across two hemispheres
Is there any point to this distinction? Why not just say "the entire planet"?
this post was submitted on 05 Nov 2025
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It was hitting the Americas and the Pacific. And both hemispheres, so north and south alike. That's because that side of the Earth was facing the sun at that time. I assume the south received the brunt of it due to the axial tilt going into southern summer.
So it was not the entire planet, just the two hemispheres of North and South and specifically mostly the Americas and the Pacific.
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Perhaps it did not substantially fill both hemispheres. Or perhaps they are referring to overlapping hemispheres like the north and west.
Is that why cell phone connections have been so weak lately?
Radio is affected by solar activity because many radio frequencies, especially those used by long-distance or shortwave radio, depend on the Earth's ionosphere for reflection, which is disrupted by solar flares. Cellular phones, however, use higher frequency bands (UHFVHF) that are not reflected by the ionosphere; instead, they transmit via a line-of-sight connection between the phone and a cell tower, making them much less susceptible to solar interference.
Our phones really use uhf/vhf? Dang. I'm a ham nerd but my radio knowledge doesn't really extend beyond those bands.
Mobile phones use UHF and SHF, where GSM is on the lower end of the spectrum (900/1800MHz) and 5G on the higher end. The newest WiFi standard is at 6GHz.
5G can go as high as 71GHz, just not in mobile phones yet
Mmmm, hammmm
What services might people have noticed being unusable because of this?
Plane to controller coms.
Cool, that was my first guess!
You specifically don't mention controller -> plane comms, is that just because they have more powerful transmitters?
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Mobile Phones don’t use VHF, only UHF and SHF
I dont think so but thats based on my location being in the Affected area and my not noticing any change to my connection.
A part of me dreads what would happen if another carrington event happened and another part of me eagerly wants to see what would happen.
Right? I'm not a prepper, but I find it's a lof of fun to plan for this kind of thing. I never actually do, prepare anything, but I make mental notes. Right now the plan would be to get a Faraday cage, shove a microwave motor in there as AFAIK they can be great as generators, then a RPi, a tiny monitor and a downloaded copy of Wikipedia. I'd love to get some Lora devices so that I can give them to friends and family
I'm not sure how well a faraday cage would protect against something like this. Maybe a lot maybe not as much as you'd think.
Total em shielding would probably be a better option.
AFAIK it should protect it. Maybe even from any electromagnetic activity. But once away, I struggle with electronics and electricity
I know with radio waves it depends on the frequency and the size of the holes in the cage. Higher frequencies need increasingly smaller holes to prevent radio waves from entering. Around 2mm at 5ghz if what I've read is correct.
I'm guessing the type of material, thickness, etc may play a role too.
What I don't know is how much of this, if any, applies to a huge blast of the sun"s toxic ass plasma hitting us in the face.
I know that microwaves are designed to block up to, iirc, 2.4ghz
Probably just use the same microwave and throw the motor inside.
Electrical work is one of the many important skills I lack. I am not sure if I could open the microwave, remove the motor, close it again, and guarantee that the cage still works
You could wrap the whole thing in tin foil to be safe
Maybe. Probably. I think you have to make sure it's grounded
Nah, it would be a good idea, but how do you ground against a big solar flare? Conductors are going to work like antennas, you'd probably be better off burying the thing than hooking it up to most things we call ground, they're going to start fires
And the only reason for the ground is to drain the induced currents from the cage before they affect the insides... You could layer insulator and foil over and over again if you want better protection
But yeah, tin foil alone would do something to make sure the microwave is solidly covered. It's not like they're a good faraday cage, they're just an available one
I mean, if the unconnected motor would be fried, I wouldn't worry about it. I'd get the fuck outside and start running, because everything touching metal is about to be on fire
I've got my foil hat on.
I’m not sure how well a faraday cage would protect against something like this. Maybe a lot maybe not as much as you’d think.
Very effectively.
The Carrington event was caused by a coronal mass ejection (CME), not a solar flare.
A coronal mass ejection is a cloud of charged particles (plasma) emitted by the sun. When it hits the earth, it induces a voltage in the earth's magnetic field. North-south, there's no voltage differential to speak of because that's the orientation of the magnetic field's lines of force. But on an east-west axis, there can be a large voltage differential. So if there's a big-ass conductor oriented on an east-west axis (like the transcontinental copper telegraph lines at the time of the Carrington event), that conductor can carry a high voltage until it is discharged. The magnitude of that voltage is proportional to the east-west vector component of the length of the conductor.
So, if a huge CME leaves the sun and is forecast to hit the earth, grid operators have 18 hours to a couple of days to decouple their grids along the east-west axis. 1/4 the length, 1/4 the induced voltage. That can make a big difference. And they know how to do that and have done it before.
A lot of the freaking out about CMEs is based on cunfusion CME impacts with the effects of electromagnetic pulses (EMPs) which are superficially similar phenomena with different (manmade) causes. But CMEs are huge, diffuse, and not ultra-fast-moving, so they don't hit like a spike as EMPs do, they hit more like an extended gust of wind, and the induced voltage doesn't grow in microseconds, it grows over hours. So worrying about what'd happen to disconnected home electronics in the event of a CME is silly.
There might be other problems, though, besides the grid induced voltage I've already mentioned. Satellites can accumulate static charge and malfunction, so you might lose GPS and some satellite-based communications paths. The earth's ionosphere might be disrupted, interfering with HF radio communications and with radio communication that relies on ionospheric skips. But those are the biggest impacts.
And if there's an EMP, it's likely that's because someone set off a nuke, so the loss of your game controller is going to be one of the least of your worries.
Cool to know, thanks for taking the time to type that out!
Pretty sure there are prepper packages available online that is a superset of knowledge bases, things like wikipedia, music, survival guides, guides on agriculture/raw material processing/ hunting / basic engineering etc. (The free ones are better than for-pay grifter packets) precisely for things like this.
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I've read that if things are off and not powered that they wouldn't be affected. You could kill the power to your house and shut off battery powered items and be okay.
Maybe I'm wrong though. Also, I've read the sun is monitored for such things we would have 10 minutes or so of time to prepare.
we would have 10 minutes or so of time to prepare
More like a couple of days. Coronal mass ejections (which is what the Carrington event was) can be seen leaving the sun, there's good software to track and predict their trajectories and how much they dissipate (or don't) en route.
No CME has an arrival time on the order of 10 mnutes.
That makes sense considering light takes 8 minutes.
This is a case of 'it depends '. The damage isn't caused by something being on or off. It's everywhere. Disconnecting can isolate damage from small storms, but world ending storms have enough energy to jump air gaps and the surges would be faster than most breakers can react to. You'd physically have to rip the cables from your house to be safe. Smaller, battery powered devices would be more susceptible regardless if they were on/off. Batteries are a concern because you don't want them to incur damage/blow up due to an electric surge.
If this sounds overblown remember that during the Carrington Event, telegraph lines continued to operate for hours even after batteries were removed. In some cases, lines sparked and damaged equipment or personnel. These are very powerful storms that naturally induce electric current in circuitry.
before Musk fired everyone.
The ESA also monitors space weather.
Along with NOAA SWPC (which is a target in Trump's war on science), the UK Met Office and a Chinese government agency have 24/7 human-staffed space weather ops centers.
ESA monitoring by human forecasters, to the best of my knowledge, isn't 24/7-- but the satellite feeds are.
Wish it would knock me out instead
I'll do it for 10 bucks
Deal. I await your strongest solar flare.
Did we know this was coming or was it a surprise?
We are in “solar maximum” so heightened activity is expected but we are also not very far in our study and understanding of the sun, and “X-class flares” are fairly unusual.
We should probably shut down any of that book-learnin' and knowing real facts about the world. Does fElon know about this "waste, fraud, and abuse"?
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Given this timeline, no, not a surprise
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I'm cool with more aurora borealis. I was only able to see a dull red glow during the last solar storm.
Flares don't cause auroras. However, they are sometimes (often?) accompanied by coronal mass ejections which, if they head our way, can cause auroras. So it all depends on whether or not there were CMEs with these flares and whether or not those CMEs are on a path that will strike Earth. This forecast differs from the one in the posted article.
As it happens, there are a few CMEs headed our way right now according to spaceweather.com .
STRONG GEOMAGNETIC STORM PREDICTED: The sun hurled another CME toward Earth today, and this one looks like it will be a direct hit. The M7.5-class explosion from sunspot 4274 has an unambiguous Earth-directed component. In total, three CMEs will graze or hit Earth in the days ahead: #1, #2, #3. As a result, strong G3-class geomagnetic storms are possible on Nov. 6-8. CME impact alerts: SMS Text.
Just for reference: G3s aren't that huge, and hit the earth frequently. And a grazing, rather than a direct hit, won't do much. What we don't know when we first see them is how diffuse those CMEs are going to be when they hit us. Most CMEs spread out after they leave the sun, sometimes to such an extent that their impact on earth isn't significant. The forecasting centers monitor how CMEs develop en route to the earth, so if you're interested, keep checking their forecasts.
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