Please create an account to participate in the Slashdot moderation system

 


Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror
×
Space

Geomagnetic Storm To Begin Tonight 111

Posted by timothy from the cuddle-up-and-watch-the-storm dept.
Kiel Oleson writes: "According to the Kansas City Star and the Space Environment Center, there is an 80% chance that a series of five geomagnetic storms will disrupt communications and power systems. These storms will hit the earth beginning at 5 PM CST today and ending at 5 PM CST tommorow. There is a 40% chance of there being severe or major disruptions in satellite orbits, electrical grids, and radio. The good side? Some of us may be able to see the Aurora! Get those UPS's charged!" Everyone's cell phone working OK?
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.

Geomagnetic Storm To Begin Tonight More

Geomagnetic Storm To Begin Tonight

Comments Filter:
  • Whoa.... you are calling Y2K a disaster? Were you up at midnight man? Did anything happen? NO. It is just a bunch of overexadgerated hubris! It will be the same thing, no matter if it is a EM storm, or an earthquake... there is no "taking a step back" - that is just stupid. We must progress to find the solutions... not pause.
  • I forget the exact year, but in the early 60's I think it was, there was a solar storm that blacked out half of Canada and drove the Aurora B. so far south that it was seen from Texas. So you never know!
  • I'll add this one to my Bastard Operator From Hell "Excuse of the day" calendar!

  • Re:Did the Canadians ever get their power grid sor (Score:5)

    by Kotetsu ( 135021 ) on Saturday November 25, 2000 @11:01AM (#602126) Homepage
    The issue is not with mineral deposits in the ground. It's with mulitple-hundred mile long power lines. When you combine a long conductor with a moving magnetic field you can generate some incredible voltages. When the power grid went down last time it was because the generated voltages were large enough to fry the circuit breakers in the power stations. After the first station went down, the others started trying to kick in extra power to compensate. With the extra voltage fluctuations from the magnetic storm, other stations went down. After a few stations were down, the others were unable to provide enough power for the grid, so the whole thing went down.

    As to whether they've fixed things so it won't happen again, I guess we'll see tonight.
  • I saw the Northern Lights from the north coast of Ireland in 1989 -- utterly fantastic. If you're anywhere near clear-ish skies, and you get the chance, stick your head outside every once in a while just in case. It's up there with a good Leonids outburst in my personal list, uh, really cool stuff to see in the sky. With the naked eye.
    --
    If the good lord had meant me to live in Los Angeles
  • I bet some of you guys will be able to hit this repeater system from all over the country tonight. It has mutiple "voters" all over middle TN and a 250W transmitter here in Nashville.

    UHF - anything less might as well be DC :)

    KE4PJW
  • crank up your Gonkulator for the best protection! Of course the American ones are not as effecive as ours, especially the old Frammerstat drive models.
  • How was this offtopic? I bet the idiot moderator didn't even bother to read the fucking post. Moron.

  • I'm flying tommorrow...although this does worry me to some extent, I trust the regulatory bodies in the US plan for some contigencies for events like this.
  • This is just another reason why I make my own electricity. My computer and home are powered by renewable energy. I will never be a slave to the (increasingly fragile) grid.
  • You properly clarified me; when I vaguely said computer error, I mean "Weather.com"'s computer/server/image spicing/etc, not my computer. Thank you for clarifying me.

    If you watch the time delayed image, what you see is the clouds on the left side of The Line fading gradually, which is what I would expect the clouds to to during nightfall. On the right side of the very clearly and probably artificial Line, you see pretty much nothing. The image of North America is probably just a back drop; sub-imposed under the picture of the clouds.

    Sorry for fooling you about knowing how weather satellites work; IANA weather satellite expert; I know nothing about the orbits or said sats; or the type and quality of said sats information. Again, I apologize for the implicit deception. Just making some random observations about this.
  • hyuck hyuck

  • X Storm (Score:2)

    by fm6 ( 162816 )
    You are out of step, culturewise. Everybody knows that unusual, gaudy phenomena are the result of extraterrestrial visitation. Especially when they are accompanied by a bright green glow!!! Get with it!

    __________________

  • As to whether they've fixed things so it won't happen again, I guess we'll see tonight

    I can't talk for all of Canada, but in Quebec it's been fixed years ago. They simply installed giant capacitors at the ends of transport lines, so that DC current is filtered out.

    Anyway, I was told that (but does not have proofs of) the whole electrical problem mainly concerned the province of Quebec because of the way the grid is layed out geographically. Big hydroelectric power plants in the northern part of the province, and very long and straight power lines to bring all that to the south. Apparently, the alignment of the lines (north-south) and their lenght (several hundred kilometers) would have helped greatly to generate the DC current that fried everything.
  • >The issue is not with mineral deposits in the ground. It's with multiple-hundred mile long power lines.

    No. It's both [agu.org].
    Quoting from the above link:

    Power systems in areas of igneous rock (gray) are the most vulnerable to the effects of intense geomagnetic activity because the high resistance of the igneous rock encourages geomagnetically induced currents (GICs) to flow in the power transmission lines situated above the rock.

    There are 765kV lines in the midwest that are 100s of miles long, but they don't have significant problems with geomagnetic storm induced voltages. Similar lines in Canada, where there exists areas of igneous rock, had problems in 1989 during the last solar cycle.

    Indeed, most of the problems with these magnetic storms occurs in the transformers. Transformers are non-linear devices and the DC voltage offset created by the storms force the transformers out of the linear part of their operating curves (saturation). This causes all kinds of problems, including localized heating of the transformer core and harmonic currents.

  • It's now 2:46 (EST) and i'm in southern canada (4525'N 7245'W) and have yet to see a thing. The sky is getting cloudy so i don't think i'll see anything anw...

    If i can't see it here, i can suppose that the majority of the /. readership won't see a thing...

  • ....My lightbulb just blew out!!!....Damn geomagnetic storms!!!

  • Why not have times used in slashdot articles given in UTC time and then possibly converted to the user preference timezone.

    Sorry, but when the f**k is 5 PM CST... ?

    I know I can find that info, but well, it'd like not to have to, I'm not american...and not all slashdot readers are.
  • > I think we are blindly walking into a disaster, > like we did with Y2K

    I agree with you that we should deal with problems before they have a major, negative, wide-spread impact... but Y2K wasn't much of a disaster, though, but more of a mega-hype-turned-fizzle (thankfully). Perhaps we just got lucky.

  • Do you mean what kind of RE gear do I have?
  • Ahh -- been Troll'd -- well little do you know that was actually the TRUTH.
  • Transistior sizes get smalle therefore they are LESS affected by magnetic fluxes. geezesh, why dont people think about basic electronics/physics before they ramble??

    and if you shield the thing with aluminum you further increase it's immunity.

    Next we'll hear that ant farts cause the click of death in Zip drives, because the transistors were mauve in color.
  • Correct me if I'm wrong. No matter how small our transistors are - as long as there's a thick enough magnetic shield around it, we'll be ok. Don't be too paranoic. Unless the interference somehow sneaks into the shield or somehow starts from within it, I can't see how our stuffs will be damaged.
  • 440??? Bah! I'm wondering what this will do to DX around 10? To bad my antenna is hanging over my car at the moment. :) Sam n2swt
  • Dude, the same thing happened to me one night!! I was sitting on my computer about 12 am, power was flickering around the house (I have a big 'ole UPS so I was OK) but there was a greeng low coming from the stairway to upstairs.. I was like wtf... did a power transformer blow a few block away.. that was one green flash.. so I go around ICQ getting paranoid about the sky turning green, and no one beleived me, so I thought I was going crazy, and stopped getting paranoid.. Oh well...
    Systems Administrator
    Servu Networks
    http://www.servuhome.net
  • The green flashes continued, and I also started hearing noises not unlike circuits being grounded. That stereotypical zap-zap noise. I must have stayed outside for an hour wondering how often something like that actually happens. I still had no idea what the hell it was, until I remembered that there was a Coronal Mass Ejection the previous night. It was a plasma storm!

    cool as a plasma storm would be, the green flash is indicative of an above ground power transformer blowing. Where I live that happens fairly often during blizzards. The green flash can be seen from miles away.

    ---

  • Try this program [spacew.com], dude.. it'll tell ya all kinds of stuff like that....
  • well, *I* liked it. Moderators these days should be ashamed of themselves!
  • If there are enough charged particles floating by to kill a UPS, your computer uptime is not the biggest of you concerns.

    --

  • Judging by the link (provided in the headlines above) from NOAA, the kP level (6) for Illinois is too low to see the Aurora. You could drive north for about 6 hours and you might get a shot.
  • i want a fried babuska doll!
  • Nobody ever gives fahrenspitzer coils enough credit :/
  • All the way down here in supersouth texas.

  • I'm flying tomorrow too, but a quick check of the story links shows the solar-storm's worst effects shouldn't reach as far south as my flight-track (SoCal to Atlanta direct).

    Inflight communications might be affected on northern routes, especially those over-the-pole flights. But airplanes themselves are self-contained systems and fairly resilient (even lightning strikes seldom damage planes). So, not too worry....

  • Yes! Maybe the satellite for my pager will go down and my boss will stop paging me every five minutes!

  • This vs Y2K (Score:4)

    by Brento ( 26177 ) <brento@@@brentozar...com> on Saturday November 25, 2000 @09:49AM (#602159) Homepage
    Funny how this has a greater probability of affecting harm to us tonight than y2k did on Dec 31 after all of our preparations, but this probably won't get much press coverage. If it doesn't have a sexy acronym, the major press doesn't seem to latch on to it. (Nothing against the Kansas City paper, of course.)
  • There's an 81.6% chance he won't be able to contact us during this magnetic storm ;)
  • Great!Another excuse that the piss-poor ISP's in Eastern Ky. will give for lousy service. I have a 4 cylinder 20 kw diesel generator on stand-by--not because of the storm or Y2K,just that the power goes out here every time a bird lands on a power line and farts. I'll have the camcorder ready(withe the DC power cord to plug into my SUV's power).
  • About 3pm this afternoon (PST, 5pm CST) Earthlink went down. My DSL line stayed up, but I couldn't click through Earthlink's DNS servers to anything.

    Cycling the DSL modem and a (rare) reboot later, it came back up. It was down about 20 minutes.
  • I wonder... How much more intense does a storm have to be in order to disrupt the power flow from a UPS? And probably more important, does anyone know how much it would take to disrupt a computer?

    /me wishes he ordered ECC memory....

  • Hooray (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    A magnetic storm, and we get to see the northern lights! I hope I can talk to my daddy tonight! He died 30 years ago :(
  • lmfao... fm6 is right. Jesus... imagine this erroneous piece of info gettin' a 5, unless the moderators did it so that those of us that know what a transformer blowing is like can laugh at poor supruzr ;D

  • What time will that be in GMT? (Or CET?).

  • World Domination (Score:3)

    by LavaDog ( 120310 ) on Saturday November 25, 2000 @09:57AM (#602167)
    Does this mean that the major world powers will be powerless for 12 hours? I can see it now, the world will be taken over by some third world country with a whole bunch of rocks.
  • The new millennium starts in 36 days. "Fires in the heavens" and "skys turning brilliant colors" are a sign It is coming!

  • Cellphones? (Score:3)

    by rizzo242 ( 165630 ) on Saturday November 25, 2000 @09:54AM (#602169) Homepage
    Everyone's cell phone working OK?

    Oh, Timothy, dear Timothy -- it probably won't be...that's kind of the point.

    As an interesting side benefit, I might actually find a use for all that ramen and cans of baked beans I bought for y2k...

    "Sweet creeping zombie Jesus!"
  • ....go to the IMAGE (Imager for Magnetopause-to-Aurora Global Exploration) "WIC image" site at: http://sprg.ssl.berkeley.edu/im age /latest_wic.html [berkeley.edu]. The pictures of the nothern hemisphere aurora are updated every few minutes directly from the Far Ultra Violet (FUV) Instrument aboard the sattelite.

  • The power went out here, was down for over 2 hours. My UPS lasted a good 45 mins, but finally died, and i had to shutdown the servers. Now, theyre recharging, and even before reading this, I was planning on going to home depot to get a generator for backup power... Ironic, could my power outage be related to this? Maybe its striking early. This gives me a good excuse to shell out a few hundred for a cheap generator (400 watts should be enough)
  • > "I agree with you that we should deal with problems before they have a major, negative, wide-spread impact...

    i don't agree... ANARCHY, MUTHAFUKAS!!!!
    (just kidding ;D )

    Signed,
    The Comittee for Stating the Blatantly Obvious;)

  • i _think_ the offset is +6 hours... so, should be about 23:00 GMT
  • Isn't there a big problem with even minor magnetic storms in areas with a high calcium content in the ground, i.e. the limestone areas of Canada? Doesn't it cause the power grid to discharge randomly or something?
    I heard that Canadian authorities were working on a fix for this a few years back(geeze, almost ten now, I suppose)- did they ever put a solution in place? And what about other areas with similar geology?
    8)
  • DC current was filtered out eh? Hmm now correct me if I am wrong. If you filter out DC when your transmitting HVDC (high voltage DC) then you are left with nothing. Quebec uses DC for long haul not AC.
    This link just proves they use DC, but I can't find info for the James Bay grid HVDC....
    http://www.nationalgrid.com/usa/operations/elect ricity/interconnections/index.shtml
  • ROFL. I also was from Eastern Ky, and know what you mean.

    I'm an AM radio DX'er, this will cause some strangeness there. Or will the storms heavily interfere with AM skywave? It may also be interesting to listen to the shortwave bands tonight as well.

    It's true an event like this will cause more disruption than Y2K did (nothing), but it's temporary. Does anyone know how far south the aurora will be able to be seen? I doubt it will get as far south as North Carolina.
  • Some 90% of Canadians live within some 5% of the contry, a thin strip running along the US border. Most of our natural resources though are further north, where there aren't many people. So this limestone affect probably isn't a major issue, since very few would be affected.

    Yep, most people here live in Southern Ontario, or southern B.C. In Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Manitoba, most people live quite far from the U.S. Regina is about three hours from the border, ditto for Calgary and Winnepeg. Saskatoon and Edmonton are both the bigger cities in their provinces and they are quite far from the Border.

  • I'm a Canadian and I've neevr heard of this at all. But regardless, our limestone deposits are held mainly in the sparsly populated region around the Hudson bay, if I am not incorrect.

    Some 90% of Canadians live within some 5% of the contry, a thin strip running along the US border. Most of our natural resources though are further north, where there aren't many people. So this limestone affect probably isn't a major issue, since very few would be affected.

    ---There is no spoon....---

  • I heard a few cases where the automatic hydraulic shocks in Lincoln Continentals (IIRC) fully extended at the stroke of midnight.
  • If so: 1) How can we get Bill Gates to fly somewhere during the storm? 2) How about the Presidential Candidates? (Florida: The sunshine wait) On a more serious note, will this affect airplanes, and if so, what are airports doing to prevent disaster and still get passengers to their destinations?
  • Transistors can be killed by very short very high frequency electromagnetic pulses but the low frequency high magnetic field of a geomagnetic storm id more of a threat to power grids, of couse statelites right in the thick of it can be hit.

    Rembember shielding equipment is very simple: put it an a metal box and the faraday cage effect will stop everything but gamma rays.

  • Is it just me, or does this sound like a classic BOFH "excuse of the day" card?
  • Y2K was a disaster. In America nothing happened because you were very well prepared. The third world did not suffer because it has very few modern computing devices anyway.

    But the so called 'second world' did suffer, though it was not reported widely in the america-centric news.

    I went to Russia and Poland earlier this year in a professional capacity, and came across many word-of-mouth tales of malfunctions and problems. Governments in these countries tend to cover up such problems, but they do exist, even still, I can assure you.

    KTB:Lover, Poet, Artiste, Aesthete, Programmer.

  • Geomagnetic storm my ass... (Score:4)

    by Kaufmann ( 16976 ) <rnedal&olimpo,com,br> on Saturday November 25, 2000 @10:25AM (#602184) Homepage
    The office of the US Press Secretary, late at night...

    Bob the Assistant: Mr Secretary, the, um, special official space bulletins have been uploaded into your account for you to check before release.

    Secretary: Thanks Bob.


    WHUX - White House Unix (c) (tm), version 6.0 ("Kissinger" release)

    (Unix is a registered trademark of AT&T.)

    Username: press
    Password: ***

    $ go to home
    Current directory is /etc/home/press.

    $ go to bulletins
    Current directory is /etc/home/press/bulletins.

    $ run "s/extraterrestrial interference/misuse of the metric system/i; s/impending alien invasion/geomagnetic storm/" on all files
    Changes effected.

    $ send all files to newswire
    Email sent.

    $ shut down


  • Link whoring for Aurorae (Score:5)

    by ptbrown ( 79745 ) on Saturday November 25, 2000 @11:48AM (#602185)

    I saved this from the last solar storm story on slashdot. (hey, alliteration!)

    http://www.sec.noaa.gov/pmap/pmapN.html& lt;/a> [noaa.gov]
    Shows the level of auroral activity in the northern hemisphere. Click around for a southern hemisphere view, ya' lazy bastards.

  • Just a random sunspot - triggered musing (Score:3)

    by ins_novelhandle_here ( 226345 ) on Saturday November 25, 2000 @11:48AM (#602186)
    Dunno if it's common knowledge or not, but sunspots are linked with solar magnetic activity; the more sunspots, the more magnetic energy (generally). Sunspot activity seems to be cyclic, with a period of somewhere around 11 years.
    Apparently, we're around the maximum of this cycle now, which nicely correlates with these storms... (and here's the random musing)

    Obviously this could (and probably will) have some effects on electrical systems here on earth(my home's power pulsed twice this morning, dunno if it's a result of the magnetic storm). What's interesting, to me at least, is that during the last solar maximum, computers/electrical dependant systems weren't quite as ubiquitous as they are now. Astronomers as far back as Galileo have recorded information on sunspots and the possibility of a cycle. But it's not like this had any noticable effect on their lives (like Poor Richard's Almanac getting delayed because the intranet went down). As the man from Britain pointed out above, our increasing reliance on technology has some risks associated with it. I'm not too overly concerned just yet, though. It's not like my electrochemical nerve impulses are gonna get scrambled; as long as those are working, I figure I'm alright;).

    I just think it's kind of interesting that the 'Net and the Information Age (sorry to sound like Katz here) happened to begin in a lull in solar activity. Now that systems that are sensitive to solar phenomena are commonplace, I'm thinking we'll notice more or larger effects of these storms on our lives. (ie- 'Napster's down?! Aaaagh!' or even worse; 'I can't get sync!!' ;D). I'm curious to see what effect (or how large an effect) this is going to have on these systems. It'd be a shame if all the sudden it turns out that these storms were just too disruptive for our technology as it stands. I mean, how would we know this until such a situation arises? I'd be willing to bet that a large-scale study of solar EM-radiation and its effects on electrical/digital systems isn't feasible without the sun's cooperation;). I shudder to think that there might be severe web-blackouts or any such thing... I'd have to *gasp* watch TV. (yeah, yeah... not to mention the possible failures of navigational systems, GPS, missile defense systems, etc, etc... )

    In the sci-fi vein; I'm wondering if we accidentally timed the Information Revolution just right... right now, we're aren't so reliant on technology that a disruption would cause widespread catastrophy. At least we'll get a vague idea of whether or not solar activity should be considered when designing technological component and systems, etc., and who knows, it might save us from ceeertain dooooom later on;D.

    Ah, well. End Random Musing.

  • Comment removed (Score:3)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Saturday November 25, 2000 @11:52AM (#602187)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • Cheezus has it right; I've witnessed two transformers blowing directly, and seen the flash and the resulting brownout from a third.
  • This link includes a working gopher directory!

    Gopher's not dead

  • CST time is -6 GMT, it is now 5 pm Central time here in texas.. i havent felt any effects yet..

    Im thinking of going to the local store and buying up all the tinfoil i can get my hands on and try to wrap myself in tinfoil and see if i get zapped. NOT...

    It's gonna the 3rd storm at 1 am cst that im waiting to see/feel/smell

  • Cool! (Score:1)

    by n9fzx ( 128488 )
    Now maybe the Loc Nar will appear while I'm doing my natural energy lighting experiments! It's great to be Den!

  • I imagine that most third world countries aren't terribly reliant on cable television, cellular phones, and microwave ovens. I believe that the water will still run (which may not even exist in said country) throughout this event. That said, this kicks ass that the usually horrid Kansas City paper actually picked up on something interesting... the last interesting thing I read in that sucker was in a review of the Grinch - quote: "Jim Carrey's acting is like being hit repeatedly with nerf bats." ... something to that effect anyway.
  • Just checking out the weather.com satellite images to see what the skies would be like tonight and noticed that if you look at the US 'visibility' satellite images they gradually blank out over 3/4 of the US with a clear and distinct north-south line where the coverage ends. It's right at the westernmost tip of the Texas. The images keep getting updated so check it out soon.
  • Go outside? It's raining in Illinois, those cloud thingies make it really hard to see the Aurora Borelis!
  • Oddly enough, our cell phones are working fine but our usually bulletproof land line sounds like bacon frying and the dial tone is only available occaisionally (sp?).

    Until I finally got through on my dial-up and saw this story I assumed it was just 'cause we got several inches of rain today and all the station wire under the house is over a quarter-century old.

    As for the aurora (mmm, slot cars and DB5's), just like any other time something interesting is going on in the sky, all we have is clouds :(

  • They do, it's called flight insurance.
  • Surely "second-world" countries (Eastern Europe, parts of Middle/South America and Asia/Pacific) did suffer Y2K related inconveniences. But that's only because their ineffectual officials _ignored_ the potential for problems until those problems arose. They had no one to blame but themselves, so I'm not going to feel sorry for them.
  • Latest bulletin: After gettting kicked again I finally reconnected on dial-up and was able to post the above.

    I am now connected at 4.8K. Not 48K, 4.8K! I now know the web equivalent of watching paint dry.

  • But isn't there already an Aurora, Illinois?
  • And approximately where in the world are you?
  • At least you won't need electricity, with the window glass and flourescent tubes glowing...
  • I'm sure if I gave my fahrenspitzer coils a mailbox they'd get enough credit offers.
  • It seems 4 (out of 35 or so) stations on my dutch cable company normaly recieves are down (Ned3, RTL 4+5 and Veronica) Maybe someone can verify this?
  • So, if these Geomagnetic storms pulse, and someones keeping track, will North demand a recount?

    Given the likelyhood of typed papers being on hard disk, I wonder how many students will be able to use the "The geomagnetic storm ate my homework" gig.

    krystal_blade

  • Quick everyone! Re-compile your kernels 800 times because that's how you fix problems like this! The electromagnetic storm may barp your g-sector and you may not have enough variables for your foozlemachine!!
  • I found that it had become extremely cold. The green flashes continued, and I also started hearing noises not unlike circuits being grounded. That stereotypical zap-zap noise. I must have stayed outside for an hour wondering how often something like that actually happens. I still had no idea what the hell it was, until I remembered that there was a Coronal Mass Ejection the previous night.

    I remember one night the power went out and I noticed a light in the sky. I looked out the window and saw this streak across the sky like an aurora and heard a buzzing noise in the sky. The streak converged somewhere far away. It turned out that a large transformer had blown up for some reason. It was the coolest thing I'd ever seen. It made me want to become a professional transformer-blower-upper.
  • As long as it does not fluke with my dsl, I don't care if it takes out what's left of Russia...

  • Re:Why do you care? (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Well, we're soon moving into fully optical devices, but yeah, we have some of those legacy I've heard you're still using.
  • Sounds to me like an evil Republican plot to prevent the vote counts in Florida from being completed on time. 5PM CST? Hmmm....

    "Listen, Mr. Bush....we've been secretly working this large device called a "Laaa-zer" thay will fire a powerful "Laaa-zer beam" at the sun, causing a reflection of solar energy that will block out the world's communication equipment for a period of 24 hours. Then we can prevent all those votes from being counted!"
  • After months of haggling with my employeer, I finally gave in and accepted a work cell phone.

    Now, when I switch the damn thing off, I can blame the outage on the geomagnetic storms!

    LETS HEAR IT FOR THE SUN! WHOOOOHOOO!

    Plus, all that y2k water in my store room is starting to develop algae. Better drink it quick!
  • so I can spin vinyl while you guys are crying over your busted plastic boxes... :))

  • ...the power goes out here every time a bird lands on a power line and farts.

    Time to stop putting beans in the feeder, methinks.

  • These storms are always cool (Score:5)

    by supruzr ( 138432 ) on Saturday November 25, 2000 @10:50AM (#602214)
    There was a geomagnetic storm over western Chicago about 7-8 months ago. That night I was sitting at my computer, when all the sudden I saw a bright flash outside a window to my left. I figured it was raining, and it was a lightning strike.

    A few minutes later, a brownout occurred and my computer rebooted. This happened continuously for about an hour, and after the third instance I just turned it off. At this point I went into my living room, when the power went totally out. I was sitting on my couch in total darkness when suddenly there was a BRIGHT GREEN flash from the window. This was too weird. I had to go outside.

    I found that it had become extremely cold. The green flashes continued, and I also started hearing noises not unlike circuits being grounded. That stereotypical zap-zap noise. I must have stayed outside for an hour wondering how often something like that actually happens. I still had no idea what the hell it was, until I remembered that there was a Coronal Mass Ejection the previous night. It was a plasma storm!
  • I live in South Africa , and my satalite tv service from the Pas 7 satalite was knocked out it took them 48 hours to send a booster signal to reload all my channels i could not figure out what happened until i read this article , great news service down here , and my sky , cnn and bbc i get throught the dish.

  • Please don't be alarmed, but "A communications disruption can mean only one thing. Invasion!"

  • Wonder if its coincidence or not? I was travelling in western Pennsylvania Sunday afternoon and on about six different occasions, the speedometer in my car dropped from 70mph to zero mph. It would stay there for a few miles, then all of the sudden, it would blip back to 70mph. Its a strange feeling driving down the interstate with your speedometer and odometer at zero and some fixed mileage, respectively. Seems fine today - I'm not sure if its mechanical or an electrical sensor, although I suspect its the latter. Similar experiences anyone?
  • I just noticed that; that seems really odd, but I wonder if it related. First off, the line is too well defined and too North/South to make me think of a terminator line. But it couldn't be caused by satellite coverage blackout for the same reasons. Secondly, the places with the visibility problems are on the night side of the terminator, so the satellites shouldn't be affected by solar radition. You would think that because it's night, you would see this, but again, the line is too north/south for a terminator line.

    If anything, it is probably just a computer error.
  • Yeah. I'd very much like to be able to cut myself off from the power grid.
  • not funny at all... now I have no real safe spot to back up my work. I'm currently working on my thesis about E-book publishing and the such, and I've been backing up everynight to my account on the campus mail server, and to my 3rd party private hosting service... now, with this GEOMAGSTORMS effecting the whole contenent, where am I to turn!!!! also, how does this effect our freind in the space station up stairs?
    _________________________________________ __
  • I was working as an administrator at the wisconsin state fair this summer when their substation blew. Cool stuff, unfortunately it was still light out. Damn the thing was loud. Whatever caused it took out two of the ten transformers and knocked out the whole park until one in the morning.

    Having no power at the state fair in the middle of milwaukee on a friday night made for many unhappy vistors...
  • What will this do to all the planes flying around the US; the earlybird holiday travelers, as well as the normal Thanksgiving holiday travelers tomorrow...

    Is there anything to be afraid of?

    Geek dating! [bunnyhop.com]

Slashdot Top Deals

"Gravitation cannot be held responsible for people falling in love." -- Albert Einstein

Close