Good! I was under the impression that a part of the process was a weakening of, and holes developing in, our geomagnetic field that protects us from the solar wind. I feared that such a situation could prompt some level of extinction events. I’m very glad to learn that I’m mistaken ,
UPDATE:
I found this item, and this one. Based on what I read in these, I suspect that a pole reversal may be a factor contributing to various extinction events in earth’s past, but not a cause. I suspect that a pole reversal, combined with an exceptionally energetic solar high during the 11-year solar activity cycle may have more to do with these events than a pole reversal alone.
Guess we may never really know till it or if it happens, but if its quick then may be too late
Think at this stage the doomsday clock is so close to midnight and with the other wars in the world today this may be a minor blip. Think Ukraine russian, Israel, china, syria. Along with natural disaster like the flooding in parts of spain, high winds in mayotte. I am sure the list goes much longer than this and you have others to add.
Agreed, but I want to better understand earths geomagnetic system, and related events as best I can, so I can take measures to mitigate these events as best as is possible. With that said, gaining knowledge is never a waste of time, and I’d prefer to spend my time learning about those things I may be able to have an effect on.
Does a CMA lose energy as it moves away from the sun? I was under the impression that a CMA is plasma and magnetic field being ejected from the sun’s corona. I’d suspect that the plasma is held together by the magnetic field, or am I missing something?
I thought it would be like gravity… effect declines as square of distance… because it spreads over a greater area
Sun is not as bright as seen from outer planets… I thought a plasma eruption would be the same… otherwise it would affect everything to the end of the universe.
We do not suffer from plasma eruptions on distant stars.
There seem to be a lot of TV reception problems (free to air, not satellite) here at the moment. Do you think solar activity could affect TV signal reception. ?
Not directly, but CMEs and solar flairs can affect radio communications when they’re launched toward the earth. In my web browser, I asked “How do solar flairs affect the d-layer and radio communications”, and got this response:
When a strong enough solar flare occurs, ionization is produced in the lower, more dense layers of the ionosphere (the D-layer), and radio waves that interact with electrons in layers lose energy due to the more frequent collisions that occur in the higher density environment of the D-layer.
When I asked the same question, replacing solar flairs with CMEs, I got a similar response. IIRC, the D-layer can become distorted so it scatters radio waves instead of reflecting them as well. Essentially, any geomagnetic event can affect the D-layer, and indirectly interfere with radio communications.
“On April 21, 2023, a coronal mass ejection (CME) erupted from the sun, spewing out a burst of plasma that raced toward Earth at nearly two million miles per hour and generated a severe geomagnetic storm (level 4 out of 5) …”
And
“They can affect power grids on Earth as well as radio signals and communications systems.
They can affect our satellite operations and GPS navigation capabilities.
They can impact astronauts in space, particularly if they are doing a spacewalk. Outside of the Earth’s protective atmosphere, the extra radiation they are exposed to may cause radiation poisoning or other harmful health effects.
They can create spectacular auroras on Earth.”
So Ernie, I don’t believe there is too much to worry about until a massive CME event happens again like the one in 1859. That was over a 150 years ago and may not happen again for another 150, 300, 1000 years. Who knows or even could predict a CME that powerful.
Looks like we already had a few major (G4) CME since 2019. Again from the site;
“This is the third severe geomagnetic storm (G4) since Solar Cycle 25 began in 2019”
I’m not necessarily as much concerned as I am curious, wanting to know more about these events. I.m particularly interested in knowing how significantly home solar power generation and the likes of fiber optic cables are likely to be affected by geomagnetic events, etc., as well as how advisable it may be for ISPs and other communications service providers to move toward solar power and using fiber optic cables as opposed to coaxial cables, et-al.
Since the sun appears to have an 11-year activity cycle, I suspect that the likelihood of increased/more frequent/intense geomagnetic events may follow that cycle as well. If that’s true, it seems to me that we should explore non-electromagnetic ways to transmit communication signals and perhaps electric power. We can generate electric power from the light of the sun, so is it too far fetched to think we can transmit power using light going through fiber optic cables? If that’s possible/practical, we may find that it’s less susceptible to geomagnetic events, and perhaps is more efficient over long distances.
These past two paragraphs have been a bit of a stream of consciousness on my part. If anything I put down made any sense/could be possible, what do you think?
I’m definitely NOT an expert on the subject, but I’ve read a bit on it… CME’s and sunspots are related, but not completely, and while there are more CME’s during the peak of the sunspot cycle, you can get both at any time…
A CME is basically a big burst of plasma and charged particles that is sent out in one direction (think shotgun blast) If it isn’t pointed right at Earth, it has little or no effect on us. Considering the relative size of the Earth as a target compared to the area of the sun (CME’s can go in any direction) the odds are pretty good that nearly all will miss…
When we get hit, the result is essentially a function of how big the CME is. The Carrington event was a ‘direct hit’ by a really big CME… (but we have detected bigger ones that missed us…) I’m not sure how it rated on the Geomagnetic Storm scale… That we have survived a level 4 is good, but remember that the scale is LOGARITHMIC - a 5 is not a “little bit” worse, it’s a LOT worse… Think of the difference in earthquakes of different magnitudes on the Richter scale, a 6 does a lot more damage than a 5… As I understand it a GM 5 is like a Richter 7…
At least some of the stuff I’ve seen says the results of a GM 5 scale storm would be similar to that of an EMP blast from an atomic bomb, but on a global scale… Stock up on candles…
Fibre optic cables can transmit light, but not electricity.
They require repeater units at certain distances to re-energise the light signal.
So they may be able to transmit energy, as light., and that energy could be extracted at the destination using the same solar cells as we use to extract energy from sunlight. Power Over Fiber – optical delivery of power, photonic power, optical power isolator.
If we coukd do that it may solve the issue with electric cars who’s range is just not enough yet to make them a viable proposition especially given the size and weight involved in just moving a battery. Not to mention life span of a battery.
My wifes car battery gave up after 18 months and only 10,000 miles ok its the engine starter so only 120 euros to replace not the 1k plus for the main electric cars use.
I know the reason a geomagnetic storm has the potential to disrupt the global power grid is that it generates/induces a significant increase in electromagnetic energy in power transmission lines, overloading them, and perhaps transformers too, causing them to ‘explode’. Traditionally, we have sent analog and digital signals electromagnetically, over conductive signal transmission lines, but in recent years, we’ve learned to reliably send these signals over fiber-optic lines/cables as pulsing light. My question now is “Is there a way to send power, in some form of light, over a variation of fiber optic cabling?”. If that could work reliably, it would solve any issue we have with the power grid. Then the only thing left to deal with would be hardening power transformers against geomagnetic storms.
Then, since we already have fiber-optic signal transmission, and Power-over-Fiber, it seems we have the technologies needed to eventually make the global power grid resilient against geomagnetic storms, and perhaps even providing a way to eliminate the need for power transformers. As @nevj says, the only thing we still need is ways to store great amounts of energy in the smallest possible space, safely. That means we’re getting close. The main issue remaining is getting the power companies to realize now urgently they need to upgrade their systems before a catastrophe occurs.
I am not an expert on Power transmission, but I strongly suspect that “Power Over Fiber” is not really an option - The Wikipedia article that @nevj pointed at didn’t go into depth, but the listed applications all sounded like very low power - probably on the order of a few millivolts at best… I suspect it would also be VERY inefficient due to the conversion steps needed on each end.
Compare a few millivolts to the demands of our power grid, which runs on thousands or millions of volts just to enable stuffing enough amps into a wire of reasonable size… Just as a reference I was recently reading an article on the off-shore wind farms that are starting to be built - one of the power feed lines that carries the plant output back to shore contains several hundred pounds of copper PER FOOT… Copper is not cheap, I’m quite sure that if there was a viable alternative the power industry would be using it…
It may well come to pass, and it may happen suddenly if someone makes a colossal breakthrough, but what I was seeing in those linked articles looked to me like a lot of theoretical hand waving, and a few lab experiments involving minute amounts of energy and minute distances (Which probably took huge amounts of energy to make work)
That is a LONG way from being able to plug anything into a quantum powered outlet…
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