How the luminary will destroy our planet
A series of powerful solar flares attracted the attention of scientists and alarmed many of our fellow citizens. What is it, what is fraught with? And do not such active processes taking place on the star closest to us mean the beginning of any serious changes that may already threaten earthly life in the foreseeable future? We tried to find answers to such questions with the help of research physicist Ivan Nazarenko.
September 2017 claims a place in the list of natural records, thanks to a powerful "cannonade" arranged by the Sun. One strong outbreak, another... Powerful flows of electromagnetic energy that hit the Earth... Scientists warn of possible negative consequences in the form of communication failures, accidents in transport systems, deterioration in the well-being of meteorologically dependent people. But can something more global follow?
Irreversible changes occur on the Sun during its entire "life" - millions of years. These are the laws of physics, - emphasizes Ivan Nazarenko. - In the end, quantitative changes will turn into qualitative ones, and our luminary, having developed, so to speak, an energy resource, will die. The vast majority of experts believe that this can happen very soon - in 5-8 billion years.
However, some of their colleagues are much more pessimistic and predict the likely onset of an imminent "solar demise." They point to the possible development of processes on the Sun, which will lead to a supernova explosion. As a result, the outer solar shell will explode and for some time will spewing energy in huge quantities - in a second as much as the Sun emitted in normal mode over the previous 10 thousand years.
Some of the supporters of this version believe that one of the signs of the beginning of the transformation into a supernova are, among other things, powerful flares on the Sun.
– Can such a process be delayed? In other words, will there be enough solar life for our lifetime?
There is no consensus among scientists here. For example, the Dutchman Piers van der Meyer once stated that the Sun will turn into a supernova as early as 2010. One of the arguments in favor of just such a development of events, he called the observed noticeable increase in the temperature of the solar substance. However, as we have seen, the Dutch researcher, fortunately, was mistaken. Although the processes of activation in our luminary have recently been noticeable. Among them, of course, are the current very powerful outbreaks. However, to be honest, we still cannot give an unambiguous answer to the question – will the Sun die in the foreseeable future? We still know too little about the star closest to us, about what is happening to it.
- Is it possible to imagine what the picture of the death of the Sun will look like if, nevertheless, the most gloomy forecasts come true?
This is easier to do than to predict its "longevity". Given the distance to us from the luminary, earthlings will see its explosion about eight minutes later. The entire sky will be engulfed in radiance from the bright white flame emitted by the exploding star. The power of this glow will be such that the night on the planet will disappear. Most likely, all living things - including people - will die already at this first stage of the cataclysm.
After that, streams of radioactive radiation will fall on the Earth - so powerful that the earth's magnetic field cannot protect them from them. Radiation will complete the destruction of flora and fauna. And all traces of their existence on the planet will be subsequently incinerated: under the influence of anomalous solar radiation, the temperature on the Earth's surface will quickly rise to 3-5 thousand degrees. At the same time, all water will evaporate and form a thick cloud cover at an altitude of tens of kilometers from the "ball". But this is still only a "preliminary apocalypse".
Due to the explosion, the Sun will “swell up” many times, and the plasma streams emitted by it will fall on the Earth. This dynamic impact will cause our devastated, burned and melted planet to be knocked out of its orbit, and it will go on an unpredictable flight outside the solar system.
However, other scientists argue that the Earth and at least some of its inhabitants still have a chance to survive the solar cataclysm. According to these predictors, the most probable process is that the Sun will first turn into a red giant, and then, throwing some of its matter into the surrounding space, will become a white dwarf. With such a metamorphosis, our planet can be “pushed” by solar radiation to a far distance from the star, and it will begin to rotate around it in an orbit with a large radius, which will eventually save the Earth from excessive overheating. There is a chance that these new conditions for the existence of the Earth in near-solar space will be suitable for the preservation of biological life on the surface of the planet. Although we must not forget that with such an "emergency evacuation" our "ball" may collide, for example, with Mars. Here the chances of survival and preservation of the planet are zero.
As Nazarenko said, according to some scientists, periods of particularly high solar activity can influence events on Earth, exacerbating the “negative”. Here are just a few examples from the researcher's collection.
The maximum solar activity was noted in 1937-1938. In this period:
On May 6, 1937, the world's largest German airship, the Hindenburg, crashed near New York;
On June 11, the trial in the "case of Marshal Tukhachevsky" ended in Moscow, from which large-scale repressions began at the top of the army;
in July, Japanese troops invaded China; during the war, Mikado soldiers brutally killed many civilians;
On July 29, 1938, in the Far East, battles began between the Red Army units and Japanese troops in the area of Lake Khasan;
From November 9 to 10, Kristallnacht happened, when mass Jewish pogroms took place in Germany.
The sunny "peak" of 1969 "backfired" with a whole series of successful and failed coups d'état and assassination attempts on state leaders:
On January 22, during a solemn meeting of the crews of the Soyuz-4 and Soyuz-5 spacecraft, an attempt was made on the General Secretary of the Central Committee of the CPSU, L. I. Brezhnev;
On January 25, in North Yemen, the military tried to overthrow the government, in the end they failed, all the conspirators were killed;
On March 25, under pressure from the high army command, the President of Pakistan, Field Marshal Ayyub Khan, resigned;
On October 15, in the city of Las Anod, an unknown person in a police uniform shot the President of Somalia, Abdirashid Ali Shermark, and after that a military coup took place in this country;
in early December, one after another, failed coup attempts took place in Libya and Sudan.
"Peak" solar activity in 1979:
On January 16, an earthquake measuring 7 on the Richter scale struck the Iranian province of Khorasan;
in February-March, a short but very fierce Sino-Vietnamese war broke out;
On August 11, two Tu-134 passenger planes collided over Dneprodzerzhinsk, killing 172 people, including the football players of the Pakhtakor team;
On November 9, for ten minutes, the world was on the verge of starting a nuclear war due to a computer failure in the American NORAD system;
at the end of December, Soviet troops were brought into Afghanistan, during the storming of the palace, Afghan President Hafizullah Amin was killed.
"Peak" 1989:
On April 9, troops dispersed a rally in Tbilisi, which was attended by more than 60 thousand people, 16 people died, hundreds were injured;
On June 4, two passenger trains burned down near Ufa as a result of a gas pipeline explosion, killing 575 people and injuring more than 670.
Another solar maximum occurred in 2000-2001:
On November 11, a fire on a finicular train in the Austrian ski resort of Kaprun killed 155 people;
September 11, 2001 - the largest terrorist attack in the United States, hijacked airliners rammed the towers of the World Trade Center, killing about 3,000 people;
On October 4, a missile launched from a Crimean training ground during an air defense exercise of Ukraine accidentally shot down a Tu-154 passenger plane of a Russian airline, killing 78 people;
In the first half of Wednesday, September 6, 2017, scientists registered the most powerful solar flare in the last 12 years. The flare was assigned a score of X9.3 - the letter means belonging to the class of extremely large flares, and the number indicates the strength of the flare. The ejection of billions of tons of matter occurred almost in the region of AR 2673, almost in the center of the solar disk, so earthlings did not escape the consequences of what happened. The second powerful outbreak (point X1.3) was recorded on the evening of Thursday, September 7, the third - today, Friday, September 8.
The sun releases huge energy into space
Solar flares, depending on the power of X-ray radiation, are divided into five classes: A, B, C, M and X. The minimum class A0.0 corresponds to the radiation power in the Earth's orbit of ten nanowatts per square meter, the next letter means a tenfold increase in power. In the course of the most powerful flares that the Sun is capable of, huge energy is released into the surrounding space, in a few minutes - about a hundred billion megatons of TNT. This is about a fifth of the energy radiated by the Sun in one second, and all the energy that humanity will produce in a million years (assuming it is produced at modern rates).
Severe geomagnetic storm expected
X-ray radiation reaches the planet in eight minutes, heavy particles - in a few hours, plasma clouds - in two to three days. The coronal ejection from the first flare has already reached the Earth, the planet collided with a cloud of solar plasma with a diameter of about one hundred million kilometers, although it was previously predicted that this would happen by Friday evening, September 8th. A geomagnetic storm of G3-G4 level (a five-point scale varies from weak G1 to extremely strong G5), provoked by the first outbreak, should end on Friday evening. Coronal ejections from the second and third solar flares have not yet reached the Earth, possible consequences should be expected at the end of this week or the beginning of next week.
The consequences of the outbreak have long been understood
Geophysicists predict the aurora in Moscow, St. Petersburg and Yekaterinburg, cities located at relatively low latitudes for the Aurora. In the US state of Arkansas, it has already been noticed. As early as Thursday, carriers in the US and Europe reported non-critical outages. The level of X-ray radiation in near-Earth orbit has slightly increased, the military specifies that there is no direct threat to satellites and ground systems, as well as to the crew of the ISS.
Image: NASA/GSFC
However, there is a danger to low-orbit and geostationary satellites. The former are at risk of failing due to deceleration from the heated atmosphere, while the latter, having moved 36,000 kilometers from the Earth, may collide with a cloud of solar plasma. Interruptions with radio communications are possible, but for a final assessment of the consequences of the outbreak, it is necessary to wait at least the end of the week. The deterioration of people's well-being due to changes in the geomagnetic situation has not been scientifically proven.
May increase solar activity
The last time such an outbreak was observed on September 7, 2005, but the strongest (with a score of X28) occurred even earlier (November 4, 2003). In particular, on October 28, 2003, one of the high-voltage transformers in the Swedish city of Malmö failed, de-energizing the entire settlement for an hour. Other countries also suffered from the storm. A few days before the events of September 2005, a less powerful flare was recorded, and scientists believed that the Sun would calm down. What is happening in the last days strongly resembles that situation. This behavior of the luminary means that the 2005 record may still be broken in the near future.
Image: NASA/GSFC
However, over the past three centuries, humanity has experienced even more powerful solar flares than those that occurred in 2003 and 2005. In early September 1859, a geomagnetic storm brought down the telegraph systems of Europe and North America. The reason was called a powerful coronal mass ejection, which reached the planet in 18 hours and was observed on September 1 by British astronomer Richard Carrington. There are also studies that question the effects of the solar flare of 1859, scientists that the magnetic storm affected only local areas of the planet.
Solar flares are difficult to quantify
A consistent theory describing the formation of solar flares does not yet exist. Flares occur, as a rule, in the places of interaction of sunspots on the border of the regions of the northern and southern magnetic polarities. This leads to a rapid release of the energy of the magnetic and electric fields, which is then used to heat the plasma (increase in the velocity of its ions).
Observed spots are areas of the Sun's surface with a temperature of about two thousand degrees Celsius below the temperature of the surrounding photosphere (about 5.5 thousand degrees Celsius). In the darkest parts of the spot, the magnetic field lines are perpendicular to the surface of the Sun, in the lighter parts they are closer to the tangent. The strength of the magnetic field of such objects exceeds its Earth value by thousands of times, and the flares themselves are associated with a sharp change in the local geometry of the magnetic field.
The solar flare occurred against the background of a minimum of solar activity. Probably, in this way the luminary releases energy and will soon calm down. Events of this kind have occurred earlier in the history of the star and the planet. The fact that this is attracting public attention today does not speak of a sudden threat to humanity, but of scientific progress - in spite of everything, scientists are gradually better understanding the processes taking place with the star, and reporting this to taxpayers.
Where to monitor the situation
Information about solar activity can be gleaned from many sources. In Russia, for example, from the websites of two institutes: and (the first at the time of this writing posted a direct warning about the danger to satellites due to a solar flare, the second contains a convenient graph of flare activity), which use data from American and European services. Interactive data on solar activity, as well as an assessment of the current and future geomagnetic situation, can be found on the website
The very idea of the possibility of the death of the sun is not new. A hundred years ago, the first assumptions appeared that someday it would go out and Darkness and cold will fall on the Earth. Fantastic thrillers and stories were created on this topic. However, scientists quickly reassured the population of the planet, explaining that the sun will burn for at least another billion years. There was another version - that the sun will explode and all the planets, including the Earth, will simply burn in a cloud of hot gas. And again, scientists took up the pacification of excessively hot minds - and created a theory according to which the sun should not explode at all, since stars of this type peacefully burn out and turn into white dwarfs.
For several decades, everyone lived in relative calm - apart from a meteorite strike from space, they did not expect any danger. From time to time, someone frightened peaceful earthlings with black holes, wandering stars and poisonous gas nebulae, but all these hypothetical threats were too far away and were not taken seriously.
And now a new threat has appeared - overheating and an explosion of the sun. From the point of view of classical astrophysics, this is impossible, since there are equations according to which stars must “work” with a constant temperature. But we have already seen more than once that nature stubbornly refuses to follow the postulates of physics and generally behaves undisciplined. This time, the temperature of the core of our luminary has unreasonably increased - according to media reports - several times. The interesting thing is that in principle this is possible - this means that the rate of nuclear reactions has increased dramatically inside the sun. There may be several reasons, and one of them has long been described in the stories of the famous Soviet science fiction writer A. Kazantsev - the sun could "swallow" some matter that became a catalyst. If this continues, if the sun does not want to shine "according to the rules", then the greatest catastrophe awaits us.
The whole horror is that the instantaneous combustion of the planet described by science fiction writers will not happen. The promised explosion most likely will not happen, since the forces of gravity will keep our star from expanding instantly. First of all, a simple increase in the temperature of the core of the sun will lead to an increase in the emission of heat and light, as well as radiation. This means that on Earth during the day it will simply be impossible to go outside - on the sunny side, the temperature can reach 50 degrees and above! The amplification of light and other types of radiation will lead to damage to the skin and vision. Melting ice is inevitable - but this is not the worst thing. Rising temperatures will lead to terrible hurricanes. The wind speed will reach 300 km/h and higher, all light buildings and trees will simply be swept away from the face of the planet. At first, cold hurricanes with snow will be replaced by warm ones, bringing showers and thunderstorms. It will simply destroy all tropical vegetation and doom hundreds of millions of people to starvation.
Only those who will live in strong stone or underground buildings away from the coast and stock up on food will be able to escape. As long as the ice melts, the hurricanes will not stop - but at the same time, the temperature will remain within the limits of human survival. Unless in the countries of the tropical zone it can become such that a person will simply have to hide in caves or burrow into the ground - so as not to literally burn out.
An increase in temperature will lead to an increase in the evaporation of water. And soon thick clouds will cover the planet, which will reduce the flow of solar thermal radiation, but at the same time steam-laden air will be very difficult to breathe. Many people with weak lungs and hearts will not survive in such a "bath". However, part of the population - especially those who have material or power resources - will be able to live in underground buildings, where, as is known, the required air temperature can be maintained without much difficulty. How long will depend on food and water supplies. Meanwhile, on the surface, the temperature will rise until the balance between the energy received from the sun and its consumption is balanced. Whether it will be +50 degrees Celsius, or +60, or maybe all +80 - this is unknown. But in any case, under such natural conditions, the vast majority of living beings will die. Single-celled, some sea dwellers, primitive plants will survive.
By the way, about 500 million years ago, the natural conditions on Earth were very hot. And it is possible that then the reason for this was also increased activity of the sun. Can everything happen again? This is not out of the question.
But what if there is an explosion? Then, before our planet is covered by a wave of hot gas, the first to come to us is sunlight. Thousand times stronger than usual. Everything that is not in the shade will instantly flare up, the temperature will rise on the sunny side of the planet. But ash and evaporating water will rise into the air and cover the sky - and sunlight, no matter how strong, will only partially penetrate them. It will turn out a terrible steam oven, in which those who are unlucky enough to burn out in the sun in the first minutes will die the most painful death. The first streams of solar gas will reach the Earth only after a few hours.
Even worse is the fate of those who at this moment will be on the shadow side of the Earth. The difference in temperatures will give rise to powerful air currents blowing at a speed of 1000 km / h (and this will also add clouds of sand and dust to the atmosphere). Monstrous waves will destroy the coastal cities before the melted ice of the poles does. And the one who was not washed away into the seething sea, who did not suffocate in a jet whirlwind, who was not carried away like a feather and crushed by a fragment of a skyscraper, will wait with horror for the coming of dawn. Because with it comes the all-destroying heat of the sun...
For millions of years, each new day of the Earth begins with the sunrise in the east and ends with its sunset in the west. Historical epochs succeed each other, some empires collapse and others are born, wars are declared and truces are concluded, and the Sun is still moving measuredly across the sky.
But does anyone think what will happen if one day, not at all perfect, the Sun suddenly ceases to exist? Against the background of this event, everything that human civilization is busy with today will turn out to be nothing more than mouse fuss on a sinking ship. But this might happen one day.
It is known from astronomy textbooks that a star like the Sun lives for about ten billion years. Of these, about 4.57 billion years have already passed today, so it is not difficult to calculate that for about 5.5 billion years humanity can do its own business on Earth without worrying that someone will suddenly turn off the “eternal light bulb” over his head.
This is how things officially stand, but a number of fairly serious physicists think otherwise. Dutch astrophysicist Piers van der Meer, who is an expert at the European Space Agency, unexpectedly announced a few years ago that on July 1, 2005, a large plasma ejection occurred on the Sun.
Astronomers have calculated that the diameter of the prominence was more than thirty diameters of the Earth, and its length exceeded a record 350 thousand kilometers. Fortunately for the inhabitants of the planet, the release of matter occurred in the opposite direction from the Earth.
However, scientists and, in particular, Van der Meer, were in no hurry to rejoice. According to an astrophysicist who has been studying the behavior of the Sun for many years, our luminary will soon experience an explosion. Moreover, the scientist called the terms not at all on a cosmic scale, the life of the luminary and, accordingly, the Dutchman assigned only about six years to humanity. It turned out that the end of the world was supposed to come in 2011-2012.
The astrophysicist's prophecy quickly spread through the world media, causing a certain panic among the impressionable inhabitants of the planet, warmed up by the Mayan prophecy, which also mentioned the death of the next Sun. In his conclusions, Van der Meer relied on data on a strange change in the internal temperature of the Sun.
For many years, the temperature of the star was constant and amounted to about 15 million degrees Celsius. But between 1994 and 2005, the temperature of the Sun suddenly shot up to 27 million degrees—almost doubling. Based on these data, the scientist concluded that, heating up at such a rapid pace, the Sun will quickly turn into a supernova.
According to Van der Meer, the end of civilization will be colorful, but not long. First, there will be a blinding flash, followed by streams of x-ray, ultraviolet and gamma radiation will destroy all life on our planet.
The earth will warm up to several thousand degrees, and the oceans will simply evaporate. However, 2011 passed, humanity happily survived December 2012, 2014 passed, 2018 started, and the cataclysm never happened.
However, one should not rejoice ahead of time, since errors are possible in predictions and such global calculations. Today, humanity needs to understand whether the Sun is really planning to explode, and if so, then approximately when this might happen.
It turned out that scientists, indeed, in recent years are thinking about how to change the official point of view regarding the model of evolution of solar-type stars. So, Simon Campbell, a scientist at Monash University, published a paper in which he argues that stars similar to the Sun, as a rule, skip the stage of old age and die immediately.
The researcher made a similar conclusion on the basis of a study of the globular cluster NGC 6752, which, with its history, made it clear that theories about the evolution of solar-type stars are erroneous. For a long time it was believed that scientists know almost everything about the evolution of stars and their aging periods.
It was assumed that the Sun, according to this theory, after about 5 billion years will lose its atmosphere and turn into a red giant - a star that has burned out all its fuel. And this red giant will first swell up to the orbit of the Earth, and then shrink to the size of a white dwarf, in order to then become an ordinary star again.
Now, after studying the globular cluster NGC 6752 with the VLT telescope, it turns out that stars like the Sun do not live to the point of deep old age, and their lifespan directly depends on the amount of sodium content.
It so happened that in the globular cluster NGC 6752 there are two generations of stars at once. This interesting fact allowed astrophysicists to compare the amount of sodium in "old" and "new" stars using more than 130 stars as an example. The findings turned out to be the most startling: they actually confirmed that a star can explode in its "prime age".
What scares scientists the most is that the Sun behaves unpredictably. The gigantic release of matter in 2005 was not preceded by any of the signs that usually signaled similar cataclysms. Most often, such “tricks” are made known by the famous sunspots - dark areas on the surface of the star, indicating a change or fluctuation in the magnetic field of the Sun.
Even now, strong magnetic storms on the Sun sometimes not only affect the health of weather-dependent people, but also destroy power lines. What to say about the emission of solar matter. And if we also imagine that once again this prominence will be directed towards the Earth.
Just think: it will reach the surface of our planet in 8 minutes. This is about the same time as the time of the approach of ballistic missiles to the borders of the United States or the USSR during the confrontation during the Cold War. Only this time, if the prominence breaks through the Earth's atmosphere, no bunker will help.
However, domestic astrophysicists believe that one should not look at things so pessimistically. In their opinion, van der Meer and admirers of his and similar theories are mistaken. After all, the intensity, and not the strength of solar radiation, has been constant for many, including recent years.
This would not be possible if the temperature of the Sun increased in the way the Dutchman says. Therefore, he is either wrong, or deliberately, wanting to become famous, creates an exaggerated sensation.
A number of other scientists argue that such temperature rises are possible, but these are the so-called cycles of solar activity, lasting 11, 22, 100 or 400 years, when after a period of temperature increase there is a period of decrease.
Moreover, the fatal outbreak that alarmed the entire planet occurred in 2005, just in the last year of the 11-year cycle of activity. At the same time, physicists around the world, without saying a word, assure that even if the Dutchman is right, at least several tens, or even hundreds of thousands of years must pass before the explosion of the Sun.
Nevertheless, if humanity wants to live forever, it needs to take care of the construction of huge starships, on which human civilization could move, so as not to depend on the whims of its star.
Used materials from the article by Dmitry Tumanov from the site
The author of the "sensation" was a certain Dutch astrophysicist and expert of the European Space Agency Piers Van der Meer and his comrades. At least all news reports refer to his data and predictions. By the way, this is not the first time. And also not for the first time, serious scientists are forced to refute this scientific passage ... To be honest, it was not so much the "joke" itself that attracted attention, but its phenomenal vitality. And the amazing craving of people for such "fried facts". Therefore, the correspondents of "RG" tried to get to the bottom of the truth.
Will the sun really explode in six years? - I tortured a senior researcher at the State Astronomical Institute. PC. Sternberg Anatoly Khlystov. - Someone Piers Van der Meer claims that the temperature of the core of the Sun, which is usually 27 million degrees Fahrenheit, has risen to 49 million degrees in the last few years ...
Really? - my interlocutor laughs.
Your Dutch colleague also claims something else: the process of heating up our star is very similar to the changes that occur in stars before the explosion of supernovas. He is sure that the process of global warming, which is traditionally attributed to the greenhouse effect, is also associated with an increase in temperature inside the solar core. What do you, an astrophysicist, say to that?
I will say that most likely there was a typo or this is someone's stupid joke.
According to astronomers' calculations, the temperature of the star itself changes very little over millions of years. Yes, and using the well-known laws of physics, in general, it is not difficult to prove that a doubling of the temperature of the Sun, as the Dutch researcher claims, would lead to a catastrophe even before the explosion. The flux from the Sun to Earth would increase 16 times! Such conditions correspond to a planet located one and a half times closer to the Sun than Mercury. Recall that during the day on Mercury the temperature is above 400 degrees Celsius, and at night - minus 180.
Climate change on Earth is indeed related to the activity of the Sun. However, scientists are well aware of its long-term cycles. Thus, observations of the last 250 years make it possible to predict that since 1960 a slow decline in solar activity has begun. And since 2010 there will be a slow growth. And so on until 2060. Then again decline to a minimum in 2110.
It goes without saying that the increased activity of the Sun is accompanied by warming, and the decrease - by cooling. And in this century one should expect a cooling at the beginning and at the end, and a warming - in its middle. If there were no other causes of global warming already now. If volcanoes had not become active and such an amount of so-called "greenhouse" gases had not been concentrated in the Earth's atmosphere. More precisely, carbon dioxide and methane, which prevent the escape of heat from the Earth heated by the sun's rays into space.
What about giant solar flares? The Dutchman calls them the harbingers of the death of the luminary.
In eleven-year cycles, there are maxima of solar activity, when strong flares occur almost every day. Much more serious happened at the beginning of this November, moreover, the most powerful in the history of observations. According to the x-ray classification, she had a score of X-28. The energy of this flash, as calculations show, could be enough to provide electricity to a city like Moscow for 200 million years. But she doesn't say anything bad either. Scientists have every reason to believe that the Sun has occasionally behaved this way for many thousands of years.
Let's refer to one more authoritative opinion. Here is what Vladimir Lipunov, Professor of Moscow State University, Doctor of Physical and Mathematical Sciences, says: “The statement that the temperature of the Sun is already close to that when supernovae explode is complete nonsense. The Sun cannot generate such a temperature. It does not have enough mass for this. Elementary physical calculations: for the Sun to explode, it must be ten times larger. It will soon go out. And not in six years, but in five billion years. In general, if I were you, I would finally check who he is - this Van der Meer."
To find out who Van der Meer is a horror story lover, the RG correspondent called the Russian office of the European Space Agency, whose expert is a scientist from Holland.
Such a specialist is not on our lists, - answered the assistant to the head of the representative office. - Moreover, there is no scientist with that name in Holland. Now it is difficult to find out where the ears of this "sensation" grow from. Most likely, this "duck" was born in one of the European yellow editions and went for a walk around the world.
- And what is the reason, in your opinion, for such a phenomenal vitality of anti-scientific information?
This question is for psychologists.
