Don't go out on Saturday!

My mum said this to me just now. She heard over her favourite radio staton FM97.2 that on Saturday there would be "something wrong with the weather" that would cause people to lose their concentration.

keke... i thought it's one of her "ignorant women"'s rumour. Then, I read the chinese tabloid and saw the same news...it says "太阳黑子" or sunspot in English. What is sunspot? I've never heard of sunspot.

As usual, I went to Wikipedia - Sunspot and subsequently SpaceWeather for more information. Somehow I am quite perturbed by the data. Why aren't the websites telling me the implications of sunspot? I'm more interested in knowing how sunspot would cause people to "lose concentration" than knowing its cycle and other physical aspects. I mean, since it has already appeared, what's the point telling me how it appeared or when it is estimated to appear etc?

Then, I found a chinese website that tries to explain the implications of sunspot. It says something like

1) 太阳黑子爆发越猛烈，地壳的活动也就越剧烈 - the sunspot generation cycle coincides with the occurence of natural disasters like earthquakes and volcanic eruption on earth. It is observed that when more sunspots explode, there is more natural disasters on earth.

2) 至少已经有5颗人类发射入太空中的卫星提前发生失灵。黑子爆发所带来的大面积森林大火事故不下百起。前次北美大面积停电导致加拿大和美国许多城市近于瘫痪。科学家发现，这次停电事故的罪魁祸首也是太阳黑子爆发引起的。太阳黑子活动时期，人类重大工程事故的发生概率也相对较高。前不久美国哥伦比亚号航天飞机的坠毁、日本火箭发射的失败、巴西火箭发射发生爆炸等都集中在太阳黑子活动时期。这绝非仅仅出于偶然因素 - the malfunctioning of 5 satalites, the America's big blackout, forest fires, plane crash, Japan's failed rocket launch and Brazil's rocket explosion all occur during the time when the sunspots are active.

3) 太阳黑子导致地球磁场发生变异 - sunspots cause changes in earth's magnetic field that resulted in birds losing their directions. That's why we see some rare birds appearing at places where they usually don't.

4) 它还能深刻引发地球气候环境在一度时期发生较大改变 - sunspots can bring about more environmental changes such as more hurricanes, more droughts, more floods, more global warming, rising sea level, melting ice caps...

5) 太阳黑子爆发年份，某些疾病有所上升，住院病人也较以往增多 - When there is more explosion of sunspots, geomagnetic waves entered the ozone layer, contributing to the mutation of viruses. Since the viruses mutate before human bodies' grow to be immune to them, it leads to outbreaks of SARS, flu, etc..

6) 甚至一些法学专家发现，社会犯罪率在太阳黑子爆发时期也是有所上升 - crime rates also seem to be higher when there is sunspot explosion.

7) It would be worse next year.

The observations sound scary! but of course, I doubt many of the observations by the so-called experts. =O) I don't know how true the claims are even though the website url says "science human" which seems to suggest that it really is a website that discusses scientific discoveries. keke

I think everyone will still go out on Saturday. If everything is indeed as serious as described, staying indoors or not won't make much difference, right? =O) Besides the opportunity cost of staying at home is quite high 'cos I have work on that day! whaha!

Before I end off, I'm thankful that my friends empathise with me ( with regards to what I typed in the last entry.) I'm feeling ok now. I hope I didn't make my friends worry about my emotional well-being! (^_^) Take care buddies!