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MrHalfAsleep's avatar
MrHalfAsleep
Community elder
2 years ago

Solar storms causing problems!

There's been a lot of solar activity (winds, storms, sunspot activity, solar flares, northern/southern lights and CME's) recently and this has been causing problems.  The last week of February was affected by erratic download speeds varying from a 98% drop in speeds to around a 10% drop. Upload speed was more or less normal. The USA was hit particularly hard as several websites went down, along with DNS servers. 

The odd thing was that other wi-fi devices were fine and connected to the internet as usual.  My wired machine, however did not.   On Friday 1st March I performed a speed test and the download speed is where I'd expect it to be.   Another odd thing was that I was able to ping websites successfully, but I could not access them through browsers.  NASA are reporting that a lot more activity is coming Earth's way on the 9th.  Lets see what happens.

I also post the occasional video about this here: https://community.virginmedia.com/t5/Community-Natter/What-are-you-watching-now/td-p/2914384 

More reading: solar flares and geomagnetic storms - Search (bing.com)

 

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    • MrHalfAsleep's avatar
      MrHalfAsleep
      Community elder
      2 months ago

      The universe is still hostile to life.  I think Mr Sillybland (name could be wrong here) will have a cunning plan ensuring the continuation of our survival, and all the stuff on the internet won't become lost knowledge in the distant future.  Therefore, I'm not to worried.

  • goslow's avatar
    goslow
    Alessandro Volta
    3 months ago

    The 'National Risks Register' (2025 edition!) suggests 'Severe space weather' could have 'Significant' impact but a likelihood of 5-25% ('Highly unlikely')

    It places 'Low temperatures and snow', 'Outbreak of an emerging infectious disease' and 'Nuclear miscalculation not involving the UK or its allies' in the same group on the risk matrix.

    It states

    Severe space weather
    The term ‘space weather’ describes a series of phenomena originating from the sun, which include solar flares, solar energetic particles and coronal mass ejections. Day-to-day space weather causes little more than the Aurora Borealis in polar regions, but strong space weather events can bring disruption to many vital technologies. Orbiting satellites are particularly vulnerable to space weather effects, and can be damaged or temporarily disabled.

    Scenario
    The reasonable worst-case scenario for this risk is based on a severe space weather event, approximately the same scale and magnitude as the Carrington Storm of 1859, lasting for 1-2 weeks. It includes a number of different solar phenomena including coronal mass ejections, solar flares, solar radiation storms and solar radio bursts. Each phenomenon would likely occur several times during a 2-week period, with each varying in magnitude, temporal and spatial extent. Impacts may include regional power disruptions, loss or disruption of Global Navigation Satellite Systems (for example Global Positioning System (GPS)) and some telecommunications (for example satellite communications and high frequency radio), disruption to aviation, an increase in background radiation doses at high altitudes and in space, and possible disruption to ground-based digital components. The catalogue of tracked objects in orbit would be significantly impacted, raising the risk of on-orbit collisions. There may also be second order impacts such as fatalities and casualties (for example, in the event of power disruptions).

    This was writ by the UK government so we can all rest easy that it has been well-considered, carefully thought out and planned for! 😂

    • MrHalfAsleep's avatar
      MrHalfAsleep
      Community elder
      2 months ago

      There's more going on now, and my connection keeps dropping.  I remember as 9 year old waiting for Skylab to fall out of the sky. Now it's Elon's stuff.  Happy days.