First I'd ever heard of it.
Good book.
Posted on 11/14/2023 12:55:30 PM PST by Red Badger
Though you can’t tell it with the unaided eye from here, the sun is incredibly active. A massive nuclear reaction hurtling through space, sometimes it and its sunspots are more active, meaning they emit more heat and radiation, and sometimes they are less active. Further, it can let fly with plasma, superheated matter, that distorts Earth’s magnetic field and can destroy electronics.
That sun activity, called Coronal Mass Ejection (CME), is incredibly dangerous for electronics, many of which are quite fragile and, in the case of infrastructure, expensive and difficult to replace. That’s because the electric charge created by the CME can fry them, something that if it happened at a large enough scale could take down the internet.
Such is what Professor Peter Becker of George Mason University warned in a recent interview with FOX Weather, saying, “The internet has come of age during a time when the sun has been relatively quiet, and now it’s entering a more active time. It’s the first time in human history that there’s been an intersection of increased solar activity with our dependence on the internet and our global economic dependence on the internet.”
He continued, “There have been a lot of (solar) flares. Flares are when the sun brightens, and we see the radiation, and that’s kind of the muzzle flash. And then the cannon shot is the coronal mass ejection (CME). So, we can see the flash, but then the coronal mass ejection can go off in some random direction in space, but we can tell when they’re actually going to head towards Earth. And that gives us about 18 hours of warning, maybe 24 hours of warning, before those particles actually get to Earth and start messing with Earth’s magnetic field.”
Continuing, he said that the solar activity could knock out even electronics that you think are safe, saying, “And then you get this kind of insidious thing where you could actually get current from ground. So everybody thinks, ‘Oh, my computer’s grounded, I’m okay,'” but in an event like this, if you drive inductive currents to the surface of the Earth, it can almost work backwards, and you can end up actually frying things that you thought were relatively safe.”
Describing what happened to telegraph wires and operators when a similar event happened in 1859, Becker claimed, “It actually took out the telegraph system, sparks were literally flying off the telegraph lines. Some operators got electrocuted because the wires ended up carrying high voltage, which they were never supposed to do, but the magnetic field variations became so strong it almost became a generator system and drove these currents down telegraph wires.”
Then, comparing those days to today and how severe and long-lasting the damage could be, Professor Becker said, “So you lay that on top of the internet with its very delicate electronics, you’re talking about something that could really fry the system for a period of several weeks to months in terms of the time it would take to repair all the infrastructure – all of the electronic switches, all of these closets of electronics in all these office buildings. That could all be fried. So we’re talking pretty major. And it’s not just communications. It’s economic disruption, too, obviously.”
Professor Becker did, however, also noted that steps can be taken to mitigate the problem is people are paying attention and use advance warning to respond promptly and properly, saying, “If we have a warning, every minute counts because you can put satellites in safe mode. You can take transformers off-line from the grid, so they don’t fry. So there’s things you can do to mitigate the problem. And then, more long term, you’re talking about hardening the internet. And that’s, of course, an economic challenge because it’s sort of like an insurance policy. You may never need it, and it would cost trillions to really harden the system.”
…and this was going to be a terrible Hurricane season…when will the “Wolf cryers” be held accountable? We hear this every month.
The welfare class will not survive. They’ll go a looting and a shooting, and ye ole white guys will starting taking the trash out.
Without citizen journalists or watchdogs groups, we wouldn’t know what the leftwingers are doing. Citizens wouldn’t be able to communicate in real time if a disaster or threat happens.
Eek! OMG! No hyperbole here.
Yup
Oh thank God.
Wonder why this fear porn again? Something up?
The phone zombies will be walking around glassy eyed bumping into things. So theirs that.
Sounds like you read “48 Hours”?
I’m about 40% through it.
Good book, so far.
“Any Suspicious0bservers here?”
Yep. Daily update every day.
For those who are interested in information about solar weather without the hype, visit SolarHam. It's geared more towards Ham Radio operators, but they have great info there.
What is discouraging is that it is preventable for relatively small money, but they want to throw it all at the Climate Change hoax.
Going to put that on my reading list. Thank you for the reference...
The internet being down would be the least of our problems if a Carrington sized CME hit is full on. Just about all communications equipment of any kind would be fried. Just about all automobiles and other forms of transportion would be similarly affected. Most modern farm machinery would cease to function. I figure 5 billion people would die from starvation in a year.
Once “they” start floating these stories, watch out! It means it is in the planning stages. Sunspots will be the handy culprit. LOL!
First I'd ever heard of it.
Good book.
That’s why I backed it up this morning.
That looks interesting. That is going on my reading list as well! Thank you-
It would have without all the work put in by companies to ensure it did not. The man hours in our small part of our company was huge.
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