Level S4 solar radiation event
swpc.noaa.gov
swpc.noaa.gov
Casting (who played who), acting, costumes and scenography (where did they get all these '80 soviet cars), and choice of scenes to film.
I had my hair rising when the guy cleaning roof of a building neighboring the reactor got stuck in deadly radiation zone for 4x the allowed 13 seconds. "You're dead comrade."
Though I suppose you could also queue it.
It’s also technically not a documentary but historical drama.
I don't ever recall seeing these in the news so frequently. It feels like there are several a year now. A decade ago, never.
And I also never remember seeing Aurora at my latitudes.
Do we just have better sensing now, or is there some cycle on a period longer than a few years? Or maybe I'm crazy and just never noticed.
There was also a fairly significant geomagnetic storm back in November of 2025 as well.
You can see the data here at NOAA's Space Weather site https://www.swpc.noaa.gov/products/solar-cycle-progression
Yes, for suitable values of "recently".
> And I also never remember seeing Aurora at my latitudes.
How old are you?
If you're younger than say your mid-40s you probably won't remember the early 80s, which is the last time we had a solar maximum that really came to anything.
Solar activity rises and falls on an 11-year cycle, and right now we're experiencing quite a peak. The previous three, peaking in 2014, 2011, and 1989 were a bit of a bust.
There was a massive peak in 1979 and I can remember my dad showing me the aurora when I was about six or seven - it seemed to be present most nights over the winter. That was also around the time of the CB Radio craze, where atmospheric conditions were such that you could use "skip" - bouncing radio signals off the highly-charged ionosphere - to talk to people hundreds of miles away as if they were just down the road, even on the comparatively high frequencies that CB used. There was a bit of a peak in the late 80s, and some good RF propagation too, as well as some incredible aurora - although the big one I remember was in about the end of 1991, early 1992.
We had absolutely blistering hot summers followed by really cold and snowy winters, too, kind of like we're having at the moment.
If the solar cycles have a longer repeating cycle of intensity on the scale of a hundred years or so (and it looks a bit like they do) then the next solar maximum in about 2036 is going to be even bigger.
The May 2024 G5 electrical storm had a peak measured DST of −412 nT: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/May_2024_solar_storms
The Carrington Event had an estimated peak DST of −800 nT to −1750 nT, but no one really knows: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carrington_Event
G5: " Pipeline currents can reach hundreds of amps, HF (high frequency) radio propagation may be impossible in many areas for one to two days..."
Looks like G5 is the highest level and the scale system is used by NOAA.
I hear that bit in my head every time a new plane or weapon designation is announced, glad to hear it stuck with others too.
in which case, don't worry about it as we won't be around to worry about it further
astro-physics is AMAZING (until it kills you lol)
Now I'm feelin' so fly like a G6
Anyone have a sense of magnitude for this advisory? How much more radiation should an airline passenger expect to receive during a G4 event than normal?
But having been in 1859 we only have estimates on what the consequences would be in the modern world. But pretty grim at the looks of it.
Funnily enough, despite having lots of alerts set up it was my mom who texted me from northern Brandenburg as she spotted it after getting an alert from RegenRadar, of all apps...
Nice to hear earth weather apps also work great in space haha. I'll keep that in mind when I set up my own notifications. Hopefully I have time to look into it before the next storm hits.
And up at the top right, left to "Latest" you can skip the time back and forth at 10 minute intervals. And then jump back like 10 images, what a beauty.
You can even see Starlink satellites https://www.foto-webcam.eu/webcam/ederplan/2026/01/19/1820
- https://www.foto-webcam.eu/webcam/ederplan/2026/01/19/2230
- https://www.foto-webcam.eu/webcam/ederplan/2026/01/19/2240
Incredible, thanks so much!
Not sure what the best service is to be alerted ahead of time. Apparently it'll be strong here again at 6am according to some of the apps some random people were waving around.
Replace hex with something more robust, at least with an actual metallic case.
How sure are we the aliens aren't trying to dial in?
What if one of my homelabs needed 100% uptime to meet my wife's SLA for messaging? Is this able to be protected?
Perhaps though you will still be able to continue to send and receive messages despite having disconnected your power supply. [1]
[1] https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=uva.x001679510&seq=40...
Shielded Ethernet could plausibly have issues with induced current on the shield. PoE might be less immune than ordinary Ethernet depending on what you’re doing with it, although well-behaved devices should be isolated. If you have a cable ISP, the cable shield might get toasty, although it’s likely to be grounded close enough to your house that any damage will be upstream.
Your 100% uptime will be tricky if your ISP goes down or you lose power.
Also, it could be a convenient excuse to upgrade to fiber internet service if you haven't already. (Yes, excuse. Equipment should have more than good enough isolation to not care.)
We didn't really understand this kind of thing when the Carrington event happened, so nobody knows for sure, but estimates for induced voltage on long conductors are usually something on the order of 20V/km. So for a 5 km long coaxial cable, you're only talking about ~120V of induced potential difference (i.e. the same voltage as a residential plug in the US). When people are analyzing the potential damage from this kind of electromagnetic disturbance (E3 is the term you'll see, based on analysis of nuclear EMP which has other components that you don't see in geomagnetic storms regardless of severity), it's mostly about really long conductors, like on the order of 100km.
104955 Warning Geomagnetic Disturbance Warning 01.19.2026 14:30
PJM-RTO
A Geomagnetic Disturbance Warning has been issued for
14:30 on 01.19.2026 through 16:00 on 01.19.2026 .
A GMD warning of K8 or greater is in effect for this period.
End time: 01.19.2026 16:00
I've posted on this before, for other warnings. Not going to repeat that.
/s
Yesterday I just would have had to walk to the balkony to see it, but I was busy with some frustrating coding problem instead ..
It will notify you when you’re in an area with a high Kp (or above a Kp you specify).
At this strength, I could see the full display including colors with my naked eye in Melbourne, May 11th 2024. This storm is slightly stronger than that event.
https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap110529.html
If you manage to pull off the Aurora Australis above a triple curl at The Right with a shark body surfing into the green room ... the internet will explode.
What is useful is KAus and the G index, KAus is shown on this page, so thats what i'll be tracking.
But now we have a bunch of kids in different schools and haven't updated our plan.
Does anyone have a plan for what happens if we have a really bad event?
I don't know how much you can plan for that other than "if it happens, try to get home", and then all the usual prepper stuff.
Depending on the kids' ages, you can teach them quite a lot about the Earth's magnetic field and why the aurora concentrates at the poles, how the high-energy particles light up the sky (it's a lot like a neon light), and how the atmosphere shields us from any danger despite the spectacular show.
Flux and bZ!
Sooo much jargon.
G4 storms are ~100 per solar cycle (~11 years).
So roughly 9 G4 events/year on average.
Please stop watching that guy, he is a total fraud and knows nothing about physics.
It probably wouldn't make sense to calculate "average snow days per month" across an entire calendar year (in most places...), this is the same thing.
Judging by this picture: https://services.swpc.noaa.gov/images/animations/ovation/nor... , I think in a few hours the whole North Europe can see it very clearly.
I guess this could be related to it? (we are in Montreal)
I doubt these toys are protected from those kinds of events.
[0] https://www.amazon.com/Fisher-Price-Settle-Sleep-Projection-...
Even with lights in the direct line of the shot you you can get good results - presumably the phone is doing HDR to achieve this.
I’m not in the city, but you’d have to actually be two states away to escape its light (literally not figuratively, according to dark sky maps).
:(
Based on that, I presume the astronauts on the ISS will need to take cover due to this event
It was mentioned that air travel ionizing radiation exposure increases during geomagnetic storms. I'd consider pausing travel for a couple of days to not be a guinea pig because there's not enough data to consider it safe. If anyone absolutely must fly tonight, it'd be interesting if they were to take a high sensitivity dosimeter to see what happens.
No, it isn't. It clearly says everything is under control but it would be good to keep an eye on it.
hypothetical: if a carrington event-esque storm happens during the mission, how badly will the houston <-> orion module communication links be affected?
In Seattle you can barely see planets.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/August_1972_solar_storms#Human...
> "Had a mission been taking place during August, those inside the Apollo command module would have been shielded from 90% of the incoming radiation. However, this reduced dose could still have caused acute radiation sickness if the astronauts were located outside the protective magnetic field of Earth, which was the case for much of a lunar mission. An astronaut engaged in EVA in orbit or on a moonwalk could have experienced severe radiation poisoning, or even absorbed a potentially lethal dose."
The Orion capsule's contingency plan looks something like this:
> "To protect themselves, astronauts will position themselves in the central part of the crew module largely reserved for storing items they’ll need during flight and create a shelter using the stowage bags on board. The method protects the crew by increasing mass directly surrounding them, and therefore making a denser environment that solar particles would have to travel through, while not adding mass to the crew module itself."
https://www.nasa.gov/missions/artemis/orion/scientists-and-e...
My mind goes to the working mechanism of eidophor projectors, where oil on the projection bowl does indeed deform under electron beam exposure.