“Massive Solar Storm”

[Marioantonio]

I was browsing YouTube when I came across this video talking about a solar storm, what are peoples thoughts on it?

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=_PzWG3vcEkI

[jacmac]

It is very weird.
It seems like a crude verbal cartoon version of a true story with some large errors.
I also got a feeling that A I is involved.

[nick c]

Here is a much better video on the same topic from Thunderbolts Space News:
https://www.thunderbolts.info/wp/2013/0 ... pace-news/

[Marioantonio]

Here is a much better video on the same topic from Thunderbolts Space News:
https://www.thunderbolts.info/wp/2013/0 ... pace-news/

Saw that before, thank you!

[nick c]

In 1859 there was not much electronics to be found, but there was extensive telegraphic communications. But then the Earth was hit by a CME or Solar Flare and it wreaked havoc on the telegraph system. Spectacular auroras normally only seen in latitudes near the poles were seen globally, with reports from Cuba, Hawaii, and many tropical areas.
The 1859 Carrington Event

That night, telegraph communications around the world began to fail; there were reports of sparks showering from telegraph machines, shocking operators and setting papers ablaze. All over the planet, colorful auroras illuminated the nighttime skies, glowing so brightly that birds began to chirp and laborers started their daily chores, believing the sun had begun rising. Some thought the end of the world was at hand, but Carrington’s naked eyes had spotted the true cause for the bizarre happenings: a massive solar flare with the energy of 10 billion atomic bombs. The flare spewed electrified gas and subatomic particles toward Earth, and the resulting geomagnetic storm—dubbed the “Carrington Event”—was the largest on record to have struck the planet.

Also, a related TPOD by Peter Mungo Jupp

[BeAChooser]

We’re a civilization waiting to die because we don’t understand these flare events.

But we sure think we know a lot about black holes.

[Michael Mozina]

I was browsing YouTube when I came across this video talking about a solar storm, what are peoples thoughts on it?

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=_PzWG3vcEkI

A couple points:

The Earth has two basic "shields" that particles from the sun have to cross in order to even hit the surface of the Earth. First they have to pass through the magnetosphere which acts to funnel most high speed particles from the sun (and the universe) into the poles of the planet. This results in aurora as those high speed particles kinetically interact with the gases in the Earth's atmosphere. The Earth's atmosphere also tends to 'shield' us from cosmic rays and high speed particle collisions here on Earth.

A Carrington sized event would pose a significant physical threat to satellites in space, and to electrical systems here on Earth. With some advance warning from SDO and other satellites in space, we should be able to shut some systems down in the short term (say 24 hours) and avoid most of the damaging effects on electric grids and such. What we would not like to see is a lot of electrical grid overload events during the dense part of the plasma wave impact on Earth.

If you're on the ground however, sitting under a tree out in nature, you might not even know it happened. If you happened to be on the night side of the planet when the plasma wave hit our shields, you'd probably just see pretty Northern lights in the sky.