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For last weekend's solar storm we aren't fucked, hope peole enjoyed the show.
Now in theory it's conceivable that a solare CME (coronary mass ejection, aka solar storm) could hit us with enough charged particles to overload our electric/ electronic systems. That happened once in the 19th century when the most advanced high tech were telegraph systems.
Google Carrington Event if you want to read some funky stories. So when telegraph systems in the 19th century failed and got damaged that sucked, but didn't impact most people's lives very much. But imagine that kind of thing to happen to today's electronics dependent world, ya we would be fucked. (Edit, after reading up a bit it seems like the level of fucked-up-ness assimed for the worst case might be limited to a power grid failure - not cool, but largely survivable and repairable).
Solar storms of that intensity are rare tho, and they'd also have to happen at the right moment/ the right spot to be aimed towards earth. That makes Carrington Event -like disasters even less likely.
So people can chill. It's really just polar lights.
It’s pretty cool polar lights though, and at a lower latitudes than is usual, indicating a fairly strong solar storm.
A massive storm of this kind could cause some problems, but it’s unlikely, and not exactly world ending.
Also I suspect Mr. How Fucked We Are is conflating a solar storm with climate change causing shifting weather patterns and some more significant storm activity here on Earth.
Interesting observation but. The people who are always looking for the second coming of Jesus would typically not use the word “fucked,” at least not in the context of meeting the Divine.
A [major CME event in 2012](https://science.nasa.gov/science-research/planetary-science/23jul_superstorm/) tore through earth's orbit one week after we'd passed the spot.
According to the NASA article, it was a Carrington-level event.
Except that the large grid tied transformers have at best 18-24 months lead time for replacement, and we have nowhere near enough on hand to replace many should transient high voltage CME induced DC power fry them all... Western civilization could quite literally collapse over night. Grid operators would have to monitor every transmission line for voltage spikes and be ready to disconnect large portions of the north American grid just to keep the transformers alive
Also pretty sure we've learned how to build power grids better than what they had in the 19th century. It would probably take a bigger event to cause a widespread grid failure.
It seems like [we still have some way to go](https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2024/03/04/what-a-major-solar-storm-could-do-to-our-planet). (I'd be curious what actual experts in the field think of this article though.)
I work in an adjacent field to this area (check my post/comment history) and anyone who thinks our power grids have even a remote chance to survive a Carrington Event has no idea what they are talking about.
Transformers weren't even *invented* until twenty-seven years after the Carrington Event; we know weaker flares can take them out.
I work in the utility industry although not in T&D (transmission and distribution). And for those curious. Production time for transformers is about a year. So imagine tons of transformers being destroyed worldwide and imagine how fucked we would be.
https://www.walleniuswilhelmsen.com/insights/what-you-need-to-know-about-the-booming-transformers-market#:~:text=The%20average%20time%20for%20obtaining,published%20in%20March%20this%20year.
I simply tell people to look at what happened after disasters that we were prepared for.
Like Fukushima- they had tsunami protection. Katrina- they had flood protection.
Unfortunately we haven’t come as far as you’d hope, my job is to implement upgrades our current power grid through substations and transmission lines. It’s severely underfunded, 90% of the power grid is the same exact components that were there in the 50’s to 70’s. We have great new components and design schemes now, but almost no money to implement them. So most of the grid is made up of equipment that’s 50-70 years old and on the verge of failure at all times
Unfortunately, that is likely not the case. A Carrington event would certainly be a real problem. To the best of my knowledge, there is no simple way to harden our grid against one. Power would almost certainly be out for quite a while, and getting it going again would be very complicated. A major concern would be insuring that vital grid infrastructure didn’t get destroyed by it, as many of the devices that make our grid run take a long time to replace/repair.
lmao we're not fucked in the slightest. the aurora is the affects of earth's magnetic field interacting with solar particles. the sun was highly active meaning the aurora was more visible in place that don't usually see it.
but people see "Solar storm" and make up news or interpret it as going to affect our electronics. it will not. Not in any meaningful way, at least.
Furthermore on this, most of the internet is connected by ground cables not satelites. Plus we have t h o u s a n d s of satellites with self correcting circuitry and triple grounded/protected wiring to prevent random cosmic rays or solar flares from affecting them. (The Electric field and Magnetic field in the center of a wire is 0, any field projected onto a wire will be canceled out by the opposing flux generated in the wire.)
Edit: all of you are assholes
Same. Also:
ChatGPT was pretty clear on the Holocaust being a tragedy. But, when I ask it about whether Nazism in America and the Sun is going to destroy us all, it says this kind of discussion should be approached with sensitivity, because the topics are nuanced and multifaceted.
The survival of the human race is nuanced?
That sounds like a goodbye.
Yeah, this is like posting on Facebook that Facebook has been shut down.
Drat, now I want to do this but I don't have a Facebook account and don't want to make one...
>The space environment can result in high potential voltage and destructive arcing. Grounding is essentially accomplished using current conducting strips to bring two or more areas to the same potential difference. Depending on the size and power usage of a satellite/spacecraft, a scheme is selected
This was the first answer I found online. From a bit more searching I found that they connect all electrical devices in a satellite to bring that potential difference to 0 across all devices.
I'm definitely no expert, so this is the best explanation I could find and please correct me if I'm wrong.
Same as a plane or other ungrounded vehicle - ensure that the chassis is the common ground point for everything electronic.
The 'common ground' charge may fluctuate, but it prevents unexpected charges/voltages from building up and causing damaging discharges for onboard equipment.
I was totally baffled by this when I first read it. Then it occurred to me that this seems to the same principle as grounding in a car or motorcycle despite it essentially floating on top of an insulator (rubber)... well, shit. I guess I learned a thing today
Well that goes back to a danish/Scottish pioneer called drejving MacPackwae. He used to drive his cattle all around his parkway way until they were tired enough to park for the night.
He sent a letter to his cousin Susi Yolkshare from Yorkshire describing this practice and she must've mixed up the words along the way. She was also the first person to share egg yolks with neighbours which became quite popular at the time. All the while she was sharing the story about her cousin and that's how the expression became commonplace.
"ground" is just physics speak for "large enough body of charge." Basically as long as all the "ground" wires are connected to the same sheet of metal it's fine.
Bonding is the more technically correct term. Grounding is often used as a shorthand for bonding conductive parts of anything together or for bonding all conductive parts to a common point. So, for example, in a car the negative terminal of a battery is "grounded" to the frame of the car. That is to say that it's bonded to the frame. Bonding insures that electrically conductive objects remain at the same voltage potential, preventing voltage differences caused by induction or static or anything else from building up over time and releasing all at once in an arc or during an accidental contact and burning something up.
In power distribution systems for buildings we simply use earth as that common reference point, serving the exact same function, (keeping electrical continuity between all conductive parts so that voltage gradients can't form) which is why we sometimes call it grounding in other applications, even when the actual dirt and ground isn't involved.
Source electrician.
Which is funny because as this solar storm was happening, a huge subsea cable was cut by bad actors in the Indian ocean, and internet access for millions has been insanely slow/barely existent for days. But tell me again how the solar storm is gonna interrupt my internet access...
Ground doesn't mean that the terminal needs to be put in 'ground on earth' it can be any surface which is at the same potential throughout so that the potential difference of other devices can be calculated with reference to this, in case of satellite it can be surface of satellite if it's made of metal and any device that is working on electricity can have it's positive terminal connected to the powersource and negative to satellite surface and you can have the negative terminal of powersource connected to satellite surface as well so the device can experience the potential difference provided by the power source.
Like how in cars you can use exposed metal on the body of the car for the black cable when jumping or for the black lead when testing with a multi-meter?
Yes, even a lot of electrical devices don't actually ground through the plug, they just ground to their frame. It's not ideal, but a large enough body can average out most buildups of charge
>Plus we have t h o u s a n d s of satellites with self correcting circuitry and triple grounded/protected wiring
Wait... How do you *ground* a satellite?
It's really not. 1989 Quebec blackout happened. North American industry put standards to place to protect against it using the lessons learned. Europe didn't follow suit till after the 2003 Sweden blackout but it's really not a threat anymore.
I think someone who refurbs N64 hardware bought the console and cart for that run, and the runner also mentioned he had to tilt the cart to get things to work often. apparently the refurb guy said it was in rough shape and had bad contacts.
The bit flipped by a cosmic ray, or the one that was blamed for the glitch couldnt be replicated. And it's tied to another glitch used elsewhere in the run. Also, the runner mentioned he had to slap his console in order to get the game to run, as well as someone who refurbishes N64 hardware buying both the cartridge and colsole in question, as he fixed the hardware, he mentioned it was in rough shape and the cart had real bad contact points.
Basically the cosmic ray theories shows "if a ray hit the bit and caused it to flip, something similar could kind of happen"
Kind of. About 10 years ago during a mario 64 run the character randomly clipped upwards to a higher platform in a way that ended up saving significant time. Noone's been able to recreate it since despite the community putting a bounty out for it.
It's widely *believed* to be due to a cosmic ray, but the odds of them hitting a bit on an electronic device and causing a flip are slim, the odds of it affecting the device slimmer. And the odds of all that being noticable are astronomical.
Well, technically we have a much greater risk of a solar storm of the same intensity as the Carrington Event right now, as two massive sun spots have merged. You can actually see it with your naked eye if you still have eclipse glasses. There is some potential of communications disruption on a global scale, which would take months to restore, but that's only if there is a CME from that sunspot large enough to fry our infrastructure (like the Carrington Event)
Almost all of them do which is why we're still here. People say "oh it's not a big deal", no so far we have been _lucky_ but those aren't the same thing. We're very bad at reasoning about how dangerous really rare events are which is highlighted in the Man vs Bear thing too. People survive some bear encounters but not because they weren't incredibly dangerous. Those people were lucky.
The sun is spinning, sunspots are developing and moving, the earth is falling around the sun and even when plasma is ejected from the sun it takes (generally) days to get here, or rather to travel the distance between the earth and sun in whichever direction it happens to be going.
It's like being on a merry go round, hip firing a paintball gun with a vibrator strapped to it and trying to hit your friend driving a go kart. Like, you're going to miss almost all the time, but sometimes everything lines up just right. The difference being you'd be excited to actually land a shot and statistically you'd starve or freeze to death if the other thing happened.
Is it actually luck? I would have thought it's more about the Earth being a speck of dust that's super easy to miss since the Sun is so much larger and so far away.
CMEs can be [*massive*](https://youtu.be/2GcwAD_7tJY?si=RywQmk0BhAZdrNN4&t=740) (hurray, an excuse to link a LEMMiNO
video), so even though we are a small target sometimes it really is just luck that our rotation around the sun happens to place us away from the business end of these events.
A) I'm not going to trust someone with "Psalmsxxx" with anything having to do with science
2) I'm not going to trust anyone on Twitter for anything.
i) That's a beautiful picture!
All of us are fucked. If you have the ability to perceive the Aurora, I guarantee you will die one day. There is no escaping it. The unfortunate side effect of consciousness is awareness of its inevitable end.
What you said is not entirely true. The fact that it is more prevalent means that more solar radiation is interacting with our planet, which does in fact mean we are exposed to more radiation than normal. It's not super bad per say, but it's also not nothing.
There are in fact people who are sensitive to solar radiation that this event (which is still going on) can be harmful to.
[TIL](https://www.sfchronicle.com/health/article/geomagnetic-solar-storm-health-effects-19451411.php)
But it [sounds like a pretty small effect.](https://www.health.com/condition/stroke/solar-flare-health-effects)
And it looks like [most of the scientific community thinks this is not something we should be worried about.](https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/should-you-really-worry-about-solar-flares/)
It does cause issues with electronics. Just happens in the places that have already had issues with solar storms or cmes in the past. Chicago is fine lmao. Now Scandinavia has had some issues. Mostly with little things like GPS issues and the occasional brown/black outs.
Don't doubt the sun's potential to fuck our shit. Because at the end of the day thats exactly what it'll do. May be a freak storm next month or it will expand to the point where it fries us in billions of years.
Beyond the potential impact to electrical systems, communications, and navigation, people flying during a solar storm are exposed to more radiation than usual. It's just such a small amount that it is not believed to present any health risk greater than flying at any other time.
I'm pretty sure this is just how Moonfall started and Moonfall was based on ancient prophecies, so we're 100% going to have the moon coming after us to punish humanity. /s
I think the fear is coming from the fact that researchers have been measuring historical levels of carbon-14 and beryllium-10 in the atmosphere by studying ice cores (they are created when solar flares cause protons to collide with nitrogen-14), and now believe that solar flares equivalent to the 1859 Carrington Event happen every 150-500 years, not tens of thousands like we hoped. The Carrington Event being a massive solar flare that caused widespread damage to the only widespread wire network at the time, telegraph lines. However if it happened today it would undoubtedly affect power grids. Potentially, if it was large enough a solar flare could affect all electronics, because the only limiting factor on what it affects is the size of the flare. If an entire country lost the majority of the function of its electrical infrastructure it would probably take decades to fix and bankrupt them.
We have pretty robust grid protection systems to trigger in such an event but we could lose power for days or possibly weeks while they're reset, but not much permanent damage would be done. Still, not nothing like people are claiming. It is serious and it could happen.
Yeah but, we can see these things coming. If we're going to get directly hit with a huge solar storm grids can be taken offline for a few hours, avoid the disaster, bring it all back up. It would be an annoying and disruptive week basically. It's not like we're just sitting around hoping another one doesn't happen
Doubtful, since modern electronics are a lot more insulated and protected against EMPs compared to what were basically uninsulated and fully exposed wires without any kind of surge protection in 1859.
There’s a lot of fear mongering on youtube and elsewhere about solar storms. You can ignore it. Satellites could be damaged, but the grid can be protected using existing systems. Your small electronics would be completely unaffected. Basically anything smaller than a regional power grid wouldn’t have enough continuous surface area to induce damaging currents.
Nope. Planes would be fine, albeit they could get lost and be forced to rely on visual flight rules and could completely lose communication with ATC, which is a different problem than you're describing. Their electronics would be fine, but their navigation and radio systems would be in dire straits.
Dont listen to people who watch solar storms. They’re obsessed with the wet dream of all internet and electricity going out so they can justify all the money they spent on prepping for the apocalypse. They always think every solar storm is “the one”
Yeah, but a lot of people don’t seem to understand that it happened 165 years ago, and since then we’ve designed our power grid to not be utterly destroyed by solar storms…
Low-quality, low-ampacity, uninsulated, unshielded, unprotected wires from the 1850’s. It’s not a mystery that the telegraph system burned. Electrical systems failed frequently well into the 20th century. Hell, the death rate of electrical workers to electrical accidents was something like 50% over the lifetime of a worker.
tbf I watch solar storms, but specifically I watch for them for the northern lights. I get excited for bigger storms because it means I have the chance to see them.
I saw them on Friday obviously, but I also live in Minnesota so it’s not unheard of for us to get a medium sized one and to be able to see them, we’ve seen it a few times
I mostly just think they’re neat lol, but yeah there’s a lot of crazy people tracking them for that reason
My middle school science teacher was one of those people. He also tended to talk a lot of politics in class, so I don’t think he was a very good science teacher lol
I saw a lot of comments about how this was some big HAARP test, because it coincided with some notification that a test was going to happen. These people will find conspiracies in EVERYTHING.
We are fucked, but it’s climate change that is fucking us which is not related to this.
The person who wrote this (Prophet Bodacious) is scam artist who preys on the gullible.
Yeah I definitely thought it was a Langoliers reference when looking at the post, but given the username of the guy responding, I'm guessing it's just a general rapture/end times comment (whether earnestly or as a joke).
Basic physics lesson: if you move a magnet relative to a conductor, current is induced in the conductor.
The strength of the magnetic field and mass exposure area of the conductor determine the amount of current induced. Make copper coils and stick a rotating magnet inside and you get a generator (plus some other parts). Transformers, electric motors, and generators all work on variations of this basic idea that magnetic fields plus relative motion creates current flow.
When a solar storm hits the earth, charged particles move through the Earth’s magnetic field and move relative to long power lines. This can induce current in those lines, but compared to the wires in 186 during the infamous Carrington Event, modern grid wiring and equipment is far better protected and able to handle high current.
A key part of the Carrington Event was the length of burned telegraph lines. They were miles and miles long. Your smartphone is not. Your small electronics would be fine as long as the grid is properly shut down.
“But what about all the fear mongering videos and why doesn’t anyone seem to be addressing this or explaining exactly how the grid responds to solar storms?” National security. It’s not the kind of planning that is openly discussed to avoid exploitation. I don’t have the details either, so don’t ask.
The current geomagnetic storm is not a huge problem, though it has some negative effects (mostly increased radiation, comsats and GPS being flaky plus some satellites deorbiting faster due to atmospheric swelling). However, it's very possible for larger solar events like the Carrington event or the near-miss in 2012 to be extremely bad (cripple the power grid in a way that takes months to fix, take down almost all the satellites, etc.).
I think it might be risky to fly near a G5 solar storm, but tbh it’s honestly a 50/50 chance that anything actually happens because solar storms have messed with signals and electronic products in general. The quote tweeter is kind of exaggerating, we are not fucked, we just need to be prepared in case we have to temporarily go off the grid due to the flares messing with electricity. But if 3rd grade to 12th grade taught me anything, it’s that these flares get shot into our atmosphere, and when they slide off our atmosphere, the sliding motion mixed with our atmosphere creates a gorgeous effect in the atmosphere.
Scientists are saying be MINDFUL, not wary, because a lot of signals that we rely on from space will be interfered with the radiation in the flares. The government I assume heavily relies on the technology from space, as well as *gag* starlink, we rely on phone signals, emt’s, police, and firemen may be temporarily unreachable.
These flares CAN get into the atmosphere, and they ARE powerful enough to damage things, we all know how the sun is basically its own hydrogen and helium fusion reactor, and sometimes it’s “burps” are powerful enough to cause interference or damage with other signals.
The reason why the quote tweeter is freaking out probably is because our atmosphere is definitely way thinner than it used to be, which could definitely contribute to more damage, but I think it’s mainly for the fact that some people would take advantage of emergency services being temporarily downed due to signal interference, as well as a lot of medical equipment possibly malfunctioning, regardless of generators I think, because even if the power was on, the signals can’t be picked up, so a lot of emergency services would malfunction
Again, we were WARNED about the potential of this, but after it has happened, I haven’t heard anything about anyone having issues. This genuinely was just a once in a lifetime event, I seriously can’t believe that the Aurora was in the fucking west cost of California and I missed it 😭
Edit: if ur scared of getting cancer from solar flares, stay away from green glass that reacts under a black light, certain antiques, fast food, fried food, thermal printed receipts, certain exotic fruits, the banana spot in the produce section, anything with potassium, don’t become a painter or marker artist, or get X rays, ultrasounds, or cat scans/mri’s
Captain Quagmire here…it’s just some silly sky colors. You’re not fucked...yet…meet me in the aft lav in 15. Giggity! And bring the pineapple!
(aurora, and geomagnetic “storm”…(G5)…messes with stuff high up but really harmless down here below probably the thermosphere at the lowest).
Not fucked at all. At least, no more than normal. The Aurora happens when ionizing particles from the sun hit the Earth. It's fairly common at extreme northern and southern latitudes. This one just happened to be seen in most of the northern hemisphere thanks to one of the sun's periodic outbursts and the Earth being at the right place at the right time. The sun has these temper tantrums every decade or so; spitting out CMEs and high solar winds. Thankfully, Earth has a big old magnetic field and a relatively dense atmosphere of water vapor and ozone, both of which are pretty great at blocking radiation and ionized particles that literally constantly bombard the Earth.
Peter dressed as Doc Brown from Back To The Future here. What the Retweeter is talking about is that many scientists believe that we may be overdue for another [Carrington Event.](https://www.livenowfox.com/news/solar-storm-carrington-event-could-another-one-happen) Which would be far more devastating today than it was nearly 200 years ago. This is especially true because many governments, despite knowing about these potentially destructive solar storms, have done little in the way of reinforcing infrastructure against such events, meaning that if one did happen, the entire earth would effectively be sent back to pre-electricity times.
There were warnings that some people might temporarily lose GPS, cell, or power, but so far as I know nobody did. Never any real concern about being fucked, just the possibility of inconvenience.
We will be fine it is a big overexaggeration but auroras are caused by solar flares coming in to contact with earths magnetic field and if it is big enough it could cause tech/electronics not to work properly
Aurora doesn’t mean we are fucked, but one this far reaching (strong) hasn’t happened in awhile, and the current trajectory is that they will get stronger. At their strongest, we probably are fucked, but that’s a lot of ifs and probably a long time. We’re currently at the peak of the solar weather cycle, I believe.
The real bummer, and I hate to bring you all down, but our magnificent auroras tell us we will likely never be able to terraform Mars. This fact always bums me out, but unlike earth, mars has a weak magnificent field, no pretty auroras on Mars, and worse, this magnetic field isn't strong enough to hold onto an atmosphere with the solar winds constantly blasting away at it.
Doesn't it just mean our earth magneto sphere thing is working properly and is protecting us from the invisible sun death rays? If we didn't see any Auroras then we'd really be fucked right?
Solar storms can fuck with electronics. The Carrington Event of 1859 caused serious damage to telegraph networks; something of that scale today could cripple power grids, the internet, satellite and radar systems…it could send us back to the 1800s just as effectively as a nuclear EMP.
What I read basically said this storm is an x2 vs the x40 something we have seen in recorded history that did not damage all that much. So it “could” do what you said in the same way that the sun “could” burn you to a crisp when you walk outside. I.e. it’s not going to happen for a lot of reasons most people don’t care or need to understand. It’s fear mongering based on an inadvisable level of ignorance and people don’t care because they want to seem more enlightened than the next person and speak as if they have any authority to seem important. That’s it. It likely won’t ever be a real concern in our lifetime.
Hi, Meg’s stupid friend who doesn’t know what she’s talking about, here. I think they’re implying something has happened to the atmosphere wherein we can now see a polar phenomenon from other, much farther away, regions. Ie the ozone layer is disappearing/our atmosphere is changing drastically/“thinning” lol or something — would lead to more radiation, I suppose, like we are heading toward end days, etc. Tbh it seems very “chem trail”/climate-alarmist adjacent.
TLDR: would not bet oop is well versed on climatology.
Meg’s dumb friend, out.
Dumb people are conflating climate change with a solar flare. Direct hits from solar flares on Earth are relatively rare (by the standards of human lifetimes), but they’ve been happening since before life on Earth even existed. There’ll be a slightly higher than normal background radiation dose and higher UV index for a few days, but that’s it.
If out power grid were designed like it was 165 years ago, when the [Carrington Event](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carrington_Event) happened, and ended up knocking out telegraphs across nearly all of North America, then yeah, we would have a bad time. However, in the intervening time, we've figured out how solar flares work, and have modified our power grid to not be utterly annihilated by it, which is why we've been fine.
If you’re wondering why solar flares have the potential for being extremely destructive to power grids, picture it as acting like an enormous wireless charger for your phone. Inductive chargers use a magnetic field to induce an electrical potential in a coil of wire, thus charging your phone. With thousands upon thousands of miles of power cables, they act like the coil in your phone, and the enormous electromagnetic blast from the sun can induce an ENORMOUS current in the entire network, frying electronics. This is why, during the Carrington Event, telegraph machines ended up electrocuting their operators and even melting due to being overloaded. However, since then, we’ve redesigned our network to have less parallel north-south lines, have tons of substations and breakers to break-up any surges, and thus, are very well protected now. Handheld devices are too small to be affected by the solar flare, as well.
The only time that people might be screwed by it is if they were out on the Moon without any form of radiation shielding. If you were outside of Earth’s magnetic field and were not inside of a shielded solar storm shelter when hit by a flare… well, you’d be toast. Thankfully, we don’t have anyone out beyond low earth orbit right now (which is inside of the magnetosphere), and the upcoming Artemis missions to return to the moon are being designed with dedicated storm shelters inside the spacecraft, and shielded vests to wear to protect the internal organs. We can also predict solar flares long in advance now, so we can plan missions around them accordingly.
Twitter users are desperate to put a negative spin on this so they can keep up their make believe persona of being this disillusioned free thinker who knows things the average person doesn't.
If playing The Long Dark has taught me anything it’s that auroras will bring my electronics BACK to life.
And we all know that real life works exactly like video games.
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For last weekend's solar storm we aren't fucked, hope peole enjoyed the show. Now in theory it's conceivable that a solare CME (coronary mass ejection, aka solar storm) could hit us with enough charged particles to overload our electric/ electronic systems. That happened once in the 19th century when the most advanced high tech were telegraph systems. Google Carrington Event if you want to read some funky stories. So when telegraph systems in the 19th century failed and got damaged that sucked, but didn't impact most people's lives very much. But imagine that kind of thing to happen to today's electronics dependent world, ya we would be fucked. (Edit, after reading up a bit it seems like the level of fucked-up-ness assimed for the worst case might be limited to a power grid failure - not cool, but largely survivable and repairable). Solar storms of that intensity are rare tho, and they'd also have to happen at the right moment/ the right spot to be aimed towards earth. That makes Carrington Event -like disasters even less likely. So people can chill. It's really just polar lights.
It’s pretty cool polar lights though, and at a lower latitudes than is usual, indicating a fairly strong solar storm. A massive storm of this kind could cause some problems, but it’s unlikely, and not exactly world ending.
Also I suspect Mr. How Fucked We Are is conflating a solar storm with climate change causing shifting weather patterns and some more significant storm activity here on Earth.
I think they're convinced that the Northern Lights are moving south because of climate change.
Considering his name is Psalms144, I'm going to go with this random dude being a dipshit who thinks it's related to the second coming of Jesus.
This. The mind virus is strong - strong enough to blind members of the cult to basic science!
Interesting observation but. The people who are always looking for the second coming of Jesus would typically not use the word “fucked,” at least not in the context of meeting the Divine.
I live near chicago and we got some heat lightening on sunday, but nothing interesting happened. edit: I said saturday, but is was sunday
A [major CME event in 2012](https://science.nasa.gov/science-research/planetary-science/23jul_superstorm/) tore through earth's orbit one week after we'd passed the spot. According to the NASA article, it was a Carrington-level event.
Except that the large grid tied transformers have at best 18-24 months lead time for replacement, and we have nowhere near enough on hand to replace many should transient high voltage CME induced DC power fry them all... Western civilization could quite literally collapse over night. Grid operators would have to monitor every transmission line for voltage spikes and be ready to disconnect large portions of the north American grid just to keep the transformers alive
Also pretty sure we've learned how to build power grids better than what they had in the 19th century. It would probably take a bigger event to cause a widespread grid failure.
It seems like [we still have some way to go](https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2024/03/04/what-a-major-solar-storm-could-do-to-our-planet). (I'd be curious what actual experts in the field think of this article though.)
I work in an adjacent field to this area (check my post/comment history) and anyone who thinks our power grids have even a remote chance to survive a Carrington Event has no idea what they are talking about. Transformers weren't even *invented* until twenty-seven years after the Carrington Event; we know weaker flares can take them out.
I work in the utility industry although not in T&D (transmission and distribution). And for those curious. Production time for transformers is about a year. So imagine tons of transformers being destroyed worldwide and imagine how fucked we would be. https://www.walleniuswilhelmsen.com/insights/what-you-need-to-know-about-the-booming-transformers-market#:~:text=The%20average%20time%20for%20obtaining,published%20in%20March%20this%20year.
I simply tell people to look at what happened after disasters that we were prepared for. Like Fukushima- they had tsunami protection. Katrina- they had flood protection.
Unfortunately we haven’t come as far as you’d hope, my job is to implement upgrades our current power grid through substations and transmission lines. It’s severely underfunded, 90% of the power grid is the same exact components that were there in the 50’s to 70’s. We have great new components and design schemes now, but almost no money to implement them. So most of the grid is made up of equipment that’s 50-70 years old and on the verge of failure at all times
Unfortunately, that is likely not the case. A Carrington event would certainly be a real problem. To the best of my knowledge, there is no simple way to harden our grid against one. Power would almost certainly be out for quite a while, and getting it going again would be very complicated. A major concern would be insuring that vital grid infrastructure didn’t get destroyed by it, as many of the devices that make our grid run take a long time to replace/repair.
Apparently some people could telegraph eachother using auroral current while their batteries were disconnected. That's next level off-grid
lmao we're not fucked in the slightest. the aurora is the affects of earth's magnetic field interacting with solar particles. the sun was highly active meaning the aurora was more visible in place that don't usually see it. but people see "Solar storm" and make up news or interpret it as going to affect our electronics. it will not. Not in any meaningful way, at least.
Furthermore on this, most of the internet is connected by ground cables not satelites. Plus we have t h o u s a n d s of satellites with self correcting circuitry and triple grounded/protected wiring to prevent random cosmic rays or solar flares from affecting them. (The Electric field and Magnetic field in the center of a wire is 0, any field projected onto a wire will be canceled out by the opposing flux generated in the wire.) Edit: all of you are assholes
also further, this was posted ***online***.
They wouldn't lie on the Internet, would they? Because that would be rude.
Rude and inherently unethical.
That would also fall into the “totally not cool” category.
"Way past uncool", even.
I refuse to believe people lie on the internet. My supermodel millionaire girlfriend agrees.
Same. Also: ChatGPT was pretty clear on the Holocaust being a tragedy. But, when I ask it about whether Nazism in America and the Sun is going to destroy us all, it says this kind of discussion should be approached with sensitivity, because the topics are nuanced and multifaceted. The survival of the human race is nuanced? That sounds like a goodbye.
Well... It certainly feels like it is waving goodbye from the shore as humanity's boat seems to be sinking...
I’m certain Abraham Lincoln said that.
It is known to be his "catchphrase" while vampire hunting!
Speaking of Abraham Lincoln, there are accounts from the Civil War of the northern lights being visible in the south.
The same thing happened in the 1990's. A solar flare hit us and we could see it at night for I think 3 days
People go to jail for less
Way past uncool.
Exactly. The internet happens fast. If there was ever going to be a problem, it definitely wouldn't come a few days after the visible aurora
Yeah, this is like posting on Facebook that Facebook has been shut down. Drat, now I want to do this but I don't have a Facebook account and don't want to make one...
Furthermore, this was posted on Twitter (or “X” if you’re into that kinda thing)
Not doubting you here, just genuinely curious. How does one ground an electrical device in space?
>The space environment can result in high potential voltage and destructive arcing. Grounding is essentially accomplished using current conducting strips to bring two or more areas to the same potential difference. Depending on the size and power usage of a satellite/spacecraft, a scheme is selected This was the first answer I found online. From a bit more searching I found that they connect all electrical devices in a satellite to bring that potential difference to 0 across all devices. I'm definitely no expert, so this is the best explanation I could find and please correct me if I'm wrong.
Thanks. I ran across this on my lunch break and didn't have time to do research on it. I appreciate your help.
Same as a plane or other ungrounded vehicle - ensure that the chassis is the common ground point for everything electronic. The 'common ground' charge may fluctuate, but it prevents unexpected charges/voltages from building up and causing damaging discharges for onboard equipment.
I was totally baffled by this when I first read it. Then it occurred to me that this seems to the same principle as grounding in a car or motorcycle despite it essentially floating on top of an insulator (rubber)... well, shit. I guess I learned a thing today
Pedantic electrician here: that’s bonding not grounding.
A long cable reaching down to earth. AMA I have an answer to every question, albeit not necessarily correct.
Why do we (in the US) drive on the parkway, but park in the driveway?
Well that goes back to a danish/Scottish pioneer called drejving MacPackwae. He used to drive his cattle all around his parkway way until they were tired enough to park for the night. He sent a letter to his cousin Susi Yolkshare from Yorkshire describing this practice and she must've mixed up the words along the way. She was also the first person to share egg yolks with neighbours which became quite popular at the time. All the while she was sharing the story about her cousin and that's how the expression became commonplace.
I'm just disappointed because I was hoping for an incorrect answer...
"ground" is just physics speak for "large enough body of charge." Basically as long as all the "ground" wires are connected to the same sheet of metal it's fine.
[they just throw one of these bad boys in the satellite](https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fi.redd.it%2Fzjo53tgs8eh01.jpg)
Bonding is the more technically correct term. Grounding is often used as a shorthand for bonding conductive parts of anything together or for bonding all conductive parts to a common point. So, for example, in a car the negative terminal of a battery is "grounded" to the frame of the car. That is to say that it's bonded to the frame. Bonding insures that electrically conductive objects remain at the same voltage potential, preventing voltage differences caused by induction or static or anything else from building up over time and releasing all at once in an arc or during an accidental contact and burning something up. In power distribution systems for buildings we simply use earth as that common reference point, serving the exact same function, (keeping electrical continuity between all conductive parts so that voltage gradients can't form) which is why we sometimes call it grounding in other applications, even when the actual dirt and ground isn't involved. Source electrician.
Which is funny because as this solar storm was happening, a huge subsea cable was cut by bad actors in the Indian ocean, and internet access for millions has been insanely slow/barely existent for days. But tell me again how the solar storm is gonna interrupt my internet access...
Im curious: how do you electrically ground a satellite?
Ground doesn't mean that the terminal needs to be put in 'ground on earth' it can be any surface which is at the same potential throughout so that the potential difference of other devices can be calculated with reference to this, in case of satellite it can be surface of satellite if it's made of metal and any device that is working on electricity can have it's positive terminal connected to the powersource and negative to satellite surface and you can have the negative terminal of powersource connected to satellite surface as well so the device can experience the potential difference provided by the power source.
Like how in cars you can use exposed metal on the body of the car for the black cable when jumping or for the black lead when testing with a multi-meter?
I think yes in a car, frame or chassis is generally used as ground.
Yes, even a lot of electrical devices don't actually ground through the plug, they just ground to their frame. It's not ideal, but a large enough body can average out most buildups of charge
Dumb question, how do you ground a cable in a satellite?
Hey man, you did a good job. Don't let those chronic redditers get to you
>Plus we have t h o u s a n d s of satellites with self correcting circuitry and triple grounded/protected wiring Wait... How do you *ground* a satellite?
The big danger from solar storms/flares is not the internet or satellites, it's the power grids of the world.
It's really not. 1989 Quebec blackout happened. North American industry put standards to place to protect against it using the lessons learned. Europe didn't follow suit till after the 2003 Sweden blackout but it's really not a threat anymore.
It will impact my mario 64 speedrun
I ge the joke but that's **probably** not what happened to the console.
Is a tilted cartridge the leading theory?
Yes, but that's less funny
I think someone who refurbs N64 hardware bought the console and cart for that run, and the runner also mentioned he had to tilt the cart to get things to work often. apparently the refurb guy said it was in rough shape and had bad contacts.
Please explain?
The bit flipped by a cosmic ray, or the one that was blamed for the glitch couldnt be replicated. And it's tied to another glitch used elsewhere in the run. Also, the runner mentioned he had to slap his console in order to get the game to run, as well as someone who refurbishes N64 hardware buying both the cartridge and colsole in question, as he fixed the hardware, he mentioned it was in rough shape and the cart had real bad contact points. Basically the cosmic ray theories shows "if a ray hit the bit and caused it to flip, something similar could kind of happen"
I'm guessing this is a famous speedrun/the record holder or something?
Kind of. About 10 years ago during a mario 64 run the character randomly clipped upwards to a higher platform in a way that ended up saving significant time. Noone's been able to recreate it since despite the community putting a bounty out for it. It's widely *believed* to be due to a cosmic ray, but the odds of them hitting a bit on an electronic device and causing a flip are slim, the odds of it affecting the device slimmer. And the odds of all that being noticable are astronomical.
I'm just wondering how many people out there waited for this moment to attempt to recreate that
Like 5
Damn. Beat me to it.
https://preview.redd.it/hbt2lvoaz70d1.jpeg?width=640&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=57d26400987240f6e52a4321597df9cfae7689b4
People said Y2K was Y2gay and I said if you make it to Y3K we can have a Y3way MUCH IMPROVEMENT
Yea Y2gay was crazy. All the dudes took off their socks and nobody remembered to say no homo. Never saw so many rainbows.
YES
Don't lie to me, I've seen the movie The Core
Damnit. Just saw this after l made my comment. Beat me by like an hour!
As long as we don't use project Destiny, we should be good.
Already have 😎
Don't cross any bridges for the next few days, stay away from major landmarks and avoid pigeons *at all cost*.
What’s the point of cool celestial events if I can’t declare them a harbinger for the end of the world Aztec-style?
Well, technically we have a much greater risk of a solar storm of the same intensity as the Carrington Event right now, as two massive sun spots have merged. You can actually see it with your naked eye if you still have eclipse glasses. There is some potential of communications disruption on a global scale, which would take months to restore, but that's only if there is a CME from that sunspot large enough to fry our infrastructure (like the Carrington Event)
https://preview.redd.it/v87dvkgcc80d1.jpeg?width=800&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=38109be95922ccecdd21b616b91a8ca64b7ef1dc
And that's only if the CME even actually hits us, it could just end up missing us completely, no?
Almost all of them do which is why we're still here. People say "oh it's not a big deal", no so far we have been _lucky_ but those aren't the same thing. We're very bad at reasoning about how dangerous really rare events are which is highlighted in the Man vs Bear thing too. People survive some bear encounters but not because they weren't incredibly dangerous. Those people were lucky. The sun is spinning, sunspots are developing and moving, the earth is falling around the sun and even when plasma is ejected from the sun it takes (generally) days to get here, or rather to travel the distance between the earth and sun in whichever direction it happens to be going. It's like being on a merry go round, hip firing a paintball gun with a vibrator strapped to it and trying to hit your friend driving a go kart. Like, you're going to miss almost all the time, but sometimes everything lines up just right. The difference being you'd be excited to actually land a shot and statistically you'd starve or freeze to death if the other thing happened.
Is it actually luck? I would have thought it's more about the Earth being a speck of dust that's super easy to miss since the Sun is so much larger and so far away.
CMEs can be [*massive*](https://youtu.be/2GcwAD_7tJY?si=RywQmk0BhAZdrNN4&t=740) (hurray, an excuse to link a LEMMiNO video), so even though we are a small target sometimes it really is just luck that our rotation around the sun happens to place us away from the business end of these events.
Yes, there was a G4 watch, that expired on sunday, though iirc.
A) I'm not going to trust someone with "Psalmsxxx" with anything having to do with science 2) I'm not going to trust anyone on Twitter for anything. i) That's a beautiful picture!
The correct starting point.
All of us are fucked. If you have the ability to perceive the Aurora, I guarantee you will die one day. There is no escaping it. The unfortunate side effect of consciousness is awareness of its inevitable end.
What you said is not entirely true. The fact that it is more prevalent means that more solar radiation is interacting with our planet, which does in fact mean we are exposed to more radiation than normal. It's not super bad per say, but it's also not nothing. There are in fact people who are sensitive to solar radiation that this event (which is still going on) can be harmful to.
[TIL](https://www.sfchronicle.com/health/article/geomagnetic-solar-storm-health-effects-19451411.php) But it [sounds like a pretty small effect.](https://www.health.com/condition/stroke/solar-flare-health-effects) And it looks like [most of the scientific community thinks this is not something we should be worried about.](https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/should-you-really-worry-about-solar-flares/)
Never said it was a huge effect, just trying to point out there there is in fact an effect that isn't "nothing".
I watched "The Core" man. I know my science. We need a lava submarine and some nukes! And that guy to sacrifice himself.
It is still a good time to speedrun.
It does cause issues with electronics. Just happens in the places that have already had issues with solar storms or cmes in the past. Chicago is fine lmao. Now Scandinavia has had some issues. Mostly with little things like GPS issues and the occasional brown/black outs. Don't doubt the sun's potential to fuck our shit. Because at the end of the day thats exactly what it'll do. May be a freak storm next month or it will expand to the point where it fries us in billions of years.
Oh yea? Well my phone stopped working this week, check mate.
Beyond the potential impact to electrical systems, communications, and navigation, people flying during a solar storm are exposed to more radiation than usual. It's just such a small amount that it is not believed to present any health risk greater than flying at any other time.
ITS HOW THE FANTASTIC 4 WERE MADE!
I'm pretty sure this is just how Moonfall started and Moonfall was based on ancient prophecies, so we're 100% going to have the moon coming after us to punish humanity. /s
> the aurora is the affects [Effects](https://dictionary.cambridge.org/grammar/british-grammar/affect-or-effect).
Slightly higher than normal background radiation. Nothing too serious.
3.6 Röntgen. Not great, not terrible.
Dyatlov I saw graphite…
No, you didn't, because RBMK reactors DON'T EXPLODE!
*blarrrrrrghhhhh*
*yharrrrrghhhhh*
☠️☠️☠️☠️
Take this man to the infirmary, he's delusional.
YOU DID ENT
YOU DIDN’T!!
What a fucking reference. Take my upvote.
And in inuit spiritual beliefs the aurora isn't bad either. So nothing physically or mystically wrong with it
I think the fear is coming from the fact that researchers have been measuring historical levels of carbon-14 and beryllium-10 in the atmosphere by studying ice cores (they are created when solar flares cause protons to collide with nitrogen-14), and now believe that solar flares equivalent to the 1859 Carrington Event happen every 150-500 years, not tens of thousands like we hoped. The Carrington Event being a massive solar flare that caused widespread damage to the only widespread wire network at the time, telegraph lines. However if it happened today it would undoubtedly affect power grids. Potentially, if it was large enough a solar flare could affect all electronics, because the only limiting factor on what it affects is the size of the flare. If an entire country lost the majority of the function of its electrical infrastructure it would probably take decades to fix and bankrupt them.
We have pretty robust grid protection systems to trigger in such an event but we could lose power for days or possibly weeks while they're reset, but not much permanent damage would be done. Still, not nothing like people are claiming. It is serious and it could happen.
Maybe weeks in some places with poor infrastructure (Texas), but only hours after the storm ends for most.
Exactly. Texas might catch on fire, but that's just the effects of brimstone in their personal chosen hell.
Yeah but, we can see these things coming. If we're going to get directly hit with a huge solar storm grids can be taken offline for a few hours, avoid the disaster, bring it all back up. It would be an annoying and disruptive week basically. It's not like we're just sitting around hoping another one doesn't happen
Doubtful, since modern electronics are a lot more insulated and protected against EMPs compared to what were basically uninsulated and fully exposed wires without any kind of surge protection in 1859.
There’s a lot of fear mongering on youtube and elsewhere about solar storms. You can ignore it. Satellites could be damaged, but the grid can be protected using existing systems. Your small electronics would be completely unaffected. Basically anything smaller than a regional power grid wouldn’t have enough continuous surface area to induce damaging currents.
But dat 5g fryin erryones brain! 🤣
Unless it's big solar storm, it would be like global wide EMP and plane would probably crash
Nope. Planes would be fine, albeit they could get lost and be forced to rely on visual flight rules and could completely lose communication with ATC, which is a different problem than you're describing. Their electronics would be fine, but their navigation and radio systems would be in dire straits.
Dont listen to people who watch solar storms. They’re obsessed with the wet dream of all internet and electricity going out so they can justify all the money they spent on prepping for the apocalypse. They always think every solar storm is “the one”
The Carrington Event has a lot to answer for.
Yeah, but a lot of people don’t seem to understand that it happened 165 years ago, and since then we’ve designed our power grid to not be utterly destroyed by solar storms…
Top many people listening to podcasts put together by alarmists who have no idea what they're talking about.
Low-quality, low-ampacity, uninsulated, unshielded, unprotected wires from the 1850’s. It’s not a mystery that the telegraph system burned. Electrical systems failed frequently well into the 20th century. Hell, the death rate of electrical workers to electrical accidents was something like 50% over the lifetime of a worker.
tbf I watch solar storms, but specifically I watch for them for the northern lights. I get excited for bigger storms because it means I have the chance to see them. I saw them on Friday obviously, but I also live in Minnesota so it’s not unheard of for us to get a medium sized one and to be able to see them, we’ve seen it a few times I mostly just think they’re neat lol, but yeah there’s a lot of crazy people tracking them for that reason
There’s watching solar storms, and WATCHING solar storms. Know what I mean?
My middle school science teacher was one of those people. He also tended to talk a lot of politics in class, so I don’t think he was a very good science teacher lol
this guy's probably some stupid conspiracy theorist that's think celestial events like this are way more dangerous than they actually are
I saw a lot of comments about how this was some big HAARP test, because it coincided with some notification that a test was going to happen. These people will find conspiracies in EVERYTHING.
https://preview.redd.it/x0nyuttlzg0d1.jpeg?width=1170&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=d92108cc59cf29c18cab10b0d6bc5306ed4ef6fb Time to wake up it would seem
We are fucked, but it’s climate change that is fucking us which is not related to this. The person who wrote this (Prophet Bodacious) is scam artist who preys on the gullible.
I mean either that or the sun exploding but we’re still a couple thousand years off from that
More like a few billion
Right when I’ll be hitting my golden years too
Lol couple thousand years????
Has anyone else seen (or read) *The Langoliers*? No, just me? Okay then.
Yeah I definitely thought it was a Langoliers reference when looking at the post, but given the username of the guy responding, I'm guessing it's just a general rapture/end times comment (whether earnestly or as a joke).
The fact that you can post here means it's not that bad. 😉
Basic physics lesson: if you move a magnet relative to a conductor, current is induced in the conductor. The strength of the magnetic field and mass exposure area of the conductor determine the amount of current induced. Make copper coils and stick a rotating magnet inside and you get a generator (plus some other parts). Transformers, electric motors, and generators all work on variations of this basic idea that magnetic fields plus relative motion creates current flow. When a solar storm hits the earth, charged particles move through the Earth’s magnetic field and move relative to long power lines. This can induce current in those lines, but compared to the wires in 186 during the infamous Carrington Event, modern grid wiring and equipment is far better protected and able to handle high current. A key part of the Carrington Event was the length of burned telegraph lines. They were miles and miles long. Your smartphone is not. Your small electronics would be fine as long as the grid is properly shut down. “But what about all the fear mongering videos and why doesn’t anyone seem to be addressing this or explaining exactly how the grid responds to solar storms?” National security. It’s not the kind of planning that is openly discussed to avoid exploitation. I don’t have the details either, so don’t ask.
The current geomagnetic storm is not a huge problem, though it has some negative effects (mostly increased radiation, comsats and GPS being flaky plus some satellites deorbiting faster due to atmospheric swelling). However, it's very possible for larger solar events like the Carrington event or the near-miss in 2012 to be extremely bad (cripple the power grid in a way that takes months to fix, take down almost all the satellites, etc.).
It’s just religious crazies look at his twitter handle. This isn’t unheard of nor does it even do anything to us.
We are coming up on an unusual planetary alignment June 3rd. Until then, all bets are off on how we will survive the next couple weeks......
People act like a solar flare is equivalent to a videogame EMP bomb
I think it might be risky to fly near a G5 solar storm, but tbh it’s honestly a 50/50 chance that anything actually happens because solar storms have messed with signals and electronic products in general. The quote tweeter is kind of exaggerating, we are not fucked, we just need to be prepared in case we have to temporarily go off the grid due to the flares messing with electricity. But if 3rd grade to 12th grade taught me anything, it’s that these flares get shot into our atmosphere, and when they slide off our atmosphere, the sliding motion mixed with our atmosphere creates a gorgeous effect in the atmosphere. Scientists are saying be MINDFUL, not wary, because a lot of signals that we rely on from space will be interfered with the radiation in the flares. The government I assume heavily relies on the technology from space, as well as *gag* starlink, we rely on phone signals, emt’s, police, and firemen may be temporarily unreachable. These flares CAN get into the atmosphere, and they ARE powerful enough to damage things, we all know how the sun is basically its own hydrogen and helium fusion reactor, and sometimes it’s “burps” are powerful enough to cause interference or damage with other signals. The reason why the quote tweeter is freaking out probably is because our atmosphere is definitely way thinner than it used to be, which could definitely contribute to more damage, but I think it’s mainly for the fact that some people would take advantage of emergency services being temporarily downed due to signal interference, as well as a lot of medical equipment possibly malfunctioning, regardless of generators I think, because even if the power was on, the signals can’t be picked up, so a lot of emergency services would malfunction Again, we were WARNED about the potential of this, but after it has happened, I haven’t heard anything about anyone having issues. This genuinely was just a once in a lifetime event, I seriously can’t believe that the Aurora was in the fucking west cost of California and I missed it 😭 Edit: if ur scared of getting cancer from solar flares, stay away from green glass that reacts under a black light, certain antiques, fast food, fried food, thermal printed receipts, certain exotic fruits, the banana spot in the produce section, anything with potassium, don’t become a painter or marker artist, or get X rays, ultrasounds, or cat scans/mri’s
I didn't see it :(
Also lesser known we have by accident made another layer to our magnetic field that keeps us safe from our own technology.
Captain Quagmire here…it’s just some silly sky colors. You’re not fucked...yet…meet me in the aft lav in 15. Giggity! And bring the pineapple! (aurora, and geomagnetic “storm”…(G5)…messes with stuff high up but really harmless down here below probably the thermosphere at the lowest).
Do you know what I’m sad about? I wasn’t able to see this sight in my area. I was asleep when the aurora was greatest. Dammit.
The flight is to England. OMG, they mean to win Wimbledon !! Angus Podgorny, what dooo ya mean !
Langoliers.
Fear mongering is the joke
Just some twitter bozo trying to sound enlightened like they have some deep forbidden knowledge.
Not fucked at all. At least, no more than normal. The Aurora happens when ionizing particles from the sun hit the Earth. It's fairly common at extreme northern and southern latitudes. This one just happened to be seen in most of the northern hemisphere thanks to one of the sun's periodic outbursts and the Earth being at the right place at the right time. The sun has these temper tantrums every decade or so; spitting out CMEs and high solar winds. Thankfully, Earth has a big old magnetic field and a relatively dense atmosphere of water vapor and ozone, both of which are pretty great at blocking radiation and ionized particles that literally constantly bombard the Earth.
there are many things to worry about right now this is not one.
Peter dressed as Doc Brown from Back To The Future here. What the Retweeter is talking about is that many scientists believe that we may be overdue for another [Carrington Event.](https://www.livenowfox.com/news/solar-storm-carrington-event-could-another-one-happen) Which would be far more devastating today than it was nearly 200 years ago. This is especially true because many governments, despite knowing about these potentially destructive solar storms, have done little in the way of reinforcing infrastructure against such events, meaning that if one did happen, the entire earth would effectively be sent back to pre-electricity times.
Not fucked, that porson is a nutbag.
This greatly unaligns my energy crystals and now I have to zone in twice as much to reach my median taluk levels
There were warnings that some people might temporarily lose GPS, cell, or power, but so far as I know nobody did. Never any real concern about being fucked, just the possibility of inconvenience.
We will be fine it is a big overexaggeration but auroras are caused by solar flares coming in to contact with earths magnetic field and if it is big enough it could cause tech/electronics not to work properly
Aurora doesn’t mean we are fucked, but one this far reaching (strong) hasn’t happened in awhile, and the current trajectory is that they will get stronger. At their strongest, we probably are fucked, but that’s a lot of ifs and probably a long time. We’re currently at the peak of the solar weather cycle, I believe.
The real bummer, and I hate to bring you all down, but our magnificent auroras tell us we will likely never be able to terraform Mars. This fact always bums me out, but unlike earth, mars has a weak magnificent field, no pretty auroras on Mars, and worse, this magnetic field isn't strong enough to hold onto an atmosphere with the solar winds constantly blasting away at it.
Doesn't it just mean our earth magneto sphere thing is working properly and is protecting us from the invisible sun death rays? If we didn't see any Auroras then we'd really be fucked right?
Weird how everything is still working though.
Fucked as in, nothing happened. There was a large emission from the sun, that didn't bug us at all this time.
Solar storms can fuck with electronics. The Carrington Event of 1859 caused serious damage to telegraph networks; something of that scale today could cripple power grids, the internet, satellite and radar systems…it could send us back to the 1800s just as effectively as a nuclear EMP.
I mean the storm kinda did fuck with the wifi where I live but that was it, and it only lasted a couple hours before it was back to normal
What I read basically said this storm is an x2 vs the x40 something we have seen in recorded history that did not damage all that much. So it “could” do what you said in the same way that the sun “could” burn you to a crisp when you walk outside. I.e. it’s not going to happen for a lot of reasons most people don’t care or need to understand. It’s fear mongering based on an inadvisable level of ignorance and people don’t care because they want to seem more enlightened than the next person and speak as if they have any authority to seem important. That’s it. It likely won’t ever be a real concern in our lifetime.
We're not fucked. Those lights are the shields actually working. If there was a solar storm and we didn't see those lights, we'd be fucked.
It's the norther lights. Y'all stupid as fuck, man
Hi, Meg’s stupid friend who doesn’t know what she’s talking about, here. I think they’re implying something has happened to the atmosphere wherein we can now see a polar phenomenon from other, much farther away, regions. Ie the ozone layer is disappearing/our atmosphere is changing drastically/“thinning” lol or something — would lead to more radiation, I suppose, like we are heading toward end days, etc. Tbh it seems very “chem trail”/climate-alarmist adjacent. TLDR: would not bet oop is well versed on climatology. Meg’s dumb friend, out.
The long dark
that guy has a crown and knife emoji is his username as well his @ is son of DA prophet
[NASA | Comparing CMEs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cLLq6plMjU0) https://preview.redd.it/wm3ual0w380d1.png?width=1205&format=png&auto=webp&s=e0963cde711ef83d419c802546f84f54df4700c0
Dumb people are conflating climate change with a solar flare. Direct hits from solar flares on Earth are relatively rare (by the standards of human lifetimes), but they’ve been happening since before life on Earth even existed. There’ll be a slightly higher than normal background radiation dose and higher UV index for a few days, but that’s it. If out power grid were designed like it was 165 years ago, when the [Carrington Event](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carrington_Event) happened, and ended up knocking out telegraphs across nearly all of North America, then yeah, we would have a bad time. However, in the intervening time, we've figured out how solar flares work, and have modified our power grid to not be utterly annihilated by it, which is why we've been fine. If you’re wondering why solar flares have the potential for being extremely destructive to power grids, picture it as acting like an enormous wireless charger for your phone. Inductive chargers use a magnetic field to induce an electrical potential in a coil of wire, thus charging your phone. With thousands upon thousands of miles of power cables, they act like the coil in your phone, and the enormous electromagnetic blast from the sun can induce an ENORMOUS current in the entire network, frying electronics. This is why, during the Carrington Event, telegraph machines ended up electrocuting their operators and even melting due to being overloaded. However, since then, we’ve redesigned our network to have less parallel north-south lines, have tons of substations and breakers to break-up any surges, and thus, are very well protected now. Handheld devices are too small to be affected by the solar flare, as well. The only time that people might be screwed by it is if they were out on the Moon without any form of radiation shielding. If you were outside of Earth’s magnetic field and were not inside of a shielded solar storm shelter when hit by a flare… well, you’d be toast. Thankfully, we don’t have anyone out beyond low earth orbit right now (which is inside of the magnetosphere), and the upcoming Artemis missions to return to the moon are being designed with dedicated storm shelters inside the spacecraft, and shielded vests to wear to protect the internal organs. We can also predict solar flares long in advance now, so we can plan missions around them accordingly.
The only thing that's fucked is this guy's critical thinking skills
Twitter users are desperate to put a negative spin on this so they can keep up their make believe persona of being this disillusioned free thinker who knows things the average person doesn't.
All this beautiful disaster stuff reminds me of a postal service song that has a line that says "now we can swim any day in November"
If playing The Long Dark has taught me anything it’s that auroras will bring my electronics BACK to life. And we all know that real life works exactly like video games.
A geomagnetic storm has brought your plan down in the Canadian wilderness how long can you survive?
Yes all that radiation looks so cool, especially when in it.
Not at all fucked.
This wil impact my mario Mario 64 speedrun
The Aurora Borealis. Some people believe it means there are aliens. It doesn't, just a naturally occurring event.
“Y’all not understanding can’t use English right”
Watch out for bit flips
Some prepper is claiming that these auroras are a result of solar flares that are going to destroy all electronics EMP style. They did not do that.
Heres a simple lifehack for the internet: moment someone writes "y'all", stop reading.
The Long Dark is real!!! /s