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Researchers identify largest ever solar storm in 14k-year-old tree rings

phys.org

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Re: Researchers identify largest ever solar storm in 14k-year-old tree rings

#131

Post by bradgessler »

_3u10 wrote: post #130
bradgessler wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Y2K supports the point that something should be done. The reason nothing terrible happened is because lots investment was made in remediating the issue.

I doubt anything in the electrical grid or that mattered actually cared about the two digit year being 00. Best case scenario some bills were going to be messed up / reissued. SCADA controlled water pumps never cared what the date was, maybe it ran on the cycle for the wrong day and the backup kicked in, big whoop.

Right, because you were there evaluating the risks? I don’t know either way, but you seem to be speculating.

Re: Researchers identify largest ever solar storm in 14k-year-old tree rings

#132

Post by _3u10 »

darken wrote: post #51
danwee wrote: post #45

Pardon my ignorance, but a solar storm would wipe out offline harddrives/ssds/laptops?

It's common to conflate the effects of a solar storm with an EMP; when in reality they're opposite extremes of the same mechanism (i.e. voltage varying over distance). An EMP is a short-duration high voltage spike; i.e. short-wavelength/high-frequency. A solar storm acts on a large scale and causes a long-duration high voltage spike; i.e. long wavelength/low-frequency. So an EMP (i.e. a high altitude nuke) will tend…

Hopefully one day we'll have a grid designed to carry high voltages over long distances instead of using inefficient low voltage transmission which exposes the grid to these dangers.

Re: Researchers identify largest ever solar storm in 14k-year-old tree rings

#133

Post by adolph »

Stevvo wrote: post #116
thimkerbell wrote: post #88

What would a sufficient Faraday cage look like?

A bunker. The atmosphere would have been filled with lighting and plasma vitrifing anything it touched.

  verb (vitrifies, vitrifying, vitrified) [with object]
  convert (something) into glass or a glasslike substance, typically by exposure to heat: the option of vitrifying nuclear waste presents problems | glazes and paintings on pottery are vitrified by firing in the furnace | (as adjective vitrified) : the use of vitrified clay pipes inside buildings is prohibited.
Given the trees continued to reproduce, the "solar energetic particle (SEP) spike" was probably not as bad as this characterization.

https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rsta.2022.020...

Re: Researchers identify largest ever solar storm in 14k-year-old tree rings

#134

Post by chrisco255 »

quickthrower2 wrote: post #122
surfsvammel wrote: post #72

We really need to start harden our grid and in all ways prepare for something like this. It will happen again and I suspect we will say: “no one could have predicted it” once it does.

Or move towards no grid? Solar, batteries, local power storage facilities (like pumps) and backup generators perhaps using natural gas.

Any electrical circuits unshielded have potential to overload in a solar storm like the Carrington event. Induction from magnetism creates a current even in disconnected circuitry and wires. See: https://www.wired.com/2011/09/0902magnetic-storm-disrupts-te...

Telegraph operators were able to communicate even though disconnected during the event.

Re: Researchers identify largest ever solar storm in 14k-year-old tree rings

#136

Post by chrisco255 »

medstrom wrote: post #103
PaulHoule wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can count individual tree rings, so yeah.

The oldest living tree has seen 9,565 birthdays ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_Tjikko ), but it doesn't have 9,565 rings. Even if it did, there's a gap of at least a few thousand years ;-) I'm impressed they got it exact, but wasn't by ring-counting (only).

Trees turn into fossils too sometimes.

Re: Researchers identify largest ever solar storm in 14k-year-old tree rings

#137

Post by Grimburger »

_3u10 wrote: post #127
surfsvammel wrote: post #72

We really need to start harden our grid and in all ways prepare for something like this. It will happen again and I suspect we will say: “no one could have predicted it” once it does.

Wasn't society supposed to collapse from Y2K too? The people doing this research need funding, and no one is going to give them funding unless, it's to make sure that this won't wipe out society. If the grid collapses in any meaningful way because of a solar storm, we're all f'ed, try rebuilding the grid without a grid. Something tells me this won't happen. I'm guessing what actually happens is a few breakers trip, t…

This comment really underestimates how much was actually done for Y2K. It was a huge global effort.

Re: Researchers identify largest ever solar storm in 14k-year-old tree rings

#138

Post by 8bitsrule »

chrisco255 wrote: post #134
quickthrower2 wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or move towards no grid? Solar, batteries, local power storage facilities (like pumps) and backup generators perhaps using natural gas.

Any electrical circuits unshielded have potential to overload in a solar storm like the Carrington event. Induction from magnetism creates a current even in disconnected circuitry and wires. See: https://www.wired.com/2011/09/0902magnetic-storm-disrupts-te... Telegraph operators were able to communicate even though disconnected during the event.

It's essential to note that,compared to Carrington,

>the Miyake Events (including the newly discovered 14,300-yr-old storm) would have been a staggering entire order-of-magnitude greater in size

and that now 9 of them have been found.

The following links the 2017 Fusa Miyaki-led PNAS paper (complete) concerning 'Large 14C excursion in 5480 BC..."

https://www.pnas.org/doi/full/10.1073/pnas.1613144114

Re: Researchers identify largest ever solar storm in 14k-year-old tree rings

#139

Post by shiroiuma »

itronitron wrote: post #85
Toutouxc wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Haha, no, you can find people complaining about that all over the web. It’s a very real effect.

Has anyone tried taping a conducting wire to the macbook case and running it to the closest ground connector?

Has anyone simply tried measuring the voltage difference between the macbook case and the nearest ground connector, and also the other two prongs in a normal electrical socket? This isn't exactly a difficult test to do.

Re: Researchers identify largest ever solar storm in 14k-year-old tree rings

#140

Post by 8bitsrule »

Stevvo wrote: post #110

This evidence supports Robert M. Schoch "Solar induced dark age" theory. I've always been a sucker for fringe archeology. Looks like Hancock et. Al. were right about an ancient cataclysm around this time, but wrong on the cause.

If only. The now well-documented Younger Dryas event - whatever it was - was thousands of years later, and has plenty of iridium- and platinum-based proxies (and a whole lot more) worldwide ... with equally sophisticated dating techiques.

Space has -many- nasties it has thrown at the Earth. When I was kid and saw the Moon through a telescope, I wondered how the Earth could have escaped that shellacking. It couldn't. (There -was- no 'Earth Impact Database' at the time.)

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