OMFG I NEED TO BUY ALL THE TOILETTE PAPER POSTHASTE
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More scientific source on space.com:
https://www.space.com/aurora-alert-solar-flare-eruption-cannibal-cme-november-30-december-1
This most extreme level can cause complete HF (high frequency) radio blackouts on the entire sunlit side of the Earth, lasting for a number of hours.
So, is that really it? A HF radio blackout? I can't imagine most of us would even notice if HF were disrupted. I don't know the physics involved, but if VHF/UHF were hit it would be a much bigger problem.
The carrington event knocked out telegraphs all over the world in the 1800s.
That’s the most powerful geomagnetic storm on record. It induced so much current in the telegraph wires that they literally melted.
In the 1800s that wasn’t a huge deal. But if it happened today, billions of dollars of electrical infrastructure could be rendered useless, and stockpiles of replacements are already non existent. It would take years to recover.
But this is not that strong of a storm, so I doubt it’ll do anything but cause some pretty lights and maybe ground a few flights due to communications issues.
And I’m sure any affected areas and satellites will be shutdown for that period to reduce any operational risk.
So less planes falling and more planes delayed.
Same for network communications as items are routed around certain areas or via some methods like fiber vs others.
Planes wouldn't just fall out of the sky anyways lmao. Even if planes lost communications completely they are still operational flying machines. It would just be very difficult to coordinate planes landing at that point. I don't know about the protocols, but I'm sure there exist failsafes to coordinate air traffic in the event of radio communication loss.
It would be a bit more serious than a loss of communication. The electronics in the plane would be completely melted. Including the ones responsible for controlling the plane.
Airplanes are designed to withstand the current, voltage, and EMP effects of lightning strikes, whose local fields are several orders of magnitude more powerful than anything the sun has ever thrown at the earth.
Any solar-originated pulse strong enough to "completely melt" any electronics in the plane will kill everyone and everything on the daylight-side of the planet, and probably strip the entire atmosphere.
Why and how would the electronics in an airplane be melted? Airplanes are naturally a Faraday cage, and all the components are going to be EMF shielded anyways.
The only thing an airplane would need to worry about with a solar storm is the increase in radiation exposure, and even then it's only relevant for the Flight crew who have limits on how much radiation they can be exposed to per OSHA.
That's not how earlths magnetic field induced current works...
The conductors on a plane are short, the induced current is tiny. Significant currents are produced in long conductors (transmission wires). Severely damaging the infrastructure they connect to, and potentially themselves.
True and I didn’t mean to imply it. Went for the hyperbole you tend to see and did a poor job with it after all.
Why does the article include so many whatever they’re calling tweets now about aliens/conspiracy theories smh
Yikes lol. Here is another source that is more sciency.
https://www.space.com/aurora-alert-solar-flare-eruption-cannibal-cme-november-30-december-1
They're called Xcrements
Because social media is useless now.
It was useless before, too, so it's just still useless.
I hope someone can ELI5. I mean, we're told that sunlight/etc we see is 8 minutes old - it took 8 minutes to get from the sun to the earth. The radiation, light, etc all travel at the speed of light, neither slower nor faster.
If we can see anything on the sun, it happened 8 minutes ago. It's not like we're looking out over a Kansas field and see a tornado coming.
Further, there's this from a quick Google (while attempting to answer this question myself), from Oct 13 2023:
"How much warning do we have for solar storms? So it should come as no surprise that a team at NASA has been busily applying AI models to solar storm data to develop an early warning system that they think could give the planet about 30 minutes' notice before a potentially devastating solar storm hits a particular area."
So how are we getting a notice one or two days in advance here? Is the sun currently ejecting matter into space, intersecting the place in our orbit we'll occupy tomorrow (or the next day)? Or is this like predicting a volcanic eruption, basing it on other observable behavior?
CMEs and solar flares do not travel at the speed of light, as they are not light
The charged particles that affect our electrical and electronic systems have mass and therefore cannot travel at the speed of light... We can see the visible light effects of a flare and know that the slower-moving particles that will cause actual damage are on the way.
I would surmise they're talking about a system to let us know where the worst effects are happening so people can prepare. This article says the fastest storms take 15-18 hours to arrive and most are slower. https://www.swpc.noaa.gov/phenomena/coronal-mass-ejections
Yes, it's not just light, it's better to understand it as an ejection of super heated plasma. It is mass ( actually called a coronal mass ejection ) and maybe kinda comparable in ELI5 concept to a volcano eruption.
I’m supposed to be on an airplane on December 1st. If the storm ends up happening on the 1st instead of the 30th, could that potentially mess with air traffic controllers and radio comms in the plane?
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