Just a Minor Sun Explosion
About this episode
Ben Bradford investigates the Carrington Event and its implications for modern technology.
In 1859, the sky turned blood-red, telegraph machines sparked and chattered, and some of their batteries exploded. Then humanity responded by building a civilization that runs on electricity, satellites, GPS, internet cables, credit cards, and cellphone towers. Great work, everyone. Ben Bradford investigates the Carrington Event — the massive solar storm that fried the technology of its time — and asks what would happen if something like it hit our much more wired world today. Was Carrington a one-off? Are modern power grids, satellites, and internet infrastructure any safer than an 1859 telegraph? And if the sun does cough another piece of itself at us, is there anything we can actually do? Guests: Jim Green, former chief scientist of NASA and founder of Metavisionaries Elizabeth Butler at the NOAA Space Weather Prediction Center For more threats from space, check out our episodes: " Asteroids! The Doom We're Best At " " We Are Losing the Moon " (also with Jim Green) Also mentioned in this episode: " We Try and Kill the Internet " Support Are We Doomed? , get bonus episodes, and more: https://doompod.com/support/ Watch earlier episodes on Youtube…
People in this episode
Host: Ben Bradford
Guest: Jim Green
Topics covered
- solar storm
- Carrington Event
- technology impact
- space threats
- infrastructure safety
Keywords
- solar storm
- Carrington Event
- technology
- NASA
- NOAA
- infrastructure
- space weather
Mentioned in this episode
Organizations: NASA, NOAA Space Weather Prediction Center
Books & works: Asteroids! The Doom We're Best At, We Are Losing the Moon, We Try and Kill the Internet
More episodes of Are We Doomed?
- Can "Scams" Be a Doom?
- The Everything Vaccine
- What Ever Happened to the Ozone Hole?
- More Nukes!
- Did AI Just Escape?
- Now I'm Scared of Cyborgs
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