A plasma blast from the sun’s superheated atmosphere, the corona, could change life as we know it on Earth:
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Blocked in my country. I cannot watch it.
But in regard to 2012 hype. The word “Could” does not mean that it will happen!
And IF it happens then there is no relationship with any perdition whatsoever. It just happens.
I understand why a sudden power failure can cause a lot of damage. But I admit that I don’t find sudden power failures frightening.
When that woman was saying, “suddenly, your lights go out! Your cell phone goes out!” like it was a terrifying prospect, I just sort of chuckled. I haven’t bothered to carry a cell phone since I stopped consulting, and if my lights went out I’d light a candle and read a book.
Now, if the power stayed off for a month, then I might be significantly affected.
If power went off in this country for a month, I think we’d all be in big trouble. There would be a lot of rioting and theft. Then I really would have regretted not getting that shotgun like Ty suggested…
Yeah, long term loss of power is both unlikely, and pretty serious.
Short term power loss can kill people in hospitals and in extreme climates, so it is dangerous. But I like in NM. The climate pretty much never gets extreme enough here to kill a healthy adult with access to blankets or fans.
The thing that can break and be very hard to fix is satellites. We can lay a lot of new cable and throw up a lot of new transformers in short order if it’s a national crisis.
Shooting several hundred new comm satellites into orbit takes a lot longer.
Gah, ‘Like’ should be ‘Live’.
Damn typos.
Ty, the real problem is the death of the supply chain. Don’t forget, all the trucks that would lay down the cable would be broken too. So would the ships that carry parts, the trains that move equipment, etc. Almost all of our modern technology requires other modern tech to make it. I think these guys are right, a MCE would kill millions, if not billions and set us back to the iron age for quite a while.
The thing here is not just about local power loss. we are talking about everything. which no power in an entire country. So hospitals are stuck on generators, at least until they run out of fuel. Getting fuel becomes a problem because a lot of the infrastructure runs on electricity.
Same for all the utilities, Water and gas are pressurized (I’ll give you one guess on how the pumping stations run on).
Also in this day and age how much cash do you have on hand? And how much is sitting as bits on a computer in the bank? And what do you do for a living, can you do your job without electricity?
I’m a programmer, working in electronic billing, no internet pretty well means my job doesn’t exist. And I’m not alone. I’m surrounded by office towers here, where thousands of people work at computers in buildings where the windows don’t open.
What about food. No power means no refrigeration. How much food is stored near you, where it can be distributed easily? And how much of it is shipped from interstate, or from the other side of the world?
One month without power would result in a death toll (exposure, starvation etc), massive unemployment companies collapsing. Probably a revolution or two. And then a long slow process of building it all back again … in short not fun.
It is also enormously unlikely.
But I am all in favor of upgrading our infrastructure. The NE outage a while back was the wakeup call.
” In the power center in the United States of America, a dream team of top scientists and policy makers meets to discuss the sun.”
This is valid and important and I love the study of it. But when I hear of “policy makers [meeting] to discuss the sun”, I still feel like laughing. What laws do you suppose they’ll make to stop the sun from having any more solar flares?
Love the video of astronomer Richard Carrington witnessing an astonishing event on September 1st, 1859. Man, they had good video back then!
Well, there are infrastructure changes that can be made to reduce the likelihood of solar flares knocking out the power grid. I assumed they meant that.
But yes, the idea of people passing laws for the sun is awesome.
Article II, Section 3: The Sun shall not produce solar flares of sufficient energy to affect the United States of America without prior written approval from the US Congress, or a Presidential order.
Lmao…
It would never pass Ty. The Teabaggers would protest that the sun should have the freedom that God gave it. I can just see the signs now ‘Keep big government out of my sun!” “No socialized sunshine!” and the fabulous “Know the SON and know the SUN!”
Mary Magdalene may have known the Son, but don’t you think knowing the Sun would be a little painful?
Waaaaaahahahahahaha!
Blocked in my country. :(
Can you tell me what the video warns about? When I try to see it just got a sign:
“Este vídeo incluye contenido de National Geographic, que lo ha bloqueado en tu país por motivos de derechos de copyright”.
Letting away the pleonastic “derechos de copyright” (rights of copyrights), it says we (Argentines) can’t see this video because it infringes National Geographic rights.
Should I get tickets for the next spaceship available? I dont’ want to, I get accustomed to this planet.
It’s basically a video about Coronal Mass Ejection. When the magnetic bands on the sun build up tension, then snap, they release a massive jet of charged plasma. This jet of plasma has a huge electro magnetic energy. When it hits (and it is when, not if) the Earth, all unshielded electronic equipment will short out. We had a minor one back in the ’80s that hit Eastern Canada, and it shut down their entire energy grid. A major CME could wipe out everything with a circuit board.
Here is the Wiki page, which has some good info
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coronal_mass_ejection
and Phil Plait, aka The Bad Astronomer, has a great chapter in his book about them. It’s called Death From the Skies. Great read if you love astronomy and disasters.
http://www.amazon.com/Death-Skies-These-Ways-World/dp/0670019976/ref=sr_1_8?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1220913560&sr=8-8/badastronomy