Time to head to the bunker? Probably not

As is usual with the popular press, they’ve got excitable and are busy predicting doom because of sunspot AR3038.

This new sunspot which is in line with the Earth has doubled in size every day since it appeared. It’s now about twice to three times the size of the Earth. Wild predictions of a collapse of electronic infrastructure because of a massive Solar flare are (at the moment) well wide of the mark.

The sunspot is producing small solar flares but Rob Steenburgh, acting lead of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Space Weather Forecast Office, is reported in PHYS.ORG to have commented, ” (it) does not have the complexity for the largest flares.”

There is a 30% chance the sunspot will produce medium-sized flares and a 10% chance it will create large flares.

No need to head to your bunker just yet.

Doom mongering is meat and potatoes for many of the press, and I wonder why they do it? The pat answer is it “sells newspapers”, but I wonder if that’s the real reason? Do they have an unspoken agenda to keep everyone in a state of panic all the time? It certainly seems like that at times, but perhaps that’s just me being paranoid.