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'Sunspot archipelago' 15 times wider than Earth could soon bombard us

livescience.com

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Re: 'Sunspot archipelago' 15 times wider than Earth could soon bombard us

#21

Post by [deleted] »

thriftwy wrote: post #15
jen729w wrote: post #12

This sort of thing has been weighing on my mind of late. The more I think about it, the more I’m convinced that this is why the stars aren’t full of spaceships. And I’m an optimist. But bear with me. We are at the point where we, as a society/species, are utterly dependent on technology. I live in the centre of Canberra, the capital of Australia, and if the power went out tomorrow, I’m not sure how long the food supp…

That anxiety is because you're living in a country which did not see bad stuff happening in it for a long time. Other places (from Europe downhill to places such as Syria and Iraq) had really bad stuff happening, and it is known that people are quite resilient. Not only the humanity does not "kill each other", the cities mostly stay intact.

[deleted]

Re: 'Sunspot archipelago' 15 times wider than Earth could soon bombard us

#22

Post by RA2lover »

senectus1 wrote: post #4
wkat4242 wrote: post #2

It doesn't just cause radio blackouts as they say in the article. For us hams it's actually great because the charged atmosphere acts like a mirror and we can bounce signals all over the earth. But for satellites this is really bad news.

I wonder what the insurance policy on starlink satellites looks like.

They already lost a few dozen satellites in a previous incident in february 2022.

https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1029/202...

Re: 'Sunspot archipelago' 15 times wider than Earth could soon bombard us

#23

Post by Kye »

BurningPenguin wrote: post #18
codebolt wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Will be interesting to see the effect on global temperatures when this SC is finished, especially if we get a prolonged quiet period afterwards. Might provide a proverbial cold shower for climate scientists.

> Might provide a proverbial cold shower for climate scientists. Why?

Probably under the mistaken impression climate scientists don't know about solar cycles.

Re: 'Sunspot archipelago' 15 times wider than Earth could soon bombard us

#24

Post by valiant-comma »

jsmcgd wrote: post #7

This is alarming. Does anyone know what the current state of space weather protection/mitigation is for electricity grids in the west? IIRC in 2012 the Earth missed a giant CME by one week, and had it hit Earth there would have been 80% casualties in the US (according to a US government committee), due to the fallout of failing electrical transformers. I'm not aware that this issue has been rectified - probably due t…

“IIRC in 2012 the Earth missed a giant CME by one week, and had it hit Earth there would have been 80% casualties in the US...”

By casualties do you mean injuries/deaths (to people)? Do you have a source? From what I could find, it would be really bad for infrastructure, but not something that would outright kill or injure most of the population.

Re: 'Sunspot archipelago' 15 times wider than Earth could soon bombard us

#25

Post by ChatGTP »

crooked-v wrote: post #19
jen729w wrote: post #12

This sort of thing has been weighing on my mind of late. The more I think about it, the more I’m convinced that this is why the stars aren’t full of spaceships. And I’m an optimist. But bear with me. We are at the point where we, as a society/species, are utterly dependent on technology. I live in the centre of Canberra, the capital of Australia, and if the power went out tomorrow, I’m not sure how long the food supp…

> without transformers, nobody knows how to build new transformers I feel like you've forgotten that books exist. Literally anywhere with a university is going to have a heap of books documenting how to rebuild modern technological society from scratch.

Do you know how long it would take to do this? You'd also have to be doing it while educating people "the old way". Schools don't even teach handwriting now.

Re: 'Sunspot archipelago' 15 times wider than Earth could soon bombard us

#26

Post by codebolt »

Kye wrote: post #23
BurningPenguin wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Might provide a proverbial cold shower for climate scientists. Why?

Probably under the mistaken impression climate scientists don't know about solar cycles.

Under the impression that a lot of climate scientists are quick to disregard the effect variations in solar activity has on climate. To be clear, I'm not denying the effects of CO2, but it still seems possible that the role of CO2 has been exaggerated to some extent. The rise in global temperatures in the past century has coincided with increases in both CO2 and solar activity. And it's probably not a coincidence that last time we had a long period with a quiet sun (the Maunder minimum) was also a very cold period here on earth.

Re: 'Sunspot archipelago' 15 times wider than Earth could soon bombard us

#27

Post by aaron695 »

jen729w wrote: post #12

This sort of thing has been weighing on my mind of late. The more I think about it, the more I’m convinced that this is why the stars aren’t full of spaceships. And I’m an optimist. But bear with me. We are at the point where we, as a society/species, are utterly dependent on technology. I live in the centre of Canberra, the capital of Australia, and if the power went out tomorrow, I’m not sure how long the food supp…

[dead]

Re: 'Sunspot archipelago' 15 times wider than Earth could soon bombard us

#28

Post by yowzadave »

thriftwy wrote: post #15
jen729w wrote: post #12

This sort of thing has been weighing on my mind of late. The more I think about it, the more I’m convinced that this is why the stars aren’t full of spaceships. And I’m an optimist. But bear with me. We are at the point where we, as a society/species, are utterly dependent on technology. I live in the centre of Canberra, the capital of Australia, and if the power went out tomorrow, I’m not sure how long the food supp…

That anxiety is because you're living in a country which did not see bad stuff happening in it for a long time. Other places (from Europe downhill to places such as Syria and Iraq) had really bad stuff happening, and it is known that people are quite resilient. Not only the humanity does not "kill each other", the cities mostly stay intact.

Yeah, I think people have this assumption because it’s been portrayed that way in fictional media so many times. In actual real-world disaster situations, people don’t instantly revert to murderous zombies—they tend to band together and act altruistically.

Re: 'Sunspot archipelago' 15 times wider than Earth could soon bombard us

#29

Post by Ekaros »

jen729w wrote: post #12

This sort of thing has been weighing on my mind of late. The more I think about it, the more I’m convinced that this is why the stars aren’t full of spaceships. And I’m an optimist. But bear with me. We are at the point where we, as a society/species, are utterly dependent on technology. I live in the centre of Canberra, the capital of Australia, and if the power went out tomorrow, I’m not sure how long the food supp…

It is scary to think what is the actual lead time on grid scale components... When you are in multiple megawatt range. It is pretty long and pretty specialised.

It is not just transformers, but switches, relays and even fuses. Much of that will have surviving spares, but still building up the capacity to build those components is not entirely trivial.

Re: 'Sunspot archipelago' 15 times wider than Earth could soon bombard us

#30

Post by sjducb »

valiant-comma wrote: post #24
jsmcgd wrote: post #7

This is alarming. Does anyone know what the current state of space weather protection/mitigation is for electricity grids in the west? IIRC in 2012 the Earth missed a giant CME by one week, and had it hit Earth there would have been 80% casualties in the US (according to a US government committee), due to the fallout of failing electrical transformers. I'm not aware that this issue has been rectified - probably due t…

“IIRC in 2012 the Earth missed a giant CME by one week, and had it hit Earth there would have been 80% casualties in the US...” By casualties do you mean injuries/deaths (to people)? Do you have a source? From what I could find, it would be really bad for infrastructure, but not something that would outright kill or injure most of the population.

The deaths come from lack of food and clean drinking water, caused by damage to infrastructure.

80% sounds too high and arbitrary tho.

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