this post was submitted on 16 May 2024
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I guess you already knew since your phone is working.

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[–] [email protected] 6 points 6 months ago

If technology survived, it wasn't a Carrington event.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

Using an IQ scale that only classifies scores into categories of 0-49, and 50+, I’ve determined I’m as smart as Einstein.

… which is to say, it’s a bit silly to assume a classification system with a “catch all” maximum is going to produce equitable results in that maximum range. (Not that they are bad systems, just that you can’t compare things in that range without qualifiers.)
Never mind that how directly a flare is aimed at the earth factors heavily, too.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Check it out! Technology survived a Carrington Event

Nope, that wasn't remotely powerful enough to be compared to Carrington.

For such an event, we'd have to take preemptive measures to protect our power grids by mostly shutting then down and cutting various interconnects temporarily until the danger had passed, for example.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 6 months ago

Whenever the headline is a question, the answer is always no.

[–] [email protected] 22 points 6 months ago

No, we didn't. It wasn't remotely close.

[–] [email protected] 44 points 6 months ago (4 children)

For such kind of stories, I would prefer reading an article from a science magazine over a random youtube video. Not everything need to be a video!

I don't know what a Carrington event is but based on context, I'd wager it's probably a huge solar flare hitting earth.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 6 months ago (1 children)

This isn't a "random" YouTube channel.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 6 months ago

The channel has 1m subscribers. It is by definition a random youtube channel to ~%99.9 of the population.

[–] [email protected] 28 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (2 children)

I had to look it up, the Carrington Event was a solar flare that impacted the entire globe and caused telegraph stations to set on fire in the 1800s. It's the biggest magnetic storm in recorded history, and would lead to global devastation if another one that size impacted Earth due to our reliance on electronics

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 months ago

Thanks for the info!

[–] [email protected] 19 points 6 months ago (1 children)

We know the real Carrington event was a much more severe storm because there were reports of the northern lights visible in the tropics.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (2 children)

I know nothing about how any of this works, and so what I am gonna say may be complete nonsense, but If the current one was weaker and the last powerful one was in the late 19th century, then this would hopefully means another "real" corrignton event will at least need more than a century and half to occur.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 6 months ago

The current model predicts that the peak activity of this solar cycle will be next year. Theoretically, we haven't seen the highest activity yet.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 6 months ago

Unfortunately for us, the sun isn't an egg timer, and it's pretty much completely impossible to determine exactly when and how strong the next solar flare is until it's hurtling through space and potentially in our direction (beyond general trends like solar cycles and such). Would be great if it worked like that though.