Re: De-Lurk Plus Why Bother with DTT?

On Mon, 30 Jan 2006 16:42:04 -0000, "Pyriform" <nobody@xxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:

>The history of communication satellites is however extremely brief. It
>would be unfortunate if it coincided with an unusually benign period of
>solar activity!

That does not seem to be the case. Solar activity is quite well known
over much of human history.

>The "perfect solar storm" of 1859 was powerful enough to disrupt the
>cutting edge communications technology of the day - the electric
>telegraph. Power surges in telegraph wires caused widespread fires in
>both Europe and the United States.

Not unlike the power distribution network in Canada in much more
recent times. They had blackouts over a wide area and where the solar
storm used to make the light bulbs flicker.

They lost a couple of satellites that time.

>I wonder what effect an event of this magnitude (or worse) would have on
>today's communications infrastructure?

Since communication satellites are designed to handle solar storms
then I would hope not much.

You may recall that only a few years ago the Sun unleashed the largest
CME that they had ever seen, by several orders of magnitude. That was
not pointing in our direction fortunately, but NASA's space probes
that were in that region seemed to live through it.

I guess this is a case of wait and see. They are well designed, but
the Sun likes to provide surprises.

Cardman
http://www.cardman.org
http://www.cardman.com
http://www.cardman.co.uk
.

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