By Michael Brooks The New Scientist 23 March 2009 IT IS midnight
on 22 September 2012 and the skies above Manhattan are filled
with a flickering curtain of colourful light. Few New Yorkers
have seen the aurora this far south but their fascination is
short-lived. Within a few seconds, electric bulbs dim and
flicker, then become unusually bright for a fleeting moment.
Then all the lights in the state go out. Within 90 seconds, the
entire eastern half of the US is without power. A year later and
millions of Americans are dead and the nation's infrastructure
lies in tatters. The World Bank declares America a developing
nation. Europe, Scandinavia, China and Japan are also struggling
to recover from the same fateful event - a violent storm, 150
million kilometres away on the surface of the sun. It sounds
ridiculous. Surely the sun couldn't create so profound a
disaster on Earth. Yet an extraordinary report funded by NASA
and issued by the US National Academy of Sciences (NAS) in
January this year claims it could d