Scientists are warning that a solar superflare on the sun could take Earth’s power systems offline sooner than previously thought. New research suggests that our sun could be capable of shooting a superflare in our direction, and it might be relatively soon impacting our power grid.
Even though our sun is older and less active than other stars in the galaxy, that doesn’t mean it’s totally lost its power, according to Yuta Notsu, a visiting researcher at CU Boulder. Notsu and colleagues used Kepler Space Telescope data to check for evidence of superflares on other stars like our sun. “The Kepler results suggest that slowly rotating, sun-like stars can also have superflares,” Notsu said during a press conference at a meeting of the American Astronomical Society in St. Louis on Monday.
According to a report by Forbes, Notsu said the type of superflares his team describes would be at least 100 times more powerful than the Carrington Event of 1859, which is said to have caused Aurora Borealis as far south as Hawaii and destroyed telegraph infrastructure. “Our study shows that superflares are rare events,” said Notsu. “But there is some possibility that we could experience such an event in the next 100 years or so.”
That would mean the power grid is potentially at stake. Depending on the severity of the super flare, we could have major problems that could stretch into months-long issues.
https://www.shtfplan.com/headline-news/6-totally-insane-things-that-will-happen-if-our-power-grid-goes-down_02272017
As humans, we are reliant on the power grid for almost everything in our daily lives. If something goes wrong, and people lose power, we could have societal upheavals and massive civil unrest. While this scenario seems less likely than an all-out economic crash, it’s still important to have the basics of survivalism in the forefront of your mind. Adopt a preparedness mindset and just consider the possible outcomes if we have problems.
You want to be prepared for whatever emergencies come your way. While prepping for a dozen different disasters may sound like a daunting task, there’s good news. Preparing for a wide variety of disasters requires the same basic supplies as preparing for one or two.
Some great prepping advice can be found in Daisy Luther’s book titled Be Ready for Anything: How to Survive Tornadoes, Earthquakes, Pandemics, Mass Shootings, Nuclear Disasters, and Other Life-Threatening Events.
The paper detailing the findings of this study was published last month in The Astrophysical Journal.
In our newspaper there was an article about what Floridians fear the most, at the top of the list was the loss of air conditioning.
K2,
Having spent a lot of time in FLA I can appreciate that.
But having lived in Mississippi, Guam, Philippines, and now in Hawaii, with no A/C, I really don’t have much pity for the Democrats from the north invading the south.
Full disclosure; I spent most my adult life in the
Pacific Northwest.
As for a grid down from a hit from a solar flare,
I’m ready. I haven’t seen an Aurora since my last visit
to Alaska. Looking forward to it.
Living in SW Florida for over 20 years I can agree with that. Over a week without power after hurricane Charley was doable but rough. We slept out on our lanai and still were miserable. The heat/humidity is brutal.
Yawnnnnnn.
We already know it can happen. As stated, The Carrington Event is the proof.
rellik
A few old people died of heat exhaustion in Florida the result of the power outage from hurricane Irma a couple of years back. Because of this a regulation was passed into law requiring a back of power source for a period of time (I don’t know how long) to supply AC. Demographically I’m very surprised that the mass influx of NY / NJ / Chicago and similar liberals haven’t had more political influence than they do here. Maybe they’re just too old to have the stamina to do it. Maybe their balanced out by the Cubans that fled Castro who are generally quite conservative. Regardless there is no snow and we have available for the common law abiding carry permits, stand your ground and not a too high cost of living. Originally I’m a NJ refugee so I know bad.
K2,
Most all of us on this site know how to recognize and deal with heat exhaustion or heat stroke. It is pretty standard first aid stuff.
Refer to the red cross or military first aid manuals if you don’t
know what the required actions are.
From personal experience Hawaii is much more comfortable than FLA, even though we get more sun. Actually I think the PI (Clark AB)is more comfortable than the places I was at in FLA.
I think it all has to do with wind and how you dress.
The Bedouin do fine in 40- 47 C, but it is a dry heat with wind.
BTW your normal body temp is 37C and average temps in FLA during the summer are 33C.
The sun goes through cycles of activity. Right now the sun is in the minimal phase with very few sunspots but the magnetic field around the sun is relatively weak. The magnetic field around the earth is connected to the sun’s magnetic field. When the sun’s magnetic field is weak (as it is now), earth’s magnetic field is weak as well. There are fewer sunspots but we are more vulnerable to the ones that occur. Strengthening the grid was the right move on Trump’s part.
rellik
Florida is just the mainland affordable summer all year state (in the southern part); lots of places are better. They in essence abandoned those old people in the old age home when Irma was coming like rats on a sinking ship.
It is probable that every 100,000 years or so our sun -Sol – MIGHT do such as here described. NASA’s studies of lunar regolith brought back by the Apollo missions essentially contains a record of some truly titanic flares occurring over the last half million years. The isotopic relative abundance of various elements on the lunar surface is something of a time capsule not dissimilar to tree rings as a record of events impinging on the surface of our nearest planetary neighbor.
However, our sun is not particularly prone to such. So called ‘Super flares’ are regularly seen in our own astrophysics neighborhood regularly…but not from stars of the type which Sol is, G2 for the curious. No indeed, where they type of monster flares are regularly seen is originating from what are called either ‘Red’ or ‘Brown’ dwarf stars. Those are regularly seen to increase thier total volumetric output by a factor of as much as 10,000 times in periods as short as twenty minutes usually lasting for a few hours.
Imagine our sun suddenly increasing it’s output by even a hundred times for brief period…virtually everything at ground level and to some depth in our oceans would be either incinerated outright or boiled alive in short order.
Thankfully, the fact of our existence today indicates that such events are vanishingly rare in our entire interstellar neighborhood. Far more concerning from my perspective are burst of hard X-rays and Soft gamma spectrum radiation from Magnetars…go look up SGR 1806-20 for some insight thereon…and THAT was operand on us here from a distance of 50,000 light years.
Dwell on that for a bit…
JOG
The weaker magnetic fields allow more cosmic radiation to reach Earth which translates to more cloudiness. This lessens the amount of electricity you get from solar panels. If the grid is down for months or years, this can cause serious problems. It depends on where you’re located. The clouds are moved by air currents. Generally during grand solar minimums, the polar air currents dip further south which is what is happening now. The right location makes all the difference. Since so much is changing, it’s hard to be sure about relocation.
All of us need to learn to live with 1889 technology.
Practice Lights out drill, week long, yearly. You will learn and be suprised. Go without a car for a week. Big suprise.
Dallas Tx had over 300,000 without power last week.
Chaos. But power co did good job of resolving. Only 4 days without. That was with outside area help.
Imagine a nationwide/world wide outage. Everyone having own problem. No outside help. What a mess. Note: Power transformers are not made in USA anymore. China Import. And China throwing a fit now. Imagine outage world wide.
Billions would die. Do you have three year food supply?
Expensive. And takes up too damn much space. Why three year? Even if you garden, have small livestock. Failures always happen when you need good crops. Ask any farmer. And most people have no idea what they are doing. Takes a lifetime to really get things down with gardening. Little things mess you up. Lttle creatures mess you up. Four leggeds. Two leggeds have stolen my crops now in good times.
Power out will mean chaos and death of billions. The more first world your country. The worse you will have it. Third world agrarian rural/small holder cultures/people, will have massive advantage over you city dwelling cell phone zombies.
You kale eating lefties anti gunner Iphone zombies will have zero chance of long term survival. One year without electric power STARVATION. Famine. Violence.
Ready yourselves now Food, water, ammo, medical kit, silver rounds. Practice lights out. Grow potatoes. Get small livestock.
Good luck.