Solar Super-Flare Effects

Here's a good link

http://hesperia.gsfc.nasa.gov/sftheory/toc.htm

Thanks for your input, but this article is already sitting on my desk, starred, underlined, and highlighted, as are all the others in that six inch pile of papers. It's not that I haven't been doing my homework, guys. It's just that none of these articles seem to deal with what would happen to me, personally, should such an event occur.

The Carrington event in 1859 is the largest and best documented flare in recorded history. At the time, electricity was a novelty and its use was not wide spread. However, the newspapers recorded that telegraph operators were thrown across the room by the power of the jolt. Even when no electricity was flowing through the telegraph wires, the electromagnetic radiation overwhelming the system allowed them to continue sending messages.

This flare was so powerful, it damaged the instrument that recorded the event. Come on, everybody...WHAT WOULD HAPPEN TODAY?

If you already have a 6" stack of articles, why post on here? I don't have time for trick questions. Do your own work!

I figured some of you nerds out there were smarter and better informed than I am...guess I was wrong. Sorry to waste your time.

Sorry if I came across harsh. If you want to have a discussion, start by telling what you think and perhaps some will join in.

If you are still interested, I have posted a similar query in the "Electrical Engineering" forum. I decided that the General Forum was perhaps not targeted enough. If I snapped at you, I apologize, but it's hard to speculate on specific results, when all I can find research-wise deals with ordinary flares.

What is required here is speculation, and I don't have enough grounding in electrical and solar events to project these results. I know, neither does anyone else, but surely there is someone out there that has at least thought about the possibility of a massive solar flare. Thanks for checking back with me.

The only thing i can think off is massive EMP, lots of electric grids and electronic devices that would be fried on a massive scale.

Okay. We have a huge EMP. Would we see a white "sun flash" at the same time?

As far as i know the speeds are different, so if there would be a flash i would not know, but i doubt it. i guess there would be a an increase of aurora, but no difference in light during the day. An increase in gammarays that could damage devices

Please double-check your info for me. My minimal research says electromagnetic radiation and light rays move at the same speed. Am I wrong on that?

Did you read this one?

http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2005/10jun_newstorm.htm

Good find! I hadn't seen this one. Really appreciate bringing it to my attention. I need some speed in my book scenario and this really helps. Thanks.

you're welcome i just did it with google

Still, you're search skills are helpful. Thanks a lot.

Hi Epke,

this link is most interesting: at a position of 60° on the Sun the solar magnetic field is aimed (at a curved line) towards earth.

This allows the charged particles to come to us like a flow in a pipeline.

Charged particles are bent to circular paths if the velocity of the particles is perpendicular to the magnetic field lines.

If the particles have a velocity component parallel to the field line this velocity component is not changed.

So in total the particles spiral the magnetic field lines.

The pitch of the spiral is inverse to field strength as the time and the axial length for one circle is going up for field strength going down.

So converging field lines (on north and south pole of earth) act as magnetic particle mirrors, let low speed particles oscillate north-south, we hear this as whistler waves or periodic fading in AM-radio-broadcast.

Fast particles reach the surface of earth deviated only slightly, medium velocity particles are caught by the magnetic field and many hit earth near the magnetic poles. Slow particles are spiraling the field lines and oscillating south-north-south until it is lost.

These particles are dangerous.

Energies used in modern cancer radiation treatment are much lower than maximum energies in extreme solar storms.

If cells in living tissue are not killed there is damage very likely to the DNA causing subsequent malfunction and sometimes cancer.

So we would need: shielding for the days of intense solar storm, water, food and energy for the days to months that will be needed to come back to "normal" life.

Who can afford this and is willing to act in advance?

RHABE

A most educated answer, and I'm afraid most of it went over my head, other than the dangerous part. How long would you estimate we would be bathed in electromagnetic radiation? As Carrington observed the 1859 flare, the flare itself had radically diminished in the few moments it took him to find his assistant and bring him back to witness to the event. Wouldn't it stand to reason that, though abnormally high sun spot activity might be present for extended periods of time, the flare itself would cause short-lived massive radiation?

Take your reference for that even from how our earths moon is now. That would be my suggestion.

Thanks.

Hi Kizmet,

did you read the recent article in SciAm on exactly this topic?

There are some predictions that will be very serious.

Any of our computerised power grids, machine shops, authorities etc will fail.

I am absolutely sure that it will happen, once per 1000 years is the prediction.

So this is a major threat, bigger than the "meteorite hits earth" scenario.

RHABE

I set the magazine aside to do just that, but haven't managed to yet (ASAP, tho). Thanks for the tip. A big flare will wipe out communication, satellites, banking transactions, GPS, and fry power transformers. There's no gasoline...the pumps are electric. Water only lasts as long as the storage tanks hold out.

How would you like to be the mom who's kids are at the mall five miles away, her husband is commuting to San Francisco, and she's working on the fifteenth floor of a highrise when all the lights, elevators, and communication shuts down? Ouch.

Not to mention all automobile electrical systems. I've seen this happen.

Yow...I hadn't considered that one!

As far as cars go...if the car is running, or in the "off" mode, would that make a difference? Parked in an underground garage? Caught on the freeway, could a car just temporarily quit and then fire up again ten minutes later? Or are its innards fried?

I doubt a non-energized system would be affected much. And undergound sheilding would surely be a plus. As to a car on the road, it would depend on the system. Newer cars that depend on computer chips to function might be a no-go without extensive repair. Older non-electronic flivvers might be relatively unscathed (heavy emphasis on 'might').

Nope, like Daffy said

The flare induces an electrical surge in electrical systems only the most simple are safe. if they are not shielded they will receive damage, so your old dodge charger will probably be OK but your modern SUV with a lots of PCB's and IC will probably be fried.

Put a metallic bag over your house and connect it to earth to receive some protection

I have a metal roof and lots of ground. The house is made from logs....and some of my old stuff still got fried.

Old stuff like what? Logs are not very helpfull against radiation (or termites)

only thing i can say is

DUCK and cover

Okay, you guys...what would protect you?

a faraday cage against the electromagnetic waves

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faraday_cage

but against the gamma rays?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gamma_rays#Shielding

hey i like wikipedia evendo it is not always correct

Interesting......The Faraday mine is a 45 minute scenic drive from where I live.....uranium pegmatite deposits......good shelter underground against gamma.

Epke, you find the greatest info for me. Thank you so much for your diligence and help.

Cute.....but we don't have termites here.

The telephone caught fire.

Hi,

this is most interesting and unique,

you may be among the very few that have experience with these phenomena.

What I am interested in: your metal roof, did it show signs of electric heating or arcing?

How is (was) the roof connected to ground? How many connections at which distance?

What quality ground do you have: wet or dry, what type of soil?

If possible, make a detailed description what failed on which equipment!

What certainly happened: energetic particles (most likely protons from the sun) hit atmospheric gas molecules and excite the glow. The energies are much higher than necessary to evaporate any metal.

Excitations are part of a scenario that produces vast amounts of electrons ions and cleaved molecules.

The different colors are due to different molecules and different excitation energies.

With a spectral analysis (optically) the involved species can be diagnosed.

The electrons are very fast in reaction to electric and magnetic fields as these have only a very small mass.

What may have happened:

within microseconds after ionisation the electrons are driven to the next positive electrode leaving a dense (?) positive plasma of a mixture of positive ions in multiple ionisation status and atomic and molecular species. This is "slow" in motion as the mass of a proton is 2000 times the mass of an electron, and even much slower as derived from (much heavier) nitrogen and oxygen and other air constituents.

This plasma can charge any "antenna" to extremely high potential, this plasma can oscillate in a vast variety of oscillation modes from low frequency to above microwaves. So any electronics will blow up - try to solder any electronic in your microwave oven, the soldering will be ok, but the ICs, amplifiers and transistors will be dead.

If the current is big it can melt and fuse any wire. So for diagnostics the nature of failures will be helpful.

Any loop (roof two ground connections and ground) may act as an oscillator.

What will not help:

Shielding by mass is not effective against protons, penetration depth will be 5 to 50cm.

Magnetic shielding would require impossible flux densities.

Faraday cage is mot effective (protons are much too fast).

What may help:

Elastic collisions are effective if colliding with the same mass- any head-on collision will result in two particles at half the velocity.

Hydrogen has the same mass, so collisions in polyethylene, PP, water, paraffins are effective. (High hydrogen molecules)

I have no idea about collision probability as function of energy but people working with particle accelerators know.

More good reading: Chen, Glow Discharge Processes.

RHABE

This is a very interesting discussion even if I am in over my head. I had no idea how many helpful people were out there, tuning in. Fascinating. So you believe that water and various forms of plastic make better shielding than concrete, earthworks, or Faraday cages, for instance. Hmmm...any other common substances that might act as a shield? P.S. Thanks for you input. L.

Hi Kizmet,

water or PE or any other material rich in hydrogen atoms is the best shielding against particles that have the same mass as hydrogen, these are protons and neutrons.

Concrete or any other material with high mass is best for shielding against gamma-rays.

Faraday cages - or complete metallic or electrically conductive shields are good in shielding against electrostatic fields and electrostatic effects: elms-fire and lightnings and are limited in shielding against electromagnetic waves: waves may be leaking into openings if frequency to diameter (of openings) is big enough or if big currents in the conductive material create magnetic fields inside the Faraday cage.
These magnetic fields will then induce voltages depending on d(flux)/d(time) .

That's why microwave heating devices have front viewing doors with small openings, small to prevent leakage.

RHABE

Thanks for the clarification.

I was in Eastern Ontario when this event occured. It borders Quebec where the most damage was done.

The visual spectral shift begins with green/yellow....intensifies to.....red/violet.....to...violet/pink. It was the areas of pink that were most affected.

Though it was said that the entire electrical grid failed at the same moment this is not true. It began to fail at very specific geographical/geological points where I suspect the electrical field did not have access to earth...ie an electrically resistant stone. Areas of sandstone and sediment that are lacking in iron were the those places where St. Elmos Fire developed. The electrical grid collapsed as a result of an ever increasing cascade effect.

WOW! So the full spectrum of potential effects seems to be pretty unpredictable for any given event, correct? I mean, two computers, one (unplugged) kaput, one (plugged in) not, is counterintuitive. Sad the "official observers" were asleep at the switch, eh?

Yes...what's interesting here is that 20 miles away is the geological formation called the Canadian Shield and little if any damage to electrical equipment occured there.

Though I have not done a systematic survey indications point to very specific locations where damage was high. It's almost as if there were 'touchdown' points.

One would think that an enquiry of a scientific nature would have resulted but none ever did to my knowledge. The entire matter was treated as a ho-hum event.

Makes me wonder what the effects were on the DEW Line and NORAD - if they were blinded even a little, it would certainly be discussed in hushed tones!

Don't know about Norad but the DEW line has been shut down for decades. It kept picking up flocks of migrating Russki geese as bomber formations.

Holy Moly. That's a whole new can of worms...if NORAD is blind, what the heck would happen then? Like putting a blindfold on a bull and hitting him with an electrical prod. All hell would break loose.

I think they are a bit cooler headed than most bulls, prodded or not. The Air Force has a Space Weather Command that is dedicated to predicting and tracking just such events, kind of like how NOAA predicts and tracks hurricanes. They are well aware of the potential for problems, and have measures in place to cope as best they can.

The SWC probably explains how the US managed to disconnect from the grid (Duck, #77), before the problems got out of control. If they're tracking these events, they may have been ready to act.

Duck, you've been very helpful here. And it is a real shame nobody seemed to really document the event...I know, I tried to find info online and pretty much came up with zippity. If anybody knows other eyewitnesses, please try to interview them for more details. Thanks.

You are correct...no documentation that I am aware of. The only mention is from a news account of the event and that it caused the entire electrical grid of Quebec to collapse. Had the collapse continued it would have affected the entire eastern seaboard of the US and Ontario. The US had time to disconnect from this collapsing grid before any damage was done. I find that VERY interesting.

That CME of 1989 was of a high order of magnitude but not the most powerfull by a long shot. It did, however, manifest itself much further south than normal.

My suspicion is that the public has been kept unaware for reasons I can only speculate about.

http://search.nasa.gov/search/search.jsp?nasaInclude=cme+1989

This is the only documentation I know of. Search the files inside the files. If you get lost inside the archives just type in.... CME 1989.... and begin search again.

I know for a fact that the razor motor insulation melted from internal heating. I unwound the wire and discovered a degree of carbonization had occured at the closest point of contact to metal. Sorry....no photo.

I use coal because of it's insulating barrier properties. In the event of a lightning strike the current will travel deeper into the ground and (ostensibly) not along the surface. The house is built on an outcrop of limestone.

The computer was switched on. Some tapes were magnetically erased...completely. Some showed a lot of noise and a very few suffered no effect at all.

By the way. I was repairing a MOM gyrocompass at the time. The insulated DC motor burnt out and we could never get it to work properly since. I had a suspicion the invar wires were somehow affected. Any ideas?

"I unwound the wire and discovered a degree of carbonization had occurred at the closest point of contact to metal."

Do you have any indication if this was from overheating or high voltage failure?

(Overheating would very likely indicate induced AC current, high voltage failure may be ?DC coupling but what path?)

What type of motor had the razor? , is there any indication about the current path? Was the carbonisation extended - 1mm diameter or more?

"In the event of a lightning strike the current will travel deeper into the ground and (ostensibly) not along the surface."

Good idea, likely to provide a lot of additional safety if vertical down resistance is low.

"Some tapes were magnetically erased...completely. Some showed a lot of noise and a very few suffered no effect at all."

Have these tapes been at nearly the same place in storage? The type of the tapes? there are older ones with brown colored iron-oxide particles for storage of magnetism and newer ones with chromium-? alloys looking metallic. I am not sure but the latter may be erasable by simple currents whereas the iron-oxide is a high resistance material embedded as particles in foil of high electrical resistance.

"The insulated DC motor burnt": same as the razor motor, did it have any connection to the outside? power supply or the like, capacitors? If so did these survive?

I don't know the MOM compass, for what purpose do they use INVAR wires? and where located? Maybe it is super-Invar? What type of magnet material? may be affected by heat? What function is not ok? Ball-bearings are most likely damaged by erosion in the racetrack if there was any overvoltage, if you turn the gyros by very gentle touching fingertips and you feel any variation of torque this will be bad. Noise at running speed is not necessarily bad. Quiet bearings are sometimes good.

I have some ANSCHUETZ gyrocompass spheres and two of the 3 (rate-integrating) gyros and 2 of the 3 accelerometers of a Ferranti IMU from a fighter aircraft. Only collected these may be I sell these on ebay in a few months.

Interested in other old technical collectors items?

RHABE

"Do you have any indication if this was from overheating or high voltage failure?"

Definately overheating. Electrical system of house is wired to protect from surge. Razor was not plugged in. Motor was a small rotary cam type ...old Phillips razor. I used it two days later and it burnt almost immediately (I don't believe in coincidence)

"Tape material and storage"

Good point! I didn't think of this at the time. Memory serves that Newer type all erased. Storage was in differrant places...ie...kids bedrooms, tv room. Some of my very old ones are still ok.

The insulated DC motor burnt":Gyro

It was connected to a dc battery supply but turned off. It is super invar (thankyou)and is coiled. Used to propel a balanced swing compensator that has a circle graduated in arc seconds or gon. Bearings and races ok. The MOM uses a hermetically sealed 'canister' sometimes filled with N gas or negative 10 atmospheres pressure.

The invar wires take over the rotation after the motor is stopped. Swing should be equal at maximum and minimum points and this was impossible to get. It would swing perfectly from one position to the next and then go + 30 arc seconds on the next swing and -30 return.

Anyway, it was a long time ago and the compass is now a very good paperweight. The technicians at MOM couldn't figure it out either.

Thanks for the offer but if I buy any more theodolites and technical instruments my wife will leave me....... .. .

Apart from gyrocompass I'd be interested to know what else you have? 4 years ago I sold a working DKM 3 to a collector on E-Bay. There were 30 bidders!

"May be there are localised low resistance paths made by erosion - frequent in limestone, difference to Canadian Shield would be most interesting."

This has been on my mind ever since the event. The limestone is the result of an ancient inland sea. The only data I based my idea on was magnetometer surveys. I could connect only three places where damage occured and each of these had low magnetic geological properties. There were some anomalies but I couldn't find any magnetometer data on those areas.

Visually I could see extremely fast oscillations (pulsations) in the brilliant pink spectrum. This was the most pronounced (and somewhat beautifully terrifying I should add) part of the storm. No green or blue or violet. From my vantage point It covered the entire visible sky. Now here's the problem...directly west of me (100km)there was no effect and people who witnessed it saw only the BGVR spectrum!

The few cars that were affected had been started during the height of the storm. They were rendered irrepairable.

In my home I had a few devices that got fried. The telephone caught fire. A computer that was unplugged never worked again. My electric razor and a fan burnt out after only a few days of use afterwards. Some things have never worked right since.

During the storm I had switched off all power to the house and yet my fluorescant bulbs in the shop began to glow.

Very interesting. Thanks for the input on cars. I'm going to have to dig out some old newspapers and see what others had to say about this event. The old Chinese curse: May you live in interesting times.

March 13th, 1989.

Thanks a bunch. Off to do my homework!

I suspect we'd lose all satellite-based systems - most of them are insufficiently sheilded electonically to survive a jolt that would upset surface electrical systems.

I agree, but I don't know exactly what systems the satellites support. Long distance phone? Television? Radio? GPS for sure. What else?

www.swpc.noaa.gov/NOAAscales .....daily observations of emp's etc.

1989 massive solar flare over Quebec, Canada could be seen in Colombia, Central America and Brazil.

I was a few km from epicentre. The Aurora was, to say the least, the most spectacular event I have ever seen or probably will ever see again. It danced and flowed with a cascade of every imaginable colour. There was a central vortex that developed directly overhead. Electric Colours emanated from the centre and flowed slowly downwards changing as they went. This was only the beginning. What was to follow for the next five hours was truly mind numbing.

The colour of the aurora changed to bright red. It began to pulse. The faster the pulses became the more the colour changed to an electric, almost blinding pink. St Elmos Fire manifested on every metallic object in my yard. The static buildup could be felt on the back of ones' neck. My dog buried itself under a brushpile and refused to come out. The snow on the mountains around me reflected pink. The world as I knew it became an electric mist of pink.

It was deliciously terrifying!

Oh, man, you should be writing this book! Perfect! An eyewitness to the actual event. Wow! Thanks and a big hug!

Some people, including myself, claim they can hear it.

Hear it?

Yeah...........whether as a result of ones' imagination or projection I couldn't say....or maybe because of the static in the atmosphere.

I can hear it... or at least I think I can. I often walk my dog at night and study the aurora. They are amazing where I live. Often times I feel I can here them move, its in the wind.

Of course you realize you will need to keep up up to date on progress - we are sure to want to read the book!

http://spaceweather.com/ THE Book................

Don't have a great deal to offer this interesting discussion, but there are a few observations and speculations. I have often wondered, are the planets evenly electrically charged, a planet the size of the earth are there an equal number of electrons to protons? And can it vary from planet to planet. In some of the other posts, it was said that the earth is bombarded by proton, I assume that the electrons due to the magnet field went in the opposite direction, to speculate could the planets have different electrical charges that have the effect of attracting or repelling its neighbour? Could a proton charged earth and moon repel each other? And what about all those aeroplanes and their computer systems. Just a few of my thoughts.

Regards JD.

Protons and electrons...I'm ignorant here. Are you suggesting that a massive solar flare might have the effect of separating the earth and moon?

Yes tongue in cheek, as I'm not a hands on electrician, my thoughts are that if some potential exists between planets what is its effect?, but the question is how large has that potential to be before it has an effect? And the other disturbing question is, where as the the larger masses may be harder to nudge out of orbit, how stable is the atmosphere, what electrical charged particle in space can strip a planet of its atmosphere. The earth being bombarded by protons one would think that a cloud of electrons would only add to the water content of the planet? but what would happen if it was the other way round, the earth bombarded by electron, encounters a cloud of protons. Pure speculation?

regards JD. PS Is your book fact or fiction?

The Earth, due apparently to its hot magma and iron core, has a magnetic field that does sheild the surface from some charged particle bombardment. Some planets (and our Moon) do not have any (or at least much) such sheilding. If there IS any electrical potential difference between say, Earth and the Moon, it does not have an appreciable effect on orbital stability. If there was a Solar flare strong enough to strip away our atmosphere, we'd never know it; we'd be dead and gone long before the air was.

I'm much too ignorant for fact. This is something called "Gridlock", purely fiction, but I do like to keep my facts straight or at least plausible. Love all this input...it exercises my brain.

I go along with the points raised by Envroman. And speculation is really an unanswered question, I find it harder to find information on Google, if one does not ask the right question, and then as you go through the answers the same web address is repeated time and time again, and it get worse when you try to add more information to ones search.

There are two other observations one may like to ponder on, First the two planets Mercury and Venus being closer to the sun and possible subject to more solar flares than the earth have no moons or satellites? Secondly if a magnetic wave ionises the poles there are two possibilities, the bodies could move apart, or one of them could flip, or in the case of the earth the atmosphere, and then attract or produce a current flow, so would the north and south poles flip also? there is I believe evidence of this (in magma), but not evidence of the reason why?

It can be interesting outside the box, Regards JD.

As we know, the north and south poles flip on a regular basis. Not within recorded history, but still, magnetic stone imprints these events without question. Already, there are anomalies showing up in the Pacific Ocean, south-west of Hawaii. Are these events perhaps encouraged by repeated proton activity?

I woke up this morning and remembered this bit of ancient history, The earth turned upside down

Regards JD.

So, in other words, not only is it possible for the earth's magnetic field to shift polarity, but for the entire planet to actually roll onto its side, while continuing to spin in the same direction at its normal speed. Did you interpret these ancient scripts as indicating the world then righted itself again? Very peculiar.

Ancient cultures were acutely aware of the rotation of the stars across the heavens and clocked their planting, worship, etc. to coincide with this rotation, so it would be reasonable that old texts would give a dizzy visual account of such an event.

I'm not sure this has much relevance to my current story, but it does show that the world has the possibility of becoming a very strange place.

No I don't believe the earth turned up side down. The statement that caught my eye was there was blood all around, and thought of the statement by Duckinthepond, that the sky turned pink, in this case maybe red? and if one considers that these writers have taken some poetic licence, this may suggest a solar flare, and with disturbances to the atmosphere any amount of optical illusions may have occurred. I know this is way off beam, but the things that happened around that time may be related to some natural phenomenon, but to think that a solar flare could part the Red sea might be pushing it?

Your probably correct and it's not relavent, I just thought it was interesting.

Regards JD.

"Plague is throughout the land. Blood is everywhere."

Hi to all,

there is a misinterpretation about the meaning of these Papyri:

Not the earth changed axis of spinning but there have been some very heavy volcanic events:

Santorin ( diameter 30Km blew up in a gigantic explosion, caused the darkness, and the covering of all land with red volcanic ashes. The explosion blew up minimum 1 cubic Kilometer of ash and pumice. Reports exist that ships were caught in the swimming pumice for 6 weeks. Nearby cultures on Crete were wiped out.

Also the related earthquake caused the red sea to let the water level oscillate down and up, first let pass the Israelites and then drown Pharaohs army.

Now Santorin is only a small rim and a new small center volcano.

Maybe it blows up every 30 Kyears, we will not know.

Earth is a giant gyro and to precess its axis requires some very big torque.

The regular precession rate is once per 27.000 years and is very constant.

We know since old Egyptian time that this is constant, they oriented their temples toward the polar star Polaris.

So everything is stable with Earths rotation and precession.

Also with magnetics: reversal any 70.000 years (not too stable in periodicity) is seen in the magnetic orientation of the seafloor.

But nobody has ever seen nor detected any separation of North- and south-poles.

Physics capacities tried to but nobody was successful.

So in any magnetic device - and Earth is generating its magnetic field as a dynamo - there is in a simple dipole configuration one North and one South-pole. In multi-polar devices (think about some magnets assembled) this may be more complicated but in total the sum of the north outgoing flux is equal to the sum of the from south incoming flux.

So everything is in good order: "only" catastrophic volcanic events happened.

RHABE

We are getting off-subject here, but I'm willing to pursue it. As far the old Papyri go, there are innumerable possible interpretations, and we could argue about it forever. However, I understood that (and you seem to say the same thing) the magnetic poles do reverse periodically. There seem to be magnetic anomalies showing up in portions of the southern hemisphere currently, and we are probably overdue for a reversal.

The magnetosphere normally protects us from solar radiation. Wouldn't the temporary disruption as the poles switch expose us to excessive radiation? That doesn't sound good. GPS is out the window, not to mention migratory patterns, etc. It sounds 'catastrophic' to me, or am I being a Nervous Nelly?

The Red Sea is too deep. The Reed Sea, on the other hand is a huge marsh east of the Nile delta where a tsunami would penetrate many 00's of kilometres inland.

Kamen volcano, a rare gas/particulate cloud release followed by explosive lava. Created a huge smoke ring which swept outwards for many kilometres.. Kamchatka.

We have the moon that acts like a safety valve so the axle shift can never be large enough the to make a flip, although the moon is slowly moving away from the earth.

Planets with no moons are more prone to tilting axes.

Hi Epke,

can you please explain this more detailed, I don't understand.

"Planets with no moons are more prone to tilting axes."

RHABE

The North Magnetic Pole fluctuates in intensity and position. There are instruments that detect its exact position and this information is relayed to navigators around the world. The declination angle from true north has increased by 12 seconds ENE since last summer. It's 'strength' has declined dramatically.

The flip of the magnetic poles has been based on a theory whose only evidence is based on solidified magma containing iron. It is speculative at best and has yet to establish whether the magma has changed position due to continental drift or some other geophysical force. It's an old argument.

http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2008/26aug_firstlight.htm?list851047

Thought you all might be interested. The Fermi Space Telescope is happening......

Thanks so much for your input. As I have been collating this data, it becomes more apparent to me that giant solar flares are not mythical. Exploring this possibility further might very well explain extinction events and, as you mentioned, species mutation.

I wish I had a better understanding of flare effects on inanimate objects, ie cars with computer modules are likely to go down, but what about motorcyles, or trains? What increases the likelyhood of failure in equipment?

Could a flare change weather patterns? For instance, increase cloudiness, cause thunderstorms, etc.? Extensive burning could do that, of course, but I'm trying to keep the human race intact in this scenario.

"What increases the likelyhood of failure in equipment?"

Short answer.........a buildup of static electricity will fry most electrical components that are incorporated into the engines ability to ignite the fuel, run efficiently and charge the batterries etc...ie...integrated circuitry. That includes every engine which does not have shielded IC's.

Personally I think species mutation would make much more interesting reading.ie....."20 lb bouncing baby eyeball born with a handicap.............."