Solar Storm to Produce Major Impact on Earth

Solar sunspots August 04, 2011

A solar storm on the sun has unleashed several Coronal Mass Ejections (CME) toward earth in the last few days.

Two CME’s were launched toward Earth on Aug 2 and 3rd according to an article in today’s  http://www.spaceweather.com/ with a third even larger solar flare launched today, August 4th

“The impact on Earth is likely to be major” according to the report.  “Major impact” is a relative term.  Our normal solar sunspot-flare activity can produce an aurora borealis or northern lights as its common known.

A truly major impact would rival the event of 1859 when earth was hit by a solar superstorm known as the “Carrington Event“.   At that time, the Earth’s protective magnetic field was bent back by two CME’s immediately followed by one very large CME.

The CME impact induced magnetic impulses into then existing telegraph lines.  Telegraph lines burned out, paper caught fire at telegraph office equipment and telegraphs continued to operate even after their batteries were disconnected.

Scientist and government officials gathered in Washington, DC at the Space Weather Enterprise Forum 2011 on June 21, 2011 to discuss preparations for the next major solar maximum.

Analysts at the GSFC Space Weather Lab say the combined cloud should reach Earth on August 5th at 13:55 UT plus or minus 7 hours.

Facebook + Google = Gottcha! Facial Recognition Gone Bad

 A new social demon is in town called “facial recognition”.

The first five social security numbers of persons using social websites such as Facebook were determined using snap shots of peoples faces, Facebook and Google’s newly acquired facial recognition software according to a professor Alessandro Acquisti at  Carnegie  Mellon University.

As reported in the Wall Street Journal, PC Magazine, Business Insider and others, the facial recognition project used snapshots of complete strangers.  PittPatt, the facial recognition software company began as a Carnegie Mellon University project, and it can spot people in photos and videos with facial recognition and tracking technology.

Google acquired PittPatt this month according to an article published in the Wall Street Journal on July 22, 2011  -  “Google built facial recognition technology for smartphones into a product known as Google Goggles, but withheld it. “As far as I know, it’s the only technology that Google built and after looking at it, we decided to stop,” said Google Chairman Eric Schmidt last month at a conference. “People could use this stuff in a very, very bad way as well as in a good way.”

Parts of the Social Security numbers were accurately determined only 27 percent of the time.  The Social Security Administration changed it’s numbering system in June according to the WSJ.

Professor Alessandro Acquisti and his team will be at the Black Hat security conference this week, where more details will be revealed during an August 4 presentation.

Sources: WSJ 7/22/2011, WSJ 8/1/2011, Business Insider, PC Magazine