Coronal mass ejections aren't tinfoil hat stuff: during the biggest recorded flare up in history, electrical equipment was passing current even when unplugged.
Solar Storm of 1859 wiki wrote:
Telegraph systems all over Europe and North America failed, in some cases even shocking telegraph operators.[5] Telegraph pylons threw sparks and telegraph paper spontaneously caught fire.[6] Some telegraph systems appeared to continue to send and receive messages despite having been disconnected from their power supplies
and
Ice cores contain thin nitrate-rich layers that can be used to reconstruct a history of past events before reliable observations. These show evidence that events of this magnitude—as measured by high-energy proton radiation, not geomagnetic effect—occur approximately once per 500 years, with events at least one-fifth as large occurring several times per century.[9] Less severe storms have occurred in 1921 and 1960, when widespread radio disruption was reported.
Last edited by alphacat on Tue Mar 13, 2012 4:17 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Can't get that excited to be honest. This blew my mind when I first read about it:
Some time ago, 2.000.000 square miles of the earth's surface was covered in molten rock when a series
of volcanoes erupted in Siberia. All this lava ignited massive coal beds on earth, causing huge amounts of carbon to be
released into the atmosphere. Obviously this disrupted our home planet greatly and 95% of all life was lost
I'm just glad organisations like peta didn't exist back then.
Now back to the sun.
Agent 47 wrote:Next time I can think of something, I will.
kay wrote:Don't have to jump all the way to electron valves, it's possible to shield against the induced current spikes. However, it's costly and heavy so no one does. Switching the circuits off also helps.
However, yes, we're woefully unprepared for this despite knowing for years it's going to happen. More of the pointless shortsightednesss of humanity.
Actually, even unplugging electrical devices won't protect them because the charge gets in anything that conduct electricity due to it's diffusal across the atmosphere. Transistors and voltage transformers will just melt...
Shielding may work, though electron valves are innately protected from this anyway due to their physical characteristics (hence them being used in Russian Mig fighters to withstand EMP from nuclear weapons) - no joined parts and sturdy materials.
I think that if the flare is powerful enough to induce a current strong enough to destroy powered-down circuitry on the ground, we're probably all cooked anyway.
I'm not surprised the Russians have already looked in to it, there's definitely masses of untapped research waiting to be translated from work done investigating indigenous Asian medical/metaphysical philosophies... for instance, did you know that Russian cosmonauts were trained in yogic practices to help them maintain and control their physical bodies in space in a confined environment under extreme demands? They're definitely still looking at this kind of stuff as, unless it's fake (though I'm confident it is possible anyway), I saw a picture of an experiment involving some soldiers watching as a female yogi swam naked in the Arctic with some belugas for investigating the potential of personal survival techniques. Russia tends to go for low tech but arguably more effective solutions to problems due to their ease of implementation.
From what it looks like to me from doing a bit of searching in the mainstream, there is no conclusive evidence that electricity or magnetism causes illness. However, I have seen other evidence advanced that it does more than it it doesn't, I shall have to look for the original references...
May 8, 2012 – SPACE – One of the largest sunspot groups in years rotated over the sun’s northeastern limb this weekend. With a least four dark cores larger than Earth, AR1476 sprawls more than 100,000 km from end to end, and makes an easy target for backyard solar telescopes. Indeed, the active region is crackling with impulsive M-class solar flares. Based on the sunspot’s complex ‘beta-gamma’ magnetic field, NOAA forecasters estimate a 75% chance of more M-flares during the next 24 hours. There is also a 10% chance of powerful X-flares.
Scientists classify solar flares according to their x-ray brightness in the wavelength range 1 to 8 Angstroms. There are 3 categories: X-class flares are big; they are major events that can trigger planet-wide radio blackouts and long-lasting radiation storms. M-class flares are medium-sized; they can cause brief radio blackouts that affect Earth's polar regions. Minor radiation storms sometimes follow an M-class flare. Compared to X- and M-class events, C-class flares are small with few noticeable consequences here on Earth.
The Sun's magnetic field is reversing, South becoming North, as it does approximately every 11 years on a cycle, but this time, something even stranger is going on: The North is moving much faster than the South, and space scientists aren't sure why.
"Right now, there's an imbalance between the north and the south poles," Jonathan Cirtain, NASA's project scientist for a Japanese solar mission called Hinode, in a recent article on NASA's website. "The north is already in transition, well ahead of the south pole, and we don't understand why."
Further, the asymmetrically reversing solar magnetic field could have an effect on Earth, resulting in increased solar flares and the accompanying bursts of radioactive particles called "coronal mass ejections," or CMEs, that can hit Earth and cause brilliant Northern Lights displays and problematic geomagnetic solar storms, according to NASA scientists.
On May 11th at 23:54 UT, a coronal mass ejection raced away from the sun faster than 1000 km/s. The fast-moving cloud will deliver a glancing blow to Earth's magnetic field on May 14th around 14:30 UT, according to a revised forecast track prepared by analysts at the Goddard Space Weather Lab. Mars is also in the line of fire. Magnetic storm alerts: text, phone.
NOAA forecasters estimate a 75% chance of M-class flares and a 20% chance of X-flares during the next 24 hours.
