Never before seen footage has been captured of a powerful solar flare and a dazzling magnetic display known as coronal rain on the surface of the sun.
Thanks Jacques M
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Interesting side-note: one second of this video equals six minutes in real time.
Just amazing power and beauty
We’re so screwed if one of those flares erupts with a coronal mass ejection on “our side” of the sun, pointing at us. If the magnetic polarity is in line with Earth’s magnetic field, it will punch right through it and energize our power grid (as radio waves interact with an antenna), overloading and causing catastrophic failure to hundreds or even thousands of transformers.
It takes one to two YEARS to build one of those huge transformers, and no, there’s no stockpile of replacements available. We would have no electricity for a very long time.
So how often does this happen? On average, every couple hundred years. In fact, it happened as recently as the fall of 1859 … back when the only wire network was the telegraph network. The event caused fires in telegraph offices and electric shock to telegraph operators.
Not to sound like an alarmist, but it may very well happen again in our lifetimes, and we currently have no defense. Technologically we have the capability (a device to bring the grid offline and disengage the transformers), but nobody wants to foot the bill for simple preventive measures.