[Liaison]

Solar flare events take 8 mins to get to earth to affect the magnetosphere and add radiation to the atmosphere. So we should already be cooked or the grid blown up yet? /sarc. Chicken littles looking for advertising and scare jumps

[BenLurkin]

Hey, there ain’t no such thing as a free lunch, pardner.

[coloradan]

Light takes 8 mins, but a CME takes a day or two.

[oldasrocks]

Shades of 1659 when the telegraph lines melted. Imagine what that would do now.

[marktwain]

Solar flare events take 8 mins to get to earth to affect the magnetosphere and add radiation to the atmosphere.

The particles which do the most damage can take hours to a week to reach Earth.

[Vermont Lt]

The particles take about three days. They don’t travel at the speed of light.

[Georgia Girl 2]

Actually they usually take about 48 hours.

[JAKraig]

Solar flare events take 8 mins to get to earth to affect the magnetosphere and add radiation to the atmosphere

__________________________________________________________

Actually, the light from a solar flare takes 8 minutes to reach earth. The light is not harmful. The problem is that there may be a solar mass ejection with it which means that particles of the sun, thousands of tons of matter can be ejected from the sun and are headed towards the earth at high speeds but not nearly as fast as light.

While nobody knows yet the exact speed, if traveling to the earth in 48 hours that would be an approximate speed of 2000 miles per hour. Not light speed but certainly fast. Even very small particles hitting electronic circuit boards in satellites would be harmful at 2000 mph. Particles hitting our atmosphere atoms and molecules at 2000 mph would make them glow brightly. These same particles will charge the molecules and atoms in the upper atmosphere which will make them much less likely to reflect radio waves from earth back down to the earth. Unfortunately those same radio waves tend to be absorbed instead of passed through so that even the radio waves of our various satellites are unable to reach their receiving stations on earth. Worse, the high speed particles hitting the electronics of the satellites can disable or at least damage them.

So, while potentially beautiful, a large CME can cause significant damage on earth. If it is large enough the particles can cause large current spikes in our long electric supply lines which can damage electronics on earth and even potentially damage the transformers that increase and decrease the voltages we need to send power over long distances.

Most CME’s miss the earth, we are a tiny spot in the Suns view but sometimes we are in an unlucky spot. When that happens it is potentially a very serious matter.