FORGET Y2K: PREPARE FOR THE SOLAR MAXIMUM

A few days ago, a handful of satellites in space watched the sun spit up an unusually high-energy flux of X-rays followed by what could have been an Earth-menacing cloud of charged particles. The solar flare fell into the most powerful category of electromagnetic radiation, and the burp that followed, called a coronal mass ejection, had the potential to disrupt power grids on Earth and kill astronauts. Solar maximums occur about every 11 years http://cnn.com/TECH/space/9909/01/solar.flares/index.html