HN Reader

This would not have been kind to any RF/EMF systems, be they GEO, LEO or terrestrial.

We'd have been walking around marvelling at st elmo's fire coming off any point-contact junction between metal or exposed metal structure, with the most fantastic skies at night.

On the other hand, would allergy sufferers be marvelling at the removal of all the dust and pollen? This would be like the outdoors becoming a giant anti-static dust remover.

Primitive man wakes up, discovers can breathe through both nostrils...

(pdf) https://oulurepo.oulu.fi/bitstream/handle/10024/55447/nbnfio...

New as in research from 2023?

https://linkinghub.elsevier.com/retrieve/pii/S02624079230189...

I hope it doesn't take so long to happen again that we have nobody around who remembers how to fix what it breaks. If so it'll be back to the stone ages for humanity.

Is this not one of the Miyake Events[1]? This particular one was reported in 2023 [2].

[1]. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miyake_event

[2]. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S02624...

Are there any cultural artifacts from these types of events? You'd think there would be stories of sky gods causing all kinds of mischief in areas where they are unaccustomed to aurora.

Doesn't that roughly coincide with the Younger Dryas?

So we can look forward to radiocarbon spikes in the weather forecast.

"New SOCOL:14C-Ex model reveals that the Late-Glacial radiocarbon spike in 12350 BC was caused by the record-strong extreme solar storm".

Just 5 years away from being 12345

> The findings revise our understanding of solar physics and space weather extremes. "This event establishes a new worst-case scenario," Golubenko notes. "Understanding its scale is critical for evaluating the risks posed by future solar storms to modern infrastructure like satellites, power grids, and communication systems."

…then proceeds to not explain anything about what that new, data-supported worst case scenario is.

The whole article is light on quantitative data, it’s a shame.

wow that's cool. Given that the 12350 BC event was over 500 times more intense than the 2005 solar storm, what are the possible consequences if a storm of similar magnitude were to occur today?

The article casually mentions a "notorious" 775 AD event which I'd never heard about (insert relevant XKCD here), so here's Wikipedia:

The event of 774 had no significant consequences for life on Earth, but had it happened in modern times, it might have produced catastrophic damage to modern technology, particularly to communication and space-borne navigation systems.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/774%E2%80%93775_carbon-14_spik...

Interestingly, the identification of the cause of the 775 AD event with a huge solar flare came from the same researchers as this story.

If this is C14 then this requires biological matter. Carbon dating depends on C14 so I’d assume that this needs to be tied to a chain of tree ring dates going back to tie these events down.

There’s no doubt evidence of stronger events further back, it would be interesting to see if theirs a loose record of suggested intensities for those.

I take it most of these details will be in the happy which I’ll need to study.

I’m curious what humans at the time would have felt, if anything.

Were they able to measure the -nT value for this storm?

That would be interesting to know, I was at the May 11th 2024 event taking photos. It was probably the strongest in the last 30 years.

Isn't it amazing that we have an in-silico model that goes back thousands of years and can even tell us about atmospheric conditions 12,000+ years ago? We can confirm this via miyake events which are registered as growth in the tree rings. One just cuts down 13,000 year old trees to confirm the model, and we're good!

> This event establishes a new worst-case scenario

This person’s definition of “worst-case scenario” is much different than mine.

We don’t know with certainty what the universe will throw at us.

We just do the very best we sensibly can.

Why should we assume that the worst thing that could happen to us happened within the past 20K years?

More fuel for the Fermi paradox. Our sun is a fairly calm well behaved star. Many stars, even if they allow life, might make anything using electricity very problematic.

Of course ours will eventually if we don’t prepare. Seems like this type of event would also doom any space settlements if it hit one.

Makes me wonder if going to the outer solar system further from the sun would be better than Mars.