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Communications Earth

Biggest Solar Flare In Years Temporarily Disrupts Radio Signals On Earth (phys.org) 28

Posted by BeauHD from the communication-disruptions dept.
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Phys.Org: A NASA telescope has captured the biggest solar flare in years, which temporarily knocked out radio communication on Earth. The sun spit out the huge flare on Thursday, resulting in two hours of radio interference in parts of the U.S. and other sunlit parts of the world. Scientists said it was the biggest flare since 2017. Multiple pilots reported communication disruptions, with the impact felt across the country, said the government's Space Weather Prediction Center.

Scientists are now monitoring this sunspot region and analyzing for a possible outburst of plasma from the sun, also known as a coronal mass ejection, directed at Earth. The eruption occurred in the far northwest section of the sun, according to the center. NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory caught the action in extreme ultraviolet light, recording the powerful surge of energy as a huge, bright flash. Launched in 2010, the spacecraft is in an extremely high orbit around Earth, where it constantly monitors the sun. The sun is nearing the peak of its 11-year or so solar cycle. Maximum sunspot activity is predicted for 2025.
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Biggest Solar Flare In Years Temporarily Disrupts Radio Signals On Earth More

Biggest Solar Flare In Years Temporarily Disrupts Radio Signals On Earth

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  • Perfect (Score:4, Funny)

    by divide overflow ( 599608 ) on Friday December 15, 2023 @10:43PM (#64085215)
    I'm blaming everything that happened today on the solar flare.

    • An airplane went down on I-26 reporting simultaneous fuel pump and two ECU failures - related?

      • No. The solar flare was from 12pm - 2pm EST but the crash didn't happen until 8:15pm EST. The report says:

        A single-engine Diamond DA-40 crashed on Interstate 26 near Asheville Regional Airport around 8:15 p.m. with two people on board, the Federal Aviation Administration reported. The North Carolina State Highway Patrol said the plane hit power lines that cross I-26 and one wing hit a tractor-trailer, WLOS-TV reported.

        • So still possible. ESD damage to memory, corruption of firmware, etc.

          "The problem in a radiation environment with floating-gate memories is that data is lost to radiation even when the device is in an unpowered state."

          Not LIKLEY, but still POSSIBLE.

          • Two ECU failures on a single engine plane? Stretching the boundaries of the possible. (Or stretching the common meaning of "ECU" as "Engine Control Unit", for which you need one of those PFY backronym generators.)

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by tlhIngan ( 30335 )

            So still possible. ESD damage to memory, corruption of firmware, etc.

            "The problem in a radiation environment with floating-gate memories is that data is lost to radiation even when the device is in an unpowered state."

            Not LIKLEY, but still POSSIBLE.

            No, not at all likely, because airplane engines date from the 60s.

            If there is an electronic ignition (which is fairly new to GA, but has been in experimental aircraft for decades), there will still be a mechanical backup - ye olde magneto. Most light aircraft use

        • It's possible that the plane caught enough of the radiation to sustain damage that didn't show itself until it was flying. 2 ECUs and a pump failing seems to be a very unlikely event. I wonder how much more damage from this event will be discovered in the coming weeks.

        • The solar flare was from 12pm - 2pm

          It lasted for 14 hours? That's an amazing solar flare. It has to be longest ever recorded.

          What you meant to say is the flare lasted from 12 noon [theserverside.com] until 2PM [rmg.co.uk].

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by znrt ( 2424692 )

            What you meant to say is the flare lasted

            funny like the guy even asks if he is making a pedantic argument.

            ffs, just stick to 24h format and stop inventing problems.

            btw, you english speakers are getting dates wrong too: it's ddmmaaaa to print and aaaammdd to write, store and sort, so stop mixing orders up. just stop, that's not "cultural", it's idiotic.

          • The solar flare was from 12pm - 2pm

            It lasted for 14 hours? That's an amazing solar flare. It has to be longest ever recorded.

            What you meant to say is the flare lasted from 12 noon [theserverside.com] until 2PM [rmg.co.uk].

            This is both an incorrect and logically inconsistent bit of posting.

            If your contention is that 12pm and 12am do not even exist, according to the link you cite and based on the literal meaning of am and pm, then you can't claim that 12pm to 2pm is 14 hours - what you would have to claim is that the elapsed time is indeterminate.

            It is true that the literal meaning of am and pm make both noon and midnight indeterminate as they are the dividing line, being neither before nor after. And it is commonly argued by

      • I'm wondering what kind of warning system we have in place when a highly distruptive, damaging flare is about to hit us with a massive electromagnetic wave. Remember the famous Carrington event that was strong enough to cause telegraph stations to blow up back in the 19th century? I'm thinking we don't have any warning system in place. It was bad enough when the big one struck just as electricity started to come into widespread use, but would be absolutely catastrophic today.. I'm a little nervous right no
        • I've been saying this for years.

        • I'm thinking we don't have any warning system in place.

          Didn't you RTFS? Or even RTFA? OK - it's Slashdot, so what would be unacceptable in public life is acceptable here. The SDO (and a couple of other sun observing satellites and ground stations) are the warning system(s).

          Oh, you want more than a few hours of warning? Well, you do get warnings on an approximately 11-year cycle, which is the most accurately predictable Solar cycle. That's rarely as much as a year off (with rounding).

          If you want, say, a w

          • OK we have that part. But what about the other part of getting the earning out to the public. Such as (in Amrrica) using the EAS and text message alerts.
            • How much relevance is this to the general public? Cell service gets a bit wobbly (probably to different levels for the different networks. And then ... what happens? GPS doesn't stop working (because GPS signals aren't transmitted over the cellular system), though downstream navigation and advertising systems may glitch. Doesn't stop you being able to walk or drive according to the stored maps on your device, or optical input to your eyes. Some emails don't get from server to remote device - which doesn't m
    • The important question is whether or not your (Patent Pending) BOFH Excuse-o-meter [d00t.org] desk calendar [jefflane.org] had this included for today (or, this being Slashdot, yesterday).

  • Additional material (Score:5, Interesting)

    by CaptQuark ( 2706165 ) on Friday December 15, 2023 @11:06PM (#64085241)

    I found some additional material on the science page of The Guardian that explains the rarity and severity of the event a little better.

    December Solar Flare [theguardian.com]

  • Well (Score:3)

    by Malays2b0wen ( 10422574 ) on Saturday December 16, 2023 @02:29AM (#64085413)
    My cellular data seemed to work just fine. I wish I knew about this sooner because I would've taken out my old AM radio to see what kind of noise this flare produced on that band in my part of the country (west coast).

  • Where are they keeping it? ;)

  • Phone call on line 1 for Mr. Carrington.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by znrt ( 2424692 )

      i just had to google and ...

      People also search for
      who is mr carrington partner
      is mr carrington married
      Mr carrington age
      Mr carrington wife
      Mr carrington net worth
      mr carrington dynasty

      ... no, i don't want to know more.

  • Good thing the NASA telescope captured that pesky flare - we don't want those things running around willy nilly!

  • It did not "knock[] out radio communication on Earth." It knocked out some very tiny small fraction of some communications on Earth.

    To wit, "Multiple pilots reported communication disruptions." That's it.

  • from the sun, and your phone dies, your GPS dies, your car dies, your bank dies, no electricity and on and on. Want fire? Rub two sticks together. The Carrington event took down the telegraph systems...just imagine in our microprocessor world what would happen. https://www.history.com/news/a... [history.com]
    • Your phone and car will be fine although cellular service and data might get disrupted. Anything plugged into the wall or hardwired to the grid without very robust surge protection may not be, satellites like gps could get destroyed, banks may lose power but likely not all backups. Widespread fires might happen. It’s not a nuclear bomb emp, the charges won’t affect anything small and portable with decent esd protection like pretty much anything today. The real problem is that charged particles
      • A good read on the power supply and what can be done to reduce the effects on the grid is this Wired story: https://web.archive.org/web/20... [archive.org] that was in the July/August 2022 issue. Going though the testimony earlier the year the Carrington event or words to the effect where not even brought up during U.S. Senate hearing (on June First, 2023). Only the part (that is also in the Wired story) about how transformers are years out in productions backlog of orders and the Wired story adds the additional detail

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