted. So he requested the history again in 2005, hoping for more information. Sure enough, he received a version a few weeks ago with the mentions of Area 51 restored. It's not the first time the government has acknowledged the existence of the super-secret, installation.

Former presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush referred A U-2 spy plane is tested at an airstrip that became known as Area 51 in this undated photo, left The CIA is acknowledging in the clearest terms yet the existence of Area 51, the top-secret Cold War test site that has been the subject of conspiracy theories for decades, but nowhere in the heavily redacted documents does it mention aliens or UFOs. A. Solar flares, like this one on Jan. equipment.

An 1859 flare named Anyone who has seen aurorae knows they look like serpents. ILYAUSOSKIN FINNISH SCIENTIST sun at 1.6 million kilometres an hour would generate enough energy to cause a solar Hare that, if it hit the Earth, would be far more severe than even the Carrington Event. There may be other weird things going on above our heads that we do not understand at all. Meteorologists have long thought that thunderstorms are caused by electrical charges building up in ice particles suspended in clouds. The trouble is, according to Russian physicist Alexander Gurevich, there simply isn't enough energy to make the lightning flashes we see.

He proposes instead that these electrical discharges must be "seeded" in some way. His proposed mechanism involves cosmic rays high-energy sub-atomic particles created by exploding stars and colliding black holes in distant galaxies that cause a "runaway electron breakdown" by ionizing the water in the atmosphere, generating immense electrical charges. If he is right and his is still a controversial theory the next time you see a lightning strike, you may be witnessing something triggered by an exploding star or burping black hole millions of light years away. 1 w. to the "location near Groom Lake" in insisting on continued secrecy, and other government references date to the 1 960s.

But Richelson as well as those who are is out there" are taking the document as a sign of loosening secrecy about the government's activities in the Nevada desert. Some UFO buffs and others believe the most earth-shattering revelations will come from Area 51 workers, not an official document. "The government probably will not release what it knows," UFO researcher Robert Hastings said. "My opinion is that whoever is flying these craft will break the story and will reveal themselves at some point in the future. The CIA is not going to release anything they don't want to talk about" The site is known as Area 51 among UFO aficionados because that was the base's Department show that America's top research institutes are grappling with each of the key issues which have bedevilled solar energy for so long.

Los Alamos home of the Manhattan Project is working on smart grids and better ways to capture excess electricity produced in peak sunlight hours. The Argonne labs are working on thermal energy storage, to overcome "intermit-tency," the curse of solar and wind. Oak Ridge is testing coatings that increase durability of solar panels eightfold. The National Renewable Energy Laboratory is working on a carbon-dioxide power cycle that could achieve 90 per cent thermal efficiency and does not require water, transforming the prospects of desert solar. The quest for renewables has quietly become a national endeavour for the world's paramount superpower, still home to 1 8 of the NICK LEWISPOSTWEDIA NEWS FILES designation on old Nevada test site maps.

The OA history reveals that officials renamed it Paradise Ranch to try to lure skilled workers. Beginning with the U-2 in the 1 950s, the base has been the testing ground for a host of top-secret aircraft, including the SR-71 Blackbird, F-1 1 7A stealth fighter and B-2 stealth bomber. Some believe i the base's Strangelovian han- gars also store alien vehicles, i evidence from incident" the alleged 1947 crash i. of a UFO in New Mexico and extraterrestrial corpses. The QA history mentions an "unexpected side-effect" of the high-flying tremendous increase in reports of unidentified flying U-2 and Oxcart planes, which flew higher than civilians believed possible, accounted for half of UFO sightings during the 1 950s and '60s, according to the report The Associated Press CIA confirms Area 51 is The truth is out there or at least some of it.

UFO buffs and believers in aliens are celebrating the CIA's clearest acknowledgment yet of the existence of Area 5 1 the top-secret Cold War test site that has been the subject of elaborate conspiracy theories for decades. But the revelations, which have set the tinfoil-hat contingent abuzz on the Internet, aren't quiteThe X-Files or Independence Day. There's no mention of UFO crashes, black-eyed extraterrestrials or staged moon landings. The 407-page document contains many redactions, however, so much fodder for the imagination still exists. The CIA history, released Thursday, not only refers to Area 51 by name and describes some of the activities that took place there, but places the US.

air force base on a map, along the 4 1 Forget tracking solar is the hot ticket in energy for U.S. military top 20 research universities. The Japanese are no slouches, either. They are spending $200 million U.S. on a thermal storage project in Hokkaido, using vanadium in electrolyte tanks.

Such ferment will surely have consequences, though what and when is hard to predict. The U.S. Energy Department expects the cost of solar power to fall by 75 per cent between 2010 and 2020. By then, average costs will have dropped to a dollar per watt for big solar farms, $1.25 for offices, and $1.50 for homes, achieving the Holy Grail of grid parity with new coal and gas plants without further need for subsidies. The current U.S.

average ranges from $5.30 for homes to $2.50 for some utilities. Germany is further ahead, below $2.50 even for homes. Costs have fallen by a quarter over the past year alone because of the flood of cheap Chinese panels. This could be like the semiconductor industry in the 1980s where the military changed the game. TONY LEGGETT CHAIRMAN S0LARCENTURY Naval Research Laboratory is the vanguard of the green revolution, but not a big stretch.

"The U.S. Defence Department is racing ahead. This could be like the semiconductor industry in the 1980s where the militarj' changed the game," said Tony Leggett, chairman of Solarcentury, a solar energy company. Nor is the Pentagon alone. Grant lists from the "SunShot Initiative" of the U.S.

Energy AMBROSE EVANSPRITCHARD LONDON DAILY TELEGRAPH LONDON U.S. Marines go to war in Afghanistan with solar cells embedded in their rucksacks, efficient enough to recharge lithium-ion batteries for radios and greatly lighten loads. Field patrols will soon have almost weightless solar blankets as well. These will be able to capture a once unthinkable 35 per cent of the sun's light as energy thanks to thin membranes technology, a spinoff from satellites. This new kit is a military imperative.

Taliban ambushes of supply convoys are a major killer. The Pentagon says the cost of refuelling forward bases is $100 U.S. a litre. The U.S. Naval Air Weapons Station has relied on a 14-megawatt array of solar panels in California's Mojave Desert for a third of hs power since ra 5TEFAN KIEFERAFPGETTY IMAGES FILES A technician walks past solar modules at the Solarpark Muehlhausen photovoltaic power plant in Germany, one of many alternative energy companies doing research.

last year. Pearl Harbor will the end of this decade, accord-soon follow as the Pentagon ing to the U.S. solar industry goes off-grid, better shielded (SEIA) in a report, Enlisting from enemies. the Sun: Powering the U.S.Mil-The U.S. Navy will derive half itary with Solar Energy.

It may its energy from renewables by be a stretch to say that the U.S..