Originally Posted By: 4wheeldog
Originally Posted By: simple_gifts
Good to see someone take up an interest in astronomy later in life.
Quote:
A huge solar flare has the POTENTIAL to bring down power systems and communications, but it would have to be much larger than anything in recorded history.
Communications systems have already been disrupted and damage occurred in the past by solar storms.
Yes they were. But.....Did it take us ten years to get back up and running? I think not....
I don't understand your point. If you use the analogy of earthquakes, it took a giant one in SF to level the city + another 60 years for society to develop engineered solutions to cope with the situation. Do we want similar lesson WRT the electric grid?
These solar storms, do we know the magnitude? Are we sure one, 10% bigger might not cause 10x the damage? Ten percent (or even 2%) on a solar magnitude is a huge amount of energy.
We only have had an electric grid ~100 years; nanoseconds on the life of the sun.
Originally Posted By: simple_gifts
Good to see someone take up an interest in astronomy later in life.
Quote:
A huge solar flare has the POTENTIAL to bring down power systems and communications, but it would have to be much larger than anything in recorded history.
Communications systems have already been disrupted and damage occurred in the past by solar storms.
Yes they were. But.....Did it take us ten years to get back up and running? I think not....
I don't understand your point. If you use the analogy of earthquakes, it took a giant one in SF to level the city + another 60 years for society to develop engineered solutions to cope with the situation. Do we want similar lesson WRT the electric grid?
These solar storms, do we know the magnitude? Are we sure one, 10% bigger might not cause 10x the damage? Ten percent (or even 2%) on a solar magnitude is a huge amount of energy.
We only have had an electric grid ~100 years; nanoseconds on the life of the sun.
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