The New War is heading toward status as a continuing event. Headline? “Iran warns Israel of Preemptive Action!” Soon! That includes not only Hamas in the Gaza Strip but Hezbollah fighters launching rockets from Lebanon in the north. This Saturday may have a little breathing room as the three or four powers in contact align themselves for what is going to happen next.

Boomers have at least a vague recollection of a world poised for an atomic exchange. Some of the other headlines may as well be called Footlines, since they are below the digital fold but as close to horror as it is possible to get. There is a reported rise in anti-Israel rhetoric here in America. Boomers also recall our campus activity as protesting students against a War in Asia.

Apparently something like that is happening again, only there are not two superpowers with chips on the table, but an additional three or four powers with atomic weapons. You may have heard about an emerging threat being discussed by Iranian figures. They have had an aggressive research effort underway for some time to provide a nuclear capability. At the moment it is not quite a working arsenal of Weapons of Mass Destruction, but they may already have the capability to deploy devices capable of producing a blast of Electro-Magnetic Pulse (EMP) that would fry all sophisticated electronic devices and knock everyone back on their heels.

You can imagine the consequences to our society, not to mention how our world would react. There is an example of what the use of EMP weapons might be like. It is from something that occurred a long time ago and is something that was big enough to capture the name of the astronomer who identified it.

December of 2019 marked the beginning of SC-25, and our Sun’s activity has reflected it. Although we haven’t reached peak levels in this cycle, we are already observing activity that exceeds predictions by NOAA and NASA. “Unusually strong” is one of the terms being used for this cycle, which the Experts inform us will occur in the solar maximum predicted in 2025.

Consequences? There will be impacts on our lives and technology here on Earth that reach from current sea-level to the behavior and operations of satellites and astronauts in space.
The “Carrington Event’ is worth a discussion of what could happen in an intense geomagnetic storm caused by our own Good Olde Sol. It has a name not because it was the biggest observed storm. But it was the first one observed.

The year was 1859 and America teetered on the brink of Civil War. There were no weapons of mass destruction involved employed, although all sorts of kinetic events were deployed in large-scale military operations. The Event occurred in Solar Cycle 10 (SC-10), the tenth observed occurrence of what has become known as the eleven-year Solar Cycle. We are entering SC-25, and the rhetoric about it is already filled with ominous projections.

The Carrington Event of 1859 created Auroral displays of remarkable strength reported around the globe. Telegraph stations were vulnerable to sparking and fires in multiple stations. We allow Professor Carrington to be recognized by his discovery since it remains an astrological anomaly.
Our naming standards have always demonstrated change. The headlines this morning reflect Israel is preparing for transition to some sort of military action. There is little doubt that it is going to happen, and Experts are running to document past and future examples of what Professor Carrington observed. Adding to the Green New World controversy, researchers like Dr. Michael Mann of Pennsylvania State University had added confusion and excitement.
Dr. Mann recently released the results of a study indicating his survey of tree-rings show the Carrington Event was not unique, and may be overshadowed by “an extremely powerful EMP event” that hit Earth more than 14,000 years ago.
Dr. Mann’s opinion is that periodic geomagnetic storms are most likely the result of ejections of coronal mass from our sun to our orbiting planet. Dr. Mann’s recent ejection of research cannot derive the specifics of his Really Big Coronal Mass Ejections (RBCMEs) from his tree-rings.
They do suggest that the event he has identified was so powerful that Auroras, normally originating in polar latitudes, were pushed south as far as Colombia from the Arctic and north from Antarctica over Australia. In that world, navigation became problematic as compasses failed. Telegraph networks all over the northern hemisphere worked without their battery back-ups engaged.

Here is the deal: our Sun is a giant fusion reactor that bombards the solar system with nonstop blasts of charged particles. We call this continuing activity the “Solar Wind.” That electromagnetic breeze can light up the polar skies with auroras and represents solar “business as usual.” But the revelations about Dr. Mann’s RBCNE suggest something larger than what Professor Carrington observed could happen again and knock our high-tech social order for a loop.

This next time, we won’t even need the sun. We might be able to produce the equivalent of a Coronal Mass Ejection all by ourselves. Our President is flying across the globe today to make a statement from what could be the cockpit of action. We will see if Solar Cycle-25 gives us an Event to be remembered, and speculate on what Professors Carrington and Mann might think about the intensity of our next one!

Copyright 2023 Vic Socotra
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