The 23rd Cycle: Learning to Live with a Stormy Star

During the year 2000, the number of sunspots reached the peak of their 11-year cycle, the 23rd such cycle since scientists first discovered the dark solar blotches. So what? As Odenwald, a NASA staffer and Washington Post contributor (The Astronomy Cafe), and other scientists expected, this proliferation of solar storms produced marked effects on Earth, including an increase in the intensity and extent of auroras. Odenwald warns that the 23rd cycle may also produce other, less welcome effects before it reaches its quiescent end in 2006, and the 24th cycle will be even more problematic. His prediction is based on the increasing vulnerability of advanced technology to space weather phenomena, such as bursts of X-rays and energetic particles or geomagnetic storms. The failure of satellites and even gas pipelines have been attributed to the impact of solar storms; given our increasingly networked digital infrastructure and our growing reliance on space-based technology, Odenwald foresees future problems with communication, navigation and electric power grids, all subject to sudden failure from events that begin on the sun. Astronauts may suffer radiation sickness--even death-- if caught without warning or sufficient protection. The problems are sociological and political as well as technological, Odenwald asserts. As space-based business proliferates, it is often advantageous to hide small failures due to space weather or to attribute them to other causes. Practical technological needs carry little weight when NASA funding depends on scientific merit, Odenwald declares, calling for more funding to understand and predict space weather. ""The sun is not the well-behaved neighbor we would like to imagine,"" he says. Odenwald offers a cogent warning, which deserves to have an impact beyond the book's own immediate readership of space science enthusiasts. B&w and color illus. not seen by PW. (Feb.)