He's got the general idea of half-life, but he's missing a lot, and it's not really a concept readily applied to that great fusion machine in the sky. And with the flares, astute and educated readers could legitimately extrapolate the "flares blaze around the world" to be solar flares that reach all the way to the earth in their flaming state. As opposed to exciting the aurora...

Sooooo much shortcut science in such a small synopsis.