TheStory
This week, a story emerged in an Arabic news outlet which reported that the world would be plunged into darkness for three full days due to a solar storm.
Solar storms sound pretty terrifying, especially because they could actually do some serious damage to our planet. They occur when built up magnetic energy in the solar atmosphere is suddenly released, and what makes them extra scary is that the amount of energy released can equal millions of hydrogen bombs.
There is often speculation about what would happen if a huge solar storm hit Earth. They could potentially disrupt power grids, satellites and global communication networks—things we rely on every day in the 21st century.
Lebanese news site www.addiyar.com reported that the world will see “three days of darkness this month.”
The report said that NASA had announced that December 21, 22 and 23 would be completely dark due to a solar storm, and that this period would be “very troublesome for mankind.”
ظاهرة :الارض ستشهد 3 ايام من الظلام هذا الشهر https://t.co/jVulRTPbxX pic.twitter.com/T2TRswRBzw
— Addiyar Newspaper (@AddiyarNews) December 7, 2015
The Blunder
Luckily none of this is true. The origin of the story is not easy to pinpoint, given the fact that hoaxes like this arise on the internet quite often. They were especially common around the time of the theory that 2012 would bring the end of the Earth due to a Mayan calendar.
Back in 2014, one such hoax gained momentum on the Internet—so much so that a NASA-affiliated Facebook page had to debunk it.
Over at earthsky.org, a science and nature website, the rumors were brushed aside with hard facts. They reported that scientists can't yet predict when a solar storm will occur, nor has there ever been an occaison in living memory when a solar storm resulted in the Earth becoming dark.
