Can Obama Demand Government To Deal With 'Space Weather'?

President Barack Obama has recently directed the federal government to come up with a way to deal with "space weather," a catch-all term for the disturbances found in the area between the sun and the earth, including solar flares that could wreak havoc on electrical power, GPS systems, aviation equipment, satellites, and other similar technologies.

Fox News noted that very bad storms of this kind can also bring down parts of the power grid, which then results in failures that could affect key services like water supply, healthcare, and transportation. The order that the president signed on Thursday also added that this has "the potential to simultaneously affect and disrupt health and safety across entire continents."

The president's directive instructed several federal agencies to come up with a plan to predict and detect such interstellar events, alert the public, protect critical infrastructures, and even find a way to recover from the damage - due in six months, as reported by NBC News. Part of the president's statement read, "Successfully preparing for space weather events is an all-of-nation endeavor that requires partnerships across governments, emergency managers, academia, the media, the insurance industry, non-profits, and the private sector."

The order was signed by the president as he prepared for a Frontiers Conference in Pittsburgh, where he also planned on announcing $300 million in spending on a variety of projects that are aimed at keeping the US on the edge of technological innovation for the next half century or so - covering what could hopefully be milestone research, from understating Alzheimer's disease to putting a person on Mars.

With this, NASA is creating a research program that will help them "understand the sun and its interactions with Earth and the solar system." Meanwhile, more of the POTUS's efforts will be detailed in the November issue of Wired Magazine as he acts as guest editor.