
Why was Earth bombarded with high-energy particles in the year 774?  - evo_9
http://arstechnica.com/science/2013/01/why-was-earth-bombarded-with-high-energy-particles-in-the-year-774/
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simias
The article mentions the 1859's "Great Auroral Storm"[1]. I had never heard of
it, it's a fascinating read.

[http://arstechnica.com/science/2012/05/1859s-great-
auroral-s...](http://arstechnica.com/science/2012/05/1859s-great-auroral-
stormthe-week-the-sun-touched-the-earth/)

~~~
halvsjur
> My current is very strong at times, and we can work better without the
> batteries, as the Aurora seems to neutralize and augment our batteries
> alternately, making current too strong at times for our relay magnets

Fascinating indeed. I wonder exactly what kind of impact a similar storm would
have today.

~~~
russell
I would expect a Carrington sized event to fry all the satellites in orbit.
The damage from no GPS for several years would probably be in the hundreds of
billions. There is a good chance that anything attached to an antenna or power
lines would also be fried. I doubt if surge protectors would do any good.
Personally I would pack my computers in metal boxes, unplug all my appliances
and maybe even turn off my house at the entrance box. Then I would go outside
and watch the display.

The saving grace is that we would have several days warning.

~~~
chakalakasp
The bummer is that, depending where you live, there is a good chance that even
if you preserved your electronics, you wouldn't have any mains current to run
them for a long, long time. I would be more worried about rushing to Walmart
and stocking up on canned goods and bottled water before anyone else figured
out what was about to happen.

~~~
kamaal
Very correct.I think in case of a mass electricity failure across the world.
Without water supply, fuel and other energy resources to transport food,
medicine and other essential supplies.

More than protecting your electronic gear, the struggle is likely to be for
food and other emergency resources.

I am sure there will mass riots and mafia scale entities controlling resources
critical to survival. Besides 2/3rd will be dead in quick time anyway. Nobody
has every survived without water or food.

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jlgreco
The whole practice of combing through old documents searching for confused
accounts of astronomical phenomena is fascinating to me. I wonder if there is
any chance of crowd-sourcing that kind of searching. Language issues would
probably prevent that from working too well though.

~~~
shardling
There's a pretty interesting study of Homer's _The Odyssey_ from that
perspective.

Pop-science story about it:
[http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=homers-
odys...](http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=homers-odyssey-may-
document-eclipse)

Original article:
[http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2008/06/23/0803317105.abst...](http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2008/06/23/0803317105.abstract)

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gus_massa
Previous discussion from another source:
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5090668> (1 day ago, 23 comments)

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axusgrad
Two black holes merging in our galaxy.

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Shivetya
Ming the Merciless was testing us?

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oneandoneis2
..and did it give anyone superpowers?

