125
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
this post was submitted on 18 Dec 2023
125 points (88.8% liked)
News
23296 readers
1158 users here now
Welcome to the News community!
Rules:
1. Be civil
Attack the argument, not the person. No racism/sexism/bigotry. Good faith argumentation only. This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban. Do not respond to rule-breaking content; report it and move on.
2. All posts should contain a source (url) that is as reliable and unbiased as possible and must only contain one link.
Obvious right or left wing sources will be removed at the mods discretion. We have an actively updated blocklist, which you can see here: https://lemmy.world/post/2246130 if you feel like any website is missing, contact the mods. Supporting links can be added in comments or posted seperately but not to the post body.
3. No bots, spam or self-promotion.
Only approved bots, which follow the guidelines for bots set by the instance, are allowed.
4. Post titles should be the same as the article used as source.
Posts which titles don’t match the source won’t be removed, but the autoMod will notify you, and if your title misrepresents the original article, the post will be deleted. If the site changed their headline, the bot might still contact you, just ignore it, we won’t delete your post.
5. Only recent news is allowed.
Posts must be news from the most recent 30 days.
6. All posts must be news articles.
No opinion pieces, Listicles, editorials or celebrity gossip is allowed. All posts will be judged on a case-by-case basis.
7. No duplicate posts.
If a source you used was already posted by someone else, the autoMod will leave a message. Please remove your post if the autoMod is correct. If the post that matches your post is very old, we refer you to rule 5.
8. Misinformation is prohibited.
Misinformation / propaganda is strictly prohibited. Any comment or post containing or linking to misinformation will be removed. If you feel that your post has been removed in error, credible sources must be provided.
9. No link shorteners.
The auto mod will contact you if a link shortener is detected, please delete your post if they are right.
10. Don't copy entire article in your post body
For copyright reasons, you are not allowed to copy an entire article into your post body. This is an instance wide rule, that is strictly enforced in this community.
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
Hey I have a solar flare/CME question that I have always wanted to know. What is the largest flare possible? And what would happen if the earth caught the full force of it? I have read about the Carrington Event and I assume that it would be worse than that.
How close would the flare come to earth? As in the light/plasmas emissions. Opposed to the partial emissions or is that a dumb distinction.
Thank you.
The theoretical limit for a solar flare is very high. These are called super flares. However, they are exceptionally rare and tend to occur in younger, larger stars than our sun. That said, it isn’t impossible for one to occur, and if a massive flare were to occur, the flare wouldn’t be the worst part. Simply put, a solar flare is magnetic energy being launched from the surface of the sun in the form of photons or particles of light. While this would create radio blackouts, satellite drag, and phenomenal aurora, it wouldn’t have a significant impact on Earth’s surface (except for the satellite issues). The real danger is the coronal mass ejection that would follow. A coronal mass ejection is protons, neutrons, alpha particles, and electrons being launched at insane speeds off the Sun’s surface. Because these particles are charged, they can impact our electric grid. And in an extreme case could, in theory, destroy it through massive electrical ground level enhancements. These enhancements would primary occur at higher latitudes because the charged particles would follow Earth’s magnetic field lines toward the poles, but could easily disrupt electric grids northward/southward of 30 degrees. That would mean most of Europe, America, much of Asia, Australia, half of South America and Africa all without power. Obvious chaos would ensue. The good news is governments are aware of this risk and have begun taking preventive mechanisms to prevent such a catastrophic failure. The other piece of good news is this type of event is very rare. The likelihood of it happening in anyone’s given lifetime is extremely low.
Thank you so much.