May 9th Monster Carrington-Class Sunspot

[Cargo]

Watch out below.
https://citizenwatchreport.com/a-carrin ... t-may-9th/

Sunspot AR3664 has grown so large, it now rivals the great Carrington sunspot of 1859.
Sprawling almost 200,000 km from end to end, AR3664 is 15 times wider than Earth. You can see it through ordinary eclipse glasses with no magnification at all. Moreover, it is easy to project an image of this sunspot onto the sidewalk or a white screen just as Carrington did in the 19th century.

A NOAA forecast model predicts the first CME will reach Earth late on May 10th. Additional CMEs will arrive on May 11th and possibly 12th. Minor to strong geomagnetic storms could occur on all three days, with auroras potentially visible at mid-latitudes in Europe and the USA.

[Maol]

This was visible to the naked eye, not to the intensity and detail of the camera images, but ... you could see the colors and movement ... wow..!!

Geomagnetic Storm/Aurora Over the Pacific NW

https://youtu.be/z9O6REY6Cb4

[BeAChooser]

Yeah, it was amazing! Where I was at the time, to the naked eye, it was structured whiteness, with a ghost of color, that covered half the sky. Put a camera on it and there was red, green, even blue. I aimed my camera away from it and found red extending almost to the horizon. And I took a series of pictures of one area a few seconds apart and they show that it was indeed changing from moment to moment. Bucket List, CHECK! WOW!

[Cargo]

Ha, how about this 'prediction' from November 2023

A cluster of sunspots has rolled into view of Earth and may send a solar storm our way as early as Saturday.
The cluster includes about a dozen sunspots that are around 125,000 miles wide— about 15 times bigger than our planet, Space.com reported
.
..
Unfortunately, a new study reveals that this solar maximum is coming sooner than expected – most likely in early 2024..

Wait. What is 15x Earth Wide? 125k Miles or 200km..

[Cargo]

Since Sunspots are externally driven, and all as such is Birklend ropes, this seem Natural. A 'filament' of currents imprinting on the solar surface is tightening, the many strands of the rope become one.

[Roy]

In 1859, there were two major metallic networks. Telegraphs, which were relatively few, and were grounded through the key and the batteries. There was damaged equipment, and fires were started by current swept up by the lines. The other major network was rail lines, which of course are grounded by steel spikes. I don’t know of any damage to rails in 1859.
Now, of course, the earth is covered by power and communications networks, and lots of steel towers. I would expect electricity swept up by the earth to pass much more easily to ground, the load on an individual line would lessened due to the profusion of lines, and that there would be little or no damage.

[BeAChooser]

Now, of course, the earth is covered by power and communications networks, and lots of steel towers. I would expect electricity swept up by the earth to pass much more easily to ground, the load on an individual line would lessened due to the profusion of lines, and that there would be little or no damage.

I hope you're right but I've read that scientists believe a Carrington-sized event could do up to $2 trillion in damage and take 10 years to recover from (https://www.sciencealert.com/how-a-mass ... technology). Newsweek wrote in 2022 (https://www.newsweek.com/doomsday-solar ... ay-1720964) that Lloyds of London concluded in 2013 that “a major space weather event on the scale of the Carrington Event could lead to power loss for a period of weeks or more. This would cause major disruption to transport, food supplies, emergency and hospital services amongst other things. For example, if pumping operations needed to be suspended that would quickly affect water and fuel supplies, sewage systems and flood defences. The absence of such fundamental services could lead to major and widespread social unrest, riots and theft with ramifications for the insurance industry and society in general."

And keep in mind that the Carringon-sized Event is not an upper bound. In fact, based on tree ring data, there was an event around 775 CE called the Miyake event. It produced the largest and fastest rise in carbon-14 ever recorded … a 12 percent increase. By comparison, the Carrington Event produced a less than 1 percent increase. So the Miyake Event likely dwarfed the Carrington Event ... according to some scientists by 10 to 20 TIMES. Ice core date suggests a similar sized event in 660 BCE and another slightly smaller event around 993 CE. So some scientists say that events that size may occur every 500 years or so ... in which case we're overdue.

Now as a point of reference, I read that a geomagnetic storm one-third the size of the Carrington Event occurred in March 1989 and caused the Quebec electrical grid to collapse for nine hours, leaving 5 million people without power in the middle of winter. Imagine what a Carrington, or Miyake-sized event would do? All of which suggests we shouldn’t be too complacent about the damage that a large solar flare could do to our modern world. But then, maybe I just misunderstood you and you’re not complacent at all.

By the way, here’s a graphic that shows the size of the March 1989 sunspot ...



Here's the Carrington sunspot compared to the one in 2003 right before a major solar flare …



And here's the sunspot situation on May 7th last week when the sun flaring caused the auroras we just witnessed …

[Roshi]

Regarding sunspots - a google search on "why are sunspots dark"?

The magnetic field in active sunspot regions can be some 2,500 times stronger than Earth's, according to the NWS. The strong magnetic field inhibits the influx of hot, new gas from the sun's interior, causing sunspots to be cooler and appear darker than their surroundings, relatively speaking

These regions of the sun appear darker because they are cooler than their surroundings. The central dark region, the umbra, is about 6,300 degrees Fahrenheit (3,500 degrees Celsius), whereas the surrounding photosphere is about 10,000 F (5,500 C), according to the National Weather Service (NWS).

https://www.space.com/sunspots-formatio ... servations

Not satisfied with this explanation. What does heat has to do with light?
Because, they also say that light comes from deep inside the Sun:

Over tens of thousands of years, the photons travel a "drunken walk," zigzagging their way from atom to atom until they reach the surface.

https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/11084/

Shouldn't the inside be brighter? Because light is not produced on the surface, and has nothing to do with heat, according to the official explanation.
Also, what does "hot, new gas from the sun's interior" has to do with light? Is the Sun some kind of gas flare? ...

[Roy]

Following BeAChooser’s post, I researched some things. Miyaki event - apparent excess of carbon-14 at times, dated by tree rings: C-14 is attributed to “cosmic rays” striking nitrogen atoms in the ionosphere. So there must be time delay in migration of C-14 to ground, then uptake by plants. There have been claims that C-14 half-life can be affected by outside conditions, so that the dating process has an unknown variable in it. Assigning specific dates would seem to have broad smears in the causes, reasoning from the results back to the causes. Not questioning the logic or the measurements, just the date inferences.
The Hydro-Quebec power failure of 1989 has a Wikipedia page, and footnote 8 leads one to an article on impedance of the lithosphere beneath the places most highly affected by the geomagnetic storm. The electric impedance of the subsurface rock is evidently much higher in those places. I confess I don’t know exactly what this implies. There is something about magnetically induced counter currents? But the H-Q corporation changed their circuit breaker setup so the article says.

The more we know, the more we learn - science wise.