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Most Powerful Geomagnetic Storm of Solar Cycle 24 Is Happening
astroengine writes: The most powerful solar storm of the current solar cycle is currently reverberating around the globe. Initially triggered by the impact of a coronal mass ejection (CME) hitting our planet's magnetosphere, a relatively mild geomagnetic storm erupted at around 04:30 UT (12:30 a.m. EDT), but it has since ramped-up to an impressive G4-class geomagnetic storm, priming high latitudes for some bright auroral displays.
It's time to shield your RAM or hope you got EEC.
It's ECC ( Error Correcting Code ) not EEC.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ECC_memory
Reporting auraras from the ground up, contribute http://aurorasaurus.org/
You're wrong. The latest projections for human population in 2100 was revised up. Now the population may be as high as 12 billions people.
Also, most women choose to have babies AND pursue a career. Where I live, thanks to the women's rights movement, not only there's subsidized daycare, completely free health care for children, free education, laws to protect women in the work place who chose to have babies (paid maternity leaves, obligation for the employer to accommodate women with children, etc.), generous government child support programs (up to 10,000$ per year per child), but the laws also make sure fathers are obligated to support their ex-girlfriend until the "child" has finished school (which can go up to 25 years old). It is considered that the well being of the woman is essential to the well being of the child.
Now the women's rights movement is pushing for a law which would give women the full benefit of marriage (meaning half the assets of the man) only after two years of relationship. After two years, you're automatically married, whether you like it or not! It's also pushing to make paternity tests illegal, as it is considered a violation of women's rights and a possible attack on their financial security.
When facing a choice between a career or a baby, most women will choose to change laws so they can have both.
(BTW, I was a strong supporter of women's rights 30 years ago, but now I think it's gone too far and it's men who should fight for their rights.)
Actually, memory effects generally come from proton radiation storms, not geomagnetic storms.
Radiation storms are usually associated with large flares. There need not be an Earth-directed CME, but it does help if a recent event created a stronger magnetic path to Earth. If that was a stream, by the time it gets towards Earth, the end that it's originating from on the sun is near or even beyond the western (rotating away) edge. So most events that cause radiation storms are "near the western limb". (see Parker Spiral)
Most of the time the atmosphere stops any particles, but when the energy is high there can be secondary collisions. An event much more rare, but usually associated with a radiation storm, is a GLE (ground level enhancement). A spike in high energy radiation level can do strange things. Creating an invisible trail, if a particle goes in the right spot, it can cause some smoke detectors to chirp out of the blue. (Usually just once, less often a few times, not at the lower volume or regular interval of a low-battery warning). Since the radiation bursts are seldom and brief, they don't add up to much exposure on Earth.
Those with counters may see a slight increase in background on the leading edge CME and fast solar wind. And since fast events clear away some slower but heavier particles that would collide with the atmosphere, there's often a drop to below normal background after an event passes. When CMEs are more frequent, like this last week, an earlier CME sweeping away some solar wind particles leaves a path when a subsequent fast CME won't get slowed down as much as usual. And if there is a fast stream from a coronal hole nearby, we we also have now), it may be sped up and spread out less. There was also a filament eruption. Those usually spread less than flare CMEs, and tend to be denser. I'm not sure what happened with the filament eruption on the 11th. I think it went west-north-west.
For many people, radon from soil and well water is far more likely to be of concern. Avoid taking long showers during a drought. More ground water is used during droughts, and that's what usually has the most radon.
An "agrarian society" generally means at least half the population is engaged in agriculture. By that definition, all first-world nations are most assuredly "technological" or "industrial" as opposed to "agrarian", and have been for quite some time. That's not discounting the importance of agriculture... it's just an acknowledgement of how mechanization and agricultural science allows farmers to be hundreds of times as productive as they used to be.
Sheesh, this is veering way off-topic.
Irony: Agile development has too much intertia to be abandoned now.