$\"Aurora$ <\/a>

Aurora during a geomagnetic storm that was most likely caused by a coronal mass ejection from the Sun on 24 May 2010. Taken from the ISS. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)<\/p><\/div>\n

We are protected from solar storms by a cloud of charged particles, or plasma, that normally surrounds Earth out to a distance of four times the planet’s radius<\/em>. Each Earth-directed solar outburst damages the cloud to some degree, and with time it repairs itself. A 2003 storm reduced the cloud to just 4 Earth radii. Scientists believe that a repeat of 1859’s Carrington Event would completely wipe out the plasma cloud, leaving us vulnerable for the following decade.<\/p>\n

Certainly, in such a scenario, our satellites would be at great risk and we would expect to lose some or even all of them. Earth-based electrical systems would also face major damage. It really comes down to the odds of two Carrington Events occurring within a decade. We haven’t been observing the Sun long enough to know how likely or unlikely that is. But if we survive one, prudent survivalists would start preparing for the second one.<\/p>\n

Source: New Scientist<\/a><\/p>\n

(this story is from 18 months ago, BTW, I’m going through piles of unfinished business…)<\/p>\n

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We are protected from solar storms by a cloud of charged particles, or plasma, that normally surrounds Earth out to a distance of four times the planet’s radius. Each Earth-directed solar outburst damages the cloud to some degree, and with time it repairs itself. A 2003 storm reduced the cloud to just 4 Earth radii. Scientists believe that a repeat of 1859’s Carrington Event would completely wipe out the plasma cloud, leaving us vulnerable for the following decade.
\nCertainly, in such a scenario, our satellites would be at great risk and we would expect to lose some or even all of them. Earth-based electrical systems would also face major damage. It really comes down to the odds of two Carrington Events occurring within a decade. We haven’t been observing the Sun long enough to know how likely or unlikely that is. But if we survive one, prudent survivalists would start preparing …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[129],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4980","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-solar-storm"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/survive2012.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4980","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/survive2012.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/survive2012.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/survive2012.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/survive2012.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4980"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"http:\/\/survive2012.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4980\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4987,"href":"http:\/\/survive2012.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4980\/revisions\/4987"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/survive2012.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4980"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/survive2012.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4980"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/survive2012.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4980"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}