What would most likely happen if a larger solar flare struck Earth?

What would most likely happen if a larger solar flare struck Earth?

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en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starfish_Prime
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larger then what?

Whoops, meant "large" not larger.

Literally who cares? Space is retarded. It's not even science.

Astronomy = Not a science

I bet you don't think psychology is a science either

GTFO out of my thread faggot

depends if it produces a CME or not

generally if it doesnt then the only effect is a radio white out over the sun facing side of earth

if it does then you can see other effects like damage to electronic devices and major auroras

Would the damage to electronic devices be at a global scale or just to the scale of the hemisphere that the Solar Flare struck?

it would be most intense at high latitudes near the poles and reduce in intensity going down the latitudes

Bump

If one "hit" our atmosphere, the worst possible outcome is local power grids going down, satellites in line of sight being damaged and a general bad mood for the localized population. It wouldn't be devastating, but it would be a definite pain in the fucking ass for humanity.

CRASHING THIS PLANET WITH NO SURVIVORS

FINALLY

Auroras everywhere

Auroras are cool

Lies

It's called the Carrington event of 1859. The most advanced technology at the time was telegraphs and the pylons threw sparks into the air and telegraph operators got shocked by their devices.

It's estimated if it happens today, it'll take a decade to repair all the damage and it'll cost $2,600,000,000,000.

After the terminal collapse of the grid almost all of the former USofA was declared a Sacrifice Zone because each and every Nuke Plant (and their huge spent fuel pools) was abandoned and went fukushima. Mexico was building walls to stem the flood of radiated refugees coming in from the north. They called them 'canĂ­bales'..

Sounds like a good time

>$2.6 trillion
Fuck you and your ton of scare-zeros.

Depends on the scale

But given your description it would likely boil off the atmosphere and flash heat the surface of the oceans and the ground. As the huge amount of energy is insane, like melt the planet insane, but thankfully the duration is not long enough to liquefy the planet, likely only 10 or 20 minutes, as most of the energy keeps traveling out into space.

You would get a EM resonating effect that would be orders of magnitude higher then normal, and flux spikes would take a few days to dampen. During which all electronics would be literally fried, even shielded stuff and anything grounding would make it worse during the back flow periods as normal electron dumps become electron generators.

Basically it would mess up things really bad, but odds are some simple multicellular life could survive. Humans, definitely dead along with most everything you can think of.

Most structures would be burned to piles of ash, anything flammable or metal would burn or melt. But some things made of stuff like brick or stone buildings might still be partly standing on the dark side of the planet, though likely damaged in interesting ways give the flash heat.

Another thing to note is if the ejection is just a heavy EMF or actually has heavy particles in it. The denser ejections would do a lot more damage and effects would be a little different in what gets destroyed first. With enough mass you might even get some small changes in orbit.

How big would one have to be to not fry the planet but to destroy the power grids across the Earth?

Literally incinerate the earth like it does in this scene

youtube.com/watch?v=vN1SyaSdCeM

A direct hit from even a small one with only an EMF body would fry nearly all electrics, even a high percentage of shielded ones would die. It doesn't take much with these high levels of energy. Shielded military vacuum tube stuff in an off state during the event should survive, but that is nothing compared to everything that would be lost. Most of that specialized gear is not really computers, but just complex switch relays, mostly for high energy radar equipment. Thought you could make something like an old computer (~1960) with them if some brilliant people got desperate and stuff with the right resources.

Even one that passes nearby would take down a lot of stuff. But if it is weak enough it would only effect half the planet. Still knocking out half the planet is really really bad.

You know how electronics have gotten smaller and more energy efficient?

Well they do this be lowering the amount of energy needed to change the states, related very closely to band gaps. The smaller the gap and/or more conductive the easier it is to change states. Thus more efficiencies/performance. But it also means less energy is needed to break it, as it is more fragile.

Now consider how the Carrington event of 1859 made copper telegraph gaps of about an inch spark in air, shorting them out. Induced only by local wiring or a small electric gird. Now think of how much it takes to jump the 65 nanometer or smaller gap (newest chips boost 14nm) have in a semiconductor circuit commonly used today. With much more complex local wiring or an electric grid with an induction cross section many orders of magnitude bigger. In short everything fries.

Bottom line is it is just too much energy, and also induces in ways completely different then normal, ie ground dumps becoming generators.

You might also like to read more about
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starfish_Prime
basically a tiny man made version that disrupted approximately 6559720 square kilometers (or 1/78 of the earth) with just 1.4 megatons of energy. It was also the fastest unanimous resolution between the US and the Soviet Union to never do shit like that again. And keep in mind those older circuits were much more robust against these things, so if stuff like that was done now it would be far worse.

Which is why a dozen or so specially modified modern ICBMs at key positions could EMP the planet if someone thought it out carefully. It would actually be far easier then nuking every major city in terms of damage and human fatalities.

I should shut up now, I tend to be that guy who when people talk about worse case stuff I point out how to make it even worse then their nightmares. Because honestly people just don't understand how bad things can really get.

Jeez, that's really interesting stuff. Would the entire Earth's power grid be fried or just the side that was hit? Would governments be able to keep hold of there nations? Would there be riots?

For both natural and artificial causes the mechanics of the effects are the same.

The larger the EMP, the larger the effected area. So it could be limited to any arbitrary size depending on the source and power. So a city block, half the planet, the whole planet, it just depends on the starting conditions.

For these smaller solar events it can be limited to a small part of the planet. But could spill into some larger areas depending on power grid setup.

For example a city is hit and everything in the city is fried.
However the surge in the city grid can travel back up the grid and continuing to knock things out till some safe guard stops it. Things in this secondary area could be down for hours or days, but most of that damage is fixable if supplies are available. Some things plunged into the grid at the time would be hurt, so cars and stuff would still work fine, but damage would most likely be inconvenience as most homes and such have small surge protection that can handle things. So some things would fry, but the amount is hard to predict and would likely be on the low side. The real problem would be the core power grid parts as those higher energy loads mean more potential for damage. Ideally safeguards would stop it and the parts would be replaced, only taking hours or days. But given how such safeguards and expensive spare parts cost it is often not keep to what many consider an acceptable level. Also if this does hit a larger area that mean more things breaking so repairs can take a lot longer as repair crews are very limited, often pulling resources from other states to help in major events.

That may not sound so bad, but you have other things like refrigerated food going bad and stuff. Food sotrage and prep takes a lot of electicity, not to mention other vital things. That stress things more then you think. If things aren't fixed in a few days the risk of riots and looting as people panic climbs. Once people panic things get a lot worse fast.

The larger the area the hard it is to fix as resources get stretch thinner and thinner till nothing can get done.

But in our globalized world today, the effects ripple everywhere. Prices for goods skyrocket as the effected areas outbid others in a panic for needed resources. This can trigger crime and other problems in unaffected areas as locals can't afford things.

Net food producing nations like the USA would be best off as food and water are first priorities for keeping a calm public. But say Japan gets hit, well they import nearly all their food and markets and transportation would be all kinds of messed up. A short time later you would see other markets in the USA getting messed up as TV, Cars, and other things made in Japan become harder to get. If mobs on black Friday are any indication food alone would not keep the USA calm after a few months. So it wouldn't be a safe zone and unsafe zone, as walls have never stopped huge refugee waves in the past. It would be more unsafe and completely unsafe zones after a year or two of things failing and fear sinking in that his is not as easy as changing a light bulb.

One very scary thing about 9/11 was the world trade centers were destroyed. Sure those were big buildings, but they housed one of the few the "world trade centers", stocks, bonds, banking bids, etc... Arguably the following rescission was triggered by destroying that one major economic hub, and a full depression was stopped by drastic behind the scenes intervention most people never knew about.

So you see the electricity stopping is bad, the transportation and food stopping is worse, but things go full dystopia when the economic markets crash. And the damage from one triggers the others, like dominoes falling in a row.

Once you learn how it works it seems like a miracle anything works at all.

oh ya, just remember this old gem
Technology Trap - covered by James Burke BBC Connections

youtu.be/MPcZ_5uCldg

>went Fukushima

So released a laughable amount of radiation and the media used it as an excuse to shill Chinese rare metals?