Thread: Increasing solar activity could wreak havoc

Increasing solar activity could wreak havoc


3 hours 16 mins ago

The sun waking from a deep sleep may not sound like such a bad thing and years ago it might not have been.
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Nasa warns of effects of 'space storm' Play video

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• Video: Nasa warns of effects of 'space storm'

However in today's world reliant on technology for the basics of everyday life, increasing levels of solar activity and the flares from the consequent 'space storm' could wreak complete havoc.
Nasa is telling us to prepare for a once in a generation storm which could result in widespread blackouts and leave us without critical communication signals for considerable periods of time.
The overheating of national power grids, mass disruption of air travel and the complete shut down of electronic items, navigation devices and major satellites are just some of the consequences of the sun reaching its maximum power in only a few years time.
As well as this, the bolt of lightning caused by the super storm could bring disastrous consequences for the world emergency service systems, hospital equipment and of course would leave us without our computers, sat navs and ipods.
The worst case scenario would see large parts of the world plunged into darkness for months
Most likely say senior scientists it will last hours and maybe days but this in a world reliant on high tech systems for almost everything we do is likely to have a drastic impact.
Increasing solar activity could wreak havoc - Yahoo! News UK

its the millenium bug all over again. yaaawwwwwn.

Originally Posted by taxexile

its the millenium bug all over again. yaaawwwwwn.

Yep, was just trying to figure out how to make some money out of it, guess i'll just market mirrors as solar flare deflectors, should find a few million gullible people if the milleniom bug is anything to go by.

Sun shades and umbrellas.

Lap top sun shades.

Now let's see how the politicians etc. can twist this round for their benefit

Its not that far fetched, solar flares do disrupt satellites and telecoms..a major event
would cripple many satellites,,which means no phones, tv, etc, I beleive sunspots have a similar effect.

But I saw a documentary about this.



We're all doomed I tell you.

Originally Posted by phunphin

Its not that far fetched, solar flares do disrupt satellites and telecoms..a major event
would cripple many satellites,,which means no phones, tv, etc, I beleive sunspots have a similar effect.

A long time ago, when all this technology was new, I argued that the old systems including Morse code should be kept in case of serious fuck up.
No bugger ever listened.

Ha, ha, fucking ha if this comes off.

/smug bastard.

A big solar storm can be desastrous. But we are better prepared than 10 years ago. We were very dependent of satellites then but now have diversified into glass fibre cable communication. We might lose some of the GPS network, bad but we can live without it.
The continental power grids are at risk but they can be protected, if some precautions are in place.

It would be worse than the millenium bug for sure.

But the millenium bug might have caused more trouble if preemptive measures had not been taken. Some retired programmers made a buck out of it. Who programs in Fortran or Cobol now? My first programming was Fortran. Very basic only. Pun intended.

Sounds like a good time for hi-tech military drills and plausible deniability.

Originally Posted by Takeovers

Who programs in Fortran or Cobol now?

they still make money, going rate was 1000 EUROS per day at one point

Ha! I was looking for that image. Computers? How about a gigantic solar flare breaking apart the planet (after roasting the surface and evaporating the oceans)? How about that?

The sky is falling, the sky is falling!

:P

Also interesting: NASA has warned us, but not really told us when to expect this once in a generation event. And NASA somehow neglected to tell us how exactly to prepare for a global power outage.

Originally Posted by harrybarracuda

But I saw a documentary about this.



We're all doomed I tell you.

Originally Posted by Butterfly

Originally Posted by Takeovers

Who programs in Fortran or Cobol now?

they still make money, going rate was 1000 EUROS per day at one point

There's legacy systems that can't be turned off. IBM has a lock on a large number of banks. You can imagine their systems consisting of thousands of individual pieces of programs working together, developed over a long period of time.

Now it's extremely difficult and/or risky to transition these systems to newer machines, or a new code base. It's all a huge pile of spaghetti, and if it's turned off for an hour the bank goes bankrupt.

We programmers know how to make ourselves indispensable :P