If anyone is interested in what "G4" means in context, here's the scale: https://www.swpc.noaa.gov/noaa-scales-explanation
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
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.
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
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?