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posted by martyb on Saturday November 10 2018, @01:47PM   Printer-friendly
from the need-more-fiber-optics dept.

Recently declassified documents suggest that in August 1972, a massive, high-velocity coronal mass ejection caused many sea mines to detonate unexpectedly. A new look is taken at the incident, taking into account more of what is known about the solar activity at the time.

The extreme space weather events of early August 1972 had significant impact on the US Navy, which have not been widely reported. These effects, long buried in the Vietnam War archives, add credence to the severity of the storm: a nearly instantaneous, unintended detonation of dozens of sea mines south of Hai Phong, North Vietnam on 4 August 1972. This event occurred near the end of the Vietnam War. The US Navy attributed the dramatic event to 'magnetic perturbations of solar storms.' In researching these events we determined that the widespread electric‐ and communication‐ grid disturbances that plagued North America and the disturbances in Southeast Asia late on 4 August likely resulted from propagation of major eruptive activity from the Sun to the Earth. The activity fits the description of a Carrington‐class storm minus the low latitude aurora reported in 1859. We provide insight into the solar, geophysical and military circumstances of this extraordinary situation. In our view this storm deserves a scientific revisit as a grand challenge for the space weather community, as it provides space‐age terrestrial observations of what was likely a Carrington‐class storm.

Given that nearly everything is almost fully dependent on electronics and those same electronics are connected to several large networks of copper wire which will act as antennas, what will we do now to mitigate the damage so we are more ready when a similar event occurs again?

From
Space Weather : On the Little‐Known Consequences of the 4 August 1972 Ultra‐Fast Coronal Mass Ejecta: Facts, Commentary and Call to Action
Science Alert : A Solar Storm Detonated Dozens of US Sea Mines, Declassified Navy Documents Reveal


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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 10 2018, @05:52PM (4 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 10 2018, @05:52PM (#760419)

    so the light emitted by the sun takes 8 min to reach earth. the sun is massive and the earth is tiny.
    the earth has a pretty solid magnetic field.
    the pretty pictures we see how solar winds deform earths magnetic field might be exaggerated and too artistic?
    but how do solar event LINGER in the solar system? my limited knowledge tells me that nothing else this close to the sun has any meaningful magnetic field ... so the earth MIGHT have a influence on the sun (in reverse?)
    the electron is not as tiny compared to the nucleus as earth is to the sun but might a solar disturbance actually feel if it's "disturbing" towards earth or just empty space?

  • (Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Saturday November 10 2018, @06:33PM (1 child)

    by maxwell demon (1608) on Saturday November 10 2018, @06:33PM (#760441) Journal

    The disturbance is through the solar wind, a stream of charged particles that is emitted by the sun. And being charged, they interact with the magnetic field of the earth. The magnetic fields of the sun certainly are negligible at the earth, but they affect the solar wind, which then disturbs the earth magnetic field.

    The earth doesn't emit charged particles, neither towards the sun nor otherwise, and therefore it won't affect the sun.

    --
    The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 10 2018, @07:29PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 10 2018, @07:29PM (#760463)

    sunspots certainly 'feel' that they are looking at earth - as more sun-spots enter than leave the earth-facing side of sol. Suspicious0bservers/youtube had a page from a 100+yo study/book in their vids just yesterday(?); CMEs (up to half lightspeed) also seem to not be in arbitrary directions. Lingering happens cause its all a plasma/electric system, as we're discovering.

    not that knowing any of this will help us if/as we get hit and loose our babel-tech.

  • (Score: 2) by hendrikboom on Saturday November 10 2018, @11:49PM

    by hendrikboom (1125) Subscriber Badge on Saturday November 10 2018, @11:49PM (#760518) Homepage Journal

    The time delay is important. We can see the sun as it was a mere nine minutes ago. But it takes a lot longer for a coronal mass ejection to get here. So a chance of seeing them coming and can take precautions such a shutting down and disconnecting the parts of our infrastructure at risk. We'll be offline for a while, but much of it will be intact afterward.