Incoming CME 9/2 Looks like a direct hit
(media.greatawakening.win)
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Shields up! Take evasive action.
Nothingburger
Excuse me while I bathe in the intergalactic plasma.
Last I saw aurora predicted down to like Illinois. We had one in Georgia like a year or two ago.
Am I missing something? Seriously, I don’t really know much about this stuff.
The sun "flares" quite regularly - releases energy so to say. Often, the sun has to release an immense amount of energy and this results in a CME - coronal mass ejection.
It's plasma and radiation basically. Normally, CME's are harmless unless they're really big like in 2003 I believe where Quebec and I think New York state had their power grids bumbled because of it.
Look into the Carrington event from the 1800's - biggest recorded CME to hit earth. Back then, the only thing really affected were telegraph machines.
Our entire existence is now electric based. If a massive CME were to hit the earth, like the Carrington event, the entire power grid would go down - even your car wouldn't work anymore. Now, our upper layers of the atmosphere do help protect us from something like this, but they can't stop everything.
Just imagine if the power went out everywhere and we couldn't get it back up. A big enough CME COULD permanently dismantle the entire grid - we'd go back to the stone age for a while.
Because the sun constantly blasts out radiation, when that radiation hits our upper layers it creates a quasi chemical reaction with our atmosphere. Auroras are just the sun's radiation dissipating and interacting with oxygen. Depending on how high up this process takes place results in the different colours.
EL5