incoming ! Solar Flare

[Deleted member 36384]

A question and an observation: Would a big CME affect the night time side of the planet? Regarding designers of flying machines; on occasion they don't get it right because the effects of an event are underestimated by the designer.

The observation is based on the tail rotors of the Super Puma helicopter. They were designed for a lightening strike of significant intensity. A Helicopter in the North Sea ditched after being struck by lightening and it was established that the magnitude of the lightening strike was significantly more than the approved design criteria for airworthiness. Similar but different is the old 200 year wave criteria for off shore platform design. Its now understood that the frequency is wrong and the 200 year wave happened a lot more frequently, within the lifecycle of most platforms.

So, I don't trust designers to cover all relevant events, although I do believe that they do their best.

 

[AntarcticPilot]

A question and an observation: Would a big CME affect the night time side of the planet?

Yes, it would. The major effects are from disturbances of the Earth's magnetic field; these would be global in effect. Furthermore, the Earth rotates and these events would be many hours long, so even if the night-side was protected, it wouldn't stay protected!

Comms would be wrecked a) by Ionospheric disturbances and b) by induction effects in cables.

Navigation satellites are mostly in 1-2 hour orbits, so they would be fried as they came out of eclipse.

As the NASA link in my previous post says, it simply isn't feasible to protect satellites from such massive events.

 

[misterg]

Aeroplanes and cars operate inside the ionosphere. Not much gets through that, even in a big solar event...

One of the potential consequences of a *major* - i.e. "Carrington-like" event is that the ionosphere is displaced. Thus radiation levels at altitude could increase dramatically (a Faraday cage is no protection against ionising radiation). It's also one of the big reasons for GPS disruption - the corrections for ionospheric refration built into the signals likely would not be able to react quickly enough to keep up with the changes in the ionosphere. This is in addition to the prospect of direct / indirect damage to satellites as a consequence of a major event.

There is absolutely no suggestion that an event of this magnitude is imminent, except on geological timescales.

Andy