Another reason for extinctions?

[mkDragon <shabut@earthlink.net>]

        Full article    

        http://www.wired.com/news/news/technology/story/21899.html
                    
 
                    Death Stars Make Winter Summer
                    by Lindsey Arent 

                    3:00 a.m.  23.Sep.99.PDT
                   Scientists have found that stars -- all
                   strikingly similar to the sun -- emit deadly
                    superflares every century or so, spewing
                    radiation and highly charged particles
                    that devastate nearby planets. 
 
                    <snip>
 
                    A superflare is an enormous explosion of
                    energy that occurs on the surface of a
                    star. Such blasts spew high-energy
                    particles, ionized gas, and radiation into
                   space. 
 
                    If the sun produced a superflare,
                    Schaefer said, the heat would be
                    sufficient enough to "turn a winter day
                    into a summer day," and the charged
                    particles striking the upper atmosphere
                    would deplete the ozone so fast that life
                    on earth would die out within a few
                    months. 

                   <snip>
 
                    Scientists predict that a medium or high
                    strength flare would deplete the Earth's
                    atmosphere of its ozone for years and
                    result in biological and ecological
                    catastrophe. 
 
                    "For a year or two everyone gets skin
                    cancer. You wouldn't want to go out for
                    (more than) half a minute at a time. Up
                    and down the food chain, things would
                    just kind of go away," Schaefer said. 
 
                    "A top-end superflare might even get to
                    the point where it kills cockroaches," he
                    said, referring to the insect's ability to
                    withstand radiation. 
 
                    Only it isn't likely to happen. Schaefer's
                    team concluded that the sun has not had a superflare
in the last 2,000 years
                    because there have been no unexplained
                    mass human extinctions. "If a low-end
                    superflare happened on our sun, it would
                    cause worldwide auroras and heatwaves
                    -- it would have appeared in a historical
                    record." 
 
                     
                     

-- 
    Onward!  through the fog....