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So what are the odds that we will have a solar super flare?
by ada1981 5y ago
So what are the odds that we will have a solar super flare?
- Jyaif 5y agoThe odds are 1. The question is when.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- peakaboo 5y agoHopefully tomorrow so we can stop worrying.
- xattt 5y agoCan we have the Cascadia earthquake as well while we’re at it?
- meepmorp 5y agoDon't forget the Yellowstone caldera!
- dylan604 5y agoWhat? No love for the ELE asteroid/comet collision?
- aivisol 5y agoCumbre Vieja megatsunami please as well.
- dylan604 5y agoDinosaur killer sized impact vs your volcano. Which tsunami would be bigger? There's more variability in the impact as the volcano is locked to its location, so fun thought exercise for the disaster pr0n types.
- _yoqn 5y agoGodzilla too?
- irrational 5y agoThis thread reminds me of this Calvin and Hobbes comic: https://thecomicninja.files.wordpress.com/2013/04/calvin-and-hobbes-playtime-large.jpg https://thecomicninja.files.wordpress.com/2013/04/calvin-and...
- andrew_ 5y agoDon't lump me in with that "we."
- tmalsburg2 5y agoNitpick: I think you mean that the probability is 1 and the odds infinity.
- ada1981 5y agoYes, within any given year.
- paunthony 5y agoThat's scary but we can't deny that it will happen.
- superkuh 5y agoIt's pretty darn unlikely in our lifetimes. But you'll know about it yourself without anyone needing to tell you before it happens. The energy available to the initial flare and/or associated coronal mass ejection is roughly proportional to the area of the sunspot group. Before there was a "super" flare and/or CME you'd see the sunspot with your unaided eyes. Check out "The standard flare model in three dimensions. II. Upper limit on solar flare energy" and the figure 4 in particular for size to energy reference. https://arxiv.org/abs/1212.2086 https://arxiv.org/abs/1212.2086
- patwolf 5y agoHow much time would elapse from the point of seeing the sunspot until the flare/CME actually occurs?
- superkuh 5y agoHard to say. For a "super" event the sunspot group might be noticibly big right after it appears and flare during the emergence which would mean a ~day or two warning all the way up to a long established group slowly growing over an entire rotation around the sun and coming back to flare and/or erupt ~29 days later.
- Filligree 5y agoSo, does that mean we'd have time to shut off our power grid and disconnect any long lines of metal? AIUI, it's only a problem if sufficiently long wires are actually connected to vulnerable equipment.
- superkuh 5y agoYes. But I think there'd be a lot of political/social problems with that. The solution for the grid at least is to spend the infrastructure money to put fast ground fault interrupters on all irreplacable (<months) big backbone transformers.
- ipspam 5y ago
- vba616 5y ago"O, swear not by the moon, the inconstant moon"