"Even Carrington would be impressed" 😬
https://spaceweather.com/archive.php?view=1&day=02&month=12&year=2025
Hopefully we just get "someone should check on our satellites" levels of auroras and not "A bunch of open questions in solar-terrestrial physics are about to be answered"
@sundogplanets how are you doing today
@sundogplanets wtf to that "alien abduction" black friday ad. ugh.
@sundogplanets xkcd? A link is preferable to copying just the picture as some of the joke is missing
@sundogplanets
I take it their use of the term "geoeffective" is a polite way of saying "yes, it is lined up to hit us".
@sundogplanets I live at 10ºN, I always wanted to see auroras, but maybe not at home 😮
@sundogplanets Holy hell. That's worrisome. Luckily, we have capable, level-headed, champions of science guiding national space weather policy....oh shit, I just got word they've all been fired and replaced with the QAnon shaman.
@sundogplanets I have been assured by my brother (an engineer who does well in his field) that the risk of solar storms to our electronic infrastructure is vastly overblown in the media. While it is technically true that a Carrington-level event *could* knock out power across continents, apparently the preventative measures are also trivially easy and built into infrastructure by default now that the risk is understood. So there'd be isolated problems but not large-scale failures
okay but have you considered: if the food's bland enough to make satellites question their existence, it’s time for a flavor upgrade. step it up, people!
if its on the Southern Hemisphere it's called an Antaurora
@sundogplanets @knud they are visible on this telelens shot i took through the mist yesterday morning
https://social.sciences.re/@jaztrophysicist/115643115490511947
@sundogplanets I chose the wrong month to get back into playing The Long Dark (which prominently features aurorae as part of its post-apocalypse setting. It is unclear what causes them in game, though it's hinted at in one of the DLC).
Hopefully, a reconnection does not happen.
@sundogplanets As they say, Carrington is sharrington wood heat in the winter because the power grid is down.
@sundogplanets
Oh, Carrington!
@sundogplanets Someone should go check on our satellites 😂 😂 😂
@sundogplanets I've been watching ever since Perseverance took this pic of the sunspots before they rotated around for our viewing pleasure.
This is blowing up a bit: not trying to scare you all! There is a *gigantic* set of sunspots coming around the limb of the sun, comparable in size to the sunspots sketched by Carrington. They may or may not send some plasma our way. There is also a minor aurora event predicted for 2 days from now due to interactions between an eruption from this sunspot group and previously emitted solar wind/magnetic fields.
ESA has some good info on big solar storms here: https://www.esa.int/Space_Safety/Space_weather/Flying_through_the_biggest_solar_storm_ever_recorded
Add to that the full moon on Friday
@sundogplanets @futzle uh. I am scared.
“coming around the limb of the sun”
Do I understand correctly that this is something which will be pointing directly at us in a bit less than a season?
@marshray It's an exercise put on by scientists to explore what would really happen in this very possible scenario. Not clickbait.
@sundogplanets The headline clearly implies the article is about an actual “recorded” solar storm, and this is not clarified until the end of the first paragraph.
Please forgive me for thinking you were talking about actual sunspots.
@sundogplanets I mean…given how the last few years have been for being a human on this planet, it would not surprise me for us to have another once in several lifetimes event 😅😅😅
@sundogplanets So maybe if you have any truly crucial, priceless data--say, old family photos digitized, or a few terrabytes of pirated movies--you know, whatever--you might want to copy them to an external hard drive and put that in a Faraday bag. Just in case.
@sundogplanets It's scary, but I made a meme to help me cope and giggle a bit.
@sundogplanets
“Dec 1 (Reuters) - Europe's Airbus (AIR.PA), opens new tab on Friday ordered immediate repairs to 6,000 of its widely used A320 jets in a sweeping recall affecting more than half the global fleet.”
“The move, announced on November 28, 2025, stems from a critical glitch in flight control systems, exacerbated by solar radiation interference that can disrupt electronic components at cruising altitudes”
<https://www.aeronewsjournal.com/2025/11/airbus-a320-recall-sparks-worldwide-jet.html>
@sundogplanets If we had any way of ensuring that the resulting CMEs only affected LLM systems, eh?
Well, those and the thousands of very LEO objects. Pushing them out of orbit in a plane above or below the solar system plane, rapidly, forever.
So does this mean I should just turn off all my computers tomorrow and the next day?
@sundogplanets Something wicked this way comes…
(Love Bradbury, so the title just sprung up in my mind)
@sundogplanets some days I think that a Carrington event might be good for us, when I'm feeling particularly cynical about all this technology
@sundogplanets I'm all for answering open questions, but...perhaps not like this?
@sundogplanets That would be quite the Alfvén wave.
@sundogplanets "well, this could be exciting" and other phrases you *really* don't want to hear from astrophysicists.
