That's because of the 4 x-class solar flares that blasted us and are going to hit us this weekend
Solar flares don't give us much warning. The electromagnetic energy from an electromagnetic/radiational burst moves at the speed of light and we get about 8 minutes before it reaches Earth. The events that take longer and give us several days between occurring and arriving at Earth are Coronal Mass Ejections of charged particles. The particles move much slower than the speed of light and the Earth's magnetosphere does a good job of protecting the planet from harm. X-class CMEs are fairly common and the sun is heading towards the Solar Maximum where sun spot activity increases a lot. We should be fine. We have been through a lot of them after all.
The earth's magnetic field has weakened significantly in the last 50 years, and the decay is accelerating.
The earth's magnetic field has weakened significantly in the last 50 years, and the decay is accelerating.
Even a weak magnetic field can influence charged particles to change course. Old CRT televisions used weak magnetic fields to steer an electron beam around. A refrigerator magnet could distort the display massively too. The Earth's field is still able to protect us very well. That's while we'll see aurora rather than have bigger effects.
We shall see. I expect more "mysterious" outages with cloud computing and internet service providers, sporadic blackouts, and disruptions to satellites.
Fridge motor magnets don’t distort old analog TV’s so much as the electrical arcs within the motor. Arcs emit the entire spectrum of EMF’s, from single digit hertz all the way as high as X-ray and gamma under vacuum, with enough power. When those fridge motors kicked on back in the day, the unshielded arcs emitting from the brushes got into the coaxial signal at the TV itself, distorting the picture. Especially true for vacuums, welders, any old inefficient unshielded motors..
A noise generator can knock every radio around offline with enough juice, primitive ones use naked electrical arcs.
I agree, you are right on. The only detail I'd argue is that, as our shield does protect us and we are in solar maximum (of this 11 year solar cycle), we are in a solar minimum in the grand scheme. As a result, our magnetic shield is in a weakened state. The prediction is an M4-M6 event, which will give us a pretty good aurora display at southern latitudes.
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