M Class flare & huge CME on May 22

M Class flare followed by a huge CME (coronal mass ejection) on May 22.  Beautiful video!

Sun Awakening?

Looks like the sun finally might truly be awakening from its 11 year slumber.  I'm sure you've heard about the solar maximums and how the sun may be hurling strong solar flares, coronal mass ejections, or even causing geomagnetic storms on earth this year and into early 2014.  The latest flare that the sun unleashed was an X class flare and is reportedly the strongest one this year.  Experts report that there is no reason to believe that this wave of sun rumblings won't continue to increase with time.

Massive Solar Flare Expectations

How can we prepare for solar flares?  How do we know what to expect if a massive flare is headed for our beautiful blue planet?  We can learn from the history of the Carrington Event.  A normal solar flare takes a few days to reach the earth, however, during the 1859 event it reached our planet in a mere 18 hours.  If a similar event were to occur today, the earths magnetic field would be unable to catch all the particles.  This would result in an aurora that would no longer just be isolated to the poles and there may be auroras over the United States and the Caribbean.  Most of us would probably just see this as a fascinating display of color and beauty, however, we would be directly impacted if our electronics were stopped by this event.  What do you think would happen if such a huge event would cause power grid outages that would last years?  Would we be able to survive or do you think that mass chaos would break out?  

Bring on 2022!

A Spacecraft is smashed into an enormous asteroid measuring 2,625 feet across.  (To put this in perspective,  a professional football field is 360 feet in length.)  Sounds like science fiction, right?  Well, guess again!  At a recent Lunar and Planetary Science Conference, the United States and the European Space Agency began planning to do just that.  They intend to send out a space probe to Asteroid Didymos and crash it into the oncoming rock.  Don't fear, however, the asteroid isn't on a trajectory towards our lovely planet - it will actually take three years for the probe to reach its target which will be 6.8 million miles from Earth.  They are hoping these impacts might break the asteroid apart and send it in alternate directions.  So bring on the year 2022 - I can't wait to see if this works!

Can a solar flare kill us?

Everyone likes a litte trivia, right?  I thought I'd share some trivia about solar flares with those of you in blogger land today.

 

 

Can a solar flare kill us?

 

 

In reality, only a small amount of the energy released from solar flares will actually reach the earth because we are protected by our planet's atmosphere. 

Literary Yoga?

Literary Yoga?

One of the most difficult things for me is to decide how to find balance.  Do I work on writing my next novel?  Do I spend time with my family?  Do I work on social media?  Or videos, covers, agents, even strange new tan lines?  Since I still love my day job, I’ve got to find ways to successfully divide my time between the things I have to do and the things I’d like to do. 

In my humblish opinion, being successful in today’s publishing world is much different and more complex than any other time in history.  It isn’t necessarily more difficult, as there are so many more venues to showcase authors, but the sheer numbers of authors, publishers, and sites sometimes make it more difficult to be noticed or ‘found’.  While I’ve had decent success as an Indie writer, my goal has always been to become a well-recognized author around the world.  As the party planners for the ‘Historically Famous Author’ parties don’t necessarily care whether my wife and grandmother really love my work, it is important to have a successful platform to build upon. 

So, is it more important to work on my writing, my platform, my family, or my mastery of the Fallen Dog yoga positions?  I wish I could say that I use every moment in pursuit of either happiness or success, but the truth is that I probably waste just as much as I spend fruitfully. Since I have a dream, but live within the real world where I’m only given 24 hours a day and hopefully another 40 years of life, my belief is that I have to find a balance (and not the Sleeping Dog kind) that will help me find both happiness and success.

I try to give the taxpayers (who happen to still be willing to pay my monthly bills) an honest day’s work everyday.  I try to spend quality time with my wife and three daughters.  I try to get the proper amount of sleep, relaxation, and exercise (though I seem to fail on all three more than any other area in my life).  I try to keep up with platform building and social media.  AND, I try to make every minute of my writing time count. 

For those of you who want to succeed in today’s publishing world, my suggestion is to find a way to practice some form of Literary Yoga.  Spend time with your job, your family, your platform building, and your writing.  Don’t let any of them overwhelm the other, but never neglect any of them either.

Dystopian Trailer

Sharing a video to the trailer of Pyrolysis.  Enjoy!

Solar Flares Make Music

Science never ceases to amaze me.  Scientists are able to take the sounds from the sun and form a compilation that resembles the sound of music - not the Julie Andrews type though.  It's fascinating that they are able to take these sounds and understand the sun's own language.  

New Gamma Burst that Impacted Earth Discovered



A new discovery of an enormous explosion in space, sending out high levels of radiation is believed to have impacted earth during the rule of Emperor Charlemagne, between 774 and 775 AD.  Scientists have discovered this impact by studying the rings in cedar trees, which point that this phenomena occurred during medieval times.  This explosion is not believed to have been caused by our own sun, but more likely a collision between two stars or two black holes that were inside our own Milky Way galaxy.  These newly discovered tree rings have given scientists their best ‘guess’ at what might have occurred during that era.