Solar Flares – check out this amazing video!

Solar flares play a big part in my new book, The Mad Moon Mission. The evil Dr Buttscratcher learns how to trigger them at will, holding the world to ransom by shutting down all global communications. This amazing video (below) shows footage from NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Centre of a solar flare pluming out from the Sun’s surface.

While naturally occurring solar flares rarely cause disruption, a ‘super storm’ in 2012 (a massive solar flare including a huge coronal mess ejection – which is what you see in the video below) narrowly missed the Earth by just nine days! Had this ‘super storm’ hit the Earth it would have caused massive damage to all types of electrical systems. The likely cost to the USA alone has been estimated at anything up to $2.6 trillion dollars! Chinese authorities believe it would have taken 6-10 years for the world to recover from such an event.

I really hope that my books will encourage children to explore the science behind the stories. Introduce them to the wonder of outer space…