across two hemispheres
Is there any point to this distinction? Why not just say “the entire planet”?
It was hitting the Americas and the Pacific. And both hemispheres, so north and south alike. That’s because that side of the Earth was facing the sun at that time. I assume the south received the brunt of it due to the axial tilt going into southern summer.
So it was not the entire planet, just the two hemispheres of North and South and specifically mostly the Americas and the Pacific.
So it was only one hemisphere, but instead of being clear and specifying actual locations, the vague description suggests the whole planet was affected. How unhelpful.
Across 4 quadrispheres
Across the mono-unisphere
Perhaps it did not substantially fill both hemispheres. Or perhaps they are referring to overlapping hemispheres like the north and west.
A part of me dreads what would happen if another carrington event happened and another part of me eagerly wants to see what would happen.
I’ve read that if things are off and not powered that they wouldn’t be affected. You could kill the power to your house and shut off battery powered items and be okay.
Maybe I’m wrong though. Also, I’ve read the sun is monitored for such things we would have 10 minutes or so of time to prepare.
This is a case of 'it depends '. The damage isn’t caused by something being on or off. It’s everywhere. Disconnecting can isolate damage from small storms, but world ending storms have enough energy to jump air gaps and the surges would be faster than most breakers can react to. You’d physically have to rip the cables from your house to be safe. Smaller, battery powered devices would be more susceptible regardless if they were on/off. Batteries are a concern because you don’t want them to incur damage/blow up due to an electric surge.
If this sounds overblown remember that during the Carrington Event, telegraph lines continued to operate for hours even after batteries were removed. In some cases, lines sparked and damaged equipment or personnel. These are very powerful storms that naturally induce electric current in circuitry.
before Musk fired everyone.
The ESA also monitors space weather.
Right? I’m not a prepper, but I find it’s a lof of fun to plan for this kind of thing. I never actually do, prepare anything, but I make mental notes. Right now the plan would be to get a Faraday cage, shove a microwave motor in there as AFAIK they can be great as generators, then a RPi, a tiny monitor and a downloaded copy of Wikipedia. I’d love to get some Lora devices so that I can give them to friends and family
Pretty sure there are prepper packages available online that is a superset of knowledge bases, things like wikipedia, music, survival guides, guides on agriculture/raw material processing/ hunting / basic engineering etc. (The free ones are better than for-pay grifter packets) precisely for things like this.
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I’m not sure how well a faraday cage would protect against something like this. Maybe a lot maybe not as much as you’d think.
Total em shielding would probably be a better option.
I’ve got my foil hat on.
AFAIK it should protect it. Maybe even from any electromagnetic activity. But once away, I struggle with electronics and electricity
I know with radio waves it depends on the frequency and the size of the holes in the cage. Higher frequencies need increasingly smaller holes to prevent radio waves from entering. Around 2mm at 5ghz if what I’ve read is correct.
I’m guessing the type of material, thickness, etc may play a role too.
What I don’t know is how much of this, if any, applies to a huge blast of the sun"s toxic ass plasma hitting us in the face.
I know that microwaves are designed to block up to, iirc, 2.4ghz
Probably just use the same microwave and throw the motor inside.
I mean, if the unconnected motor would be fried, I wouldn’t worry about it. I’d get the fuck outside and start running, because everything touching metal is about to be on fire
Electrical work is one of the many important skills I lack. I am not sure if I could open the microwave, remove the motor, close it again, and guarantee that the cage still works
You could wrap the whole thing in tin foil to be safe
Maybe. Probably. I think you have to make sure it’s grounded
Is that why cell phone connections have been so weak lately?
Radio is affected by solar activity because many radio frequencies, especially those used by long-distance or shortwave radio, depend on the Earth’s ionosphere for reflection, which is disrupted by solar flares. Cellular phones, however, use higher frequency bands (UHFVHF) that are not reflected by the ionosphere; instead, they transmit via a line-of-sight connection between the phone and a cell tower, making them much less susceptible to solar interference.
Our phones really use uhf/vhf? Dang. I’m a ham nerd but my radio knowledge doesn’t really extend beyond those bands.
Mmmm, hammmm
Mobile phones use UHF and SHF, where GSM is on the lower end of the spectrum (900/1800MHz) and 5G on the higher end. The newest WiFi standard is at 6GHz.
5G can go as high as 71GHz, just not in mobile phones yet
Mobile Phones don’t use VHF, only UHF and SHF
What services might people have noticed being unusable because of this?
Plane to controller coms.
Cool, that was my first guess!
You specifically don’t mention controller -> plane comms, is that just because they have more powerful transmitters?
I dont think so but thats based on my location being in the Affected area and my not noticing any change to my connection.
Wish it would knock me out instead
I’ll do it for 10 bucks
Deal. I await your strongest solar flare.
Did we know this was coming or was it a surprise?
It hit us like a sudden monsoon in Goa.
We are in “solar maximum” so heightened activity is expected but we are also not very far in our study and understanding of the sun, and “X-class flares” are fairly unusual.
We should probably shut down any of that book-learnin’ and knowing real facts about the world. Does fElon know about this “waste, fraud, and abuse”?
Out only hope that take being naked X-class will keep him interested long enough to no cancel funding, but not long enough to declare war on the su…
Oh, he thinks we can pull a reverse Dyson sphere to shade the earth enough to reverse climate change now.
Isn’t climate change was just a woke mind virus thing though? /s
Given this timeline, no, not a surprise
I’m cool with more aurora borealis. I was only able to see a dull red glow during the last solar storm.
Flares don’t cause auroras. However, they are sometimes (often?) accompanied by coronal mass ejections which, if they head our way, can cause auroras. So it all depends on whether or not there were CMEs with these flares and whether or not those CMEs are on a path that will strike Earth. This forecast differs from the one in the posted article.
As it happens, there are a few CMEs headed our way right now according to spaceweather.com .
STRONG GEOMAGNETIC STORM PREDICTED: The sun hurled another CME toward Earth today, and this one looks like it will be a direct hit. The M7.5-class explosion from sunspot 4274 has an unambiguous Earth-directed component. In total, three CMEs will graze or hit Earth in the days ahead: #1, #2, #3. As a result, strong G3-class geomagnetic storms are possible on Nov. 6-8. CME impact alerts: SMS Text.
