The buried lede here is we need to think harder about preparing for another solar event like happened in 993 that left its mark in the tree rings, because such events are not all that rare and the next one will destroy GPS and much of the power grid.https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/20/science/vikings-newfoundland-age.html …
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Another solar event about 200 years earlier was nearly twice as intense. And for the less intense ones (that would still fry our infrastructure) we're basically dependent on some monk somewhere writing down how weird it is that he can read by aurora lighthttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/774%E2%80%93775_carbon-14_spike …
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Everyone loves the Carrington Event, the well-documented solar storm in 1859 that has been the gold standard for "if this happened today, we'd be toast". But the 774 event was at least 10 times as strong. The Sun does not play.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carrington_Event …
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The good news is these massive solar storms happen all the time, it's just rare to get one that hits Earth square-on. So they're not hard to study. The bad news is these massive solar storms happen all the time.
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Replying to @Pinboard
fortunately our system and society are well set up to make expensive, complicated preparations for rare catastrophic events.
1 reply 0 retweets 7 likes
At least it will burn off the sarcasm
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