Posted on 06/15/2018 7:00:06 AM PDT by BenLurkin
One hundred fifty-nine years ago, our sun belched out a sea of charged particles aimed at Earth. It sped toward us at millions of miles per hour, walloping the planet hard enough to addle the world's telegraph systems and bring the northern lights as far south as Jamaica.
Damage from the solar storm, called the Carrington Event, was pretty limited — chiefly because the world didn't have a lot of very long wires that are susceptible to disruption. But that was then, and a massive solar storm will come our way again.
That's because the sun is constantly convulsing with titanic forces, sending megatons of feisty charged particles across the 93 million miles to Earth. Although our planet is shielded by a vast, invisible magnetic field, those charged particles can punch through. When they do, they can cause widespread disruption in today's continent-spanning electrical system. But not just the world's electrical grid. A massive wave of charged particle emissions can also cripple orbiting communications satellites and force planes to detour around radiation-bathed polar regions.
"An event of that scale could be catastrophic if it happened tomorrow," says Francis O'Sullivan, director of research for the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Energy Initiative. "It's not just the lights going off now. It's bank accounts disappearing.
(Excerpt) Read more at cnet.com ...
We aren’t ready for a solar storm smackdown
IF we survived the odongo years, we can survive just about anything.
Does that mean, we’re all gonna die?
Life’ll kill ya! - Warren Zevon
LOL, pretty much.
A.K.A. Give me money for “science” stuff.
Women and minorities hardest hit?
LOL. Good one.
The sun is racist?...
More seriously, many of the fixes to the grid to minimize the effects of a major solar storm are the same as needed for an EMP attack.
Adding a bit of energy to a telegraph line that normally carries a few watts of power is noticeable. Adding the same amount of energy to a power line that carries hundreds of megawatts would be quite a bit less noticeable.
Is it caused by ‘global climate change’ or will it change the climate?
Is it caused by ‘global climate change’ or will it change the climate?
But yet, we may be heading to a period of a very quiet Sun. In that case, we need to worry about a much colder climate that will really affect agriculture—hope people around the world like eating a lot more wheat, because rice production could be seriously affected.
It will cause Bitcoins to glow
Bigly.
We aren’t ready for anything.
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