NASA Worried About The Sun

NASA is worried about the sudden reduction of sunspots during what is supposed to be the maximum during an 11-year cycle.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2290289/NASA-warns-unexpected-happening-Sun-year-supposed-peak-sunspot-cycle.html

However, take a gander at the below composite:

A typical solar flare... of which we can do nothing, zip, nada.

 

Earth is something like 96 million miles away from the sun, not the distance indicated in the above graphic. But you can see the size of a typical solar flare compared to the size of the earth, and if a flare like that was headed straight for earth, what good would worrying about it do?

96 million miles is a goodly distance to reduce the damage from a large flare - the inverse square law and all that -  but the bottom line is if the sun decided to go bang, we would vanish in an instant, and all that worry and ulcer-producing stress would have been for nothing.

Kinda makes you laugh at egomaniacs like Obama and McCain,  who think they can control everything.

Nice photograph though.