Ep. #854: James F. Ponder – Carrington Event

As Earth goes through an intense solar storm this weekend, a new simulation of the most powerful one ever paints a grim picture for our modern world. Known as the Carrington Event after the astronomer who first observed its effects, this storm in 1859 illuminated the night sky as bright as day with dazzling auroras and fried telegraph systems across the globe. Jeremy welcomes James F. Ponder to discuss the event and how devastating such a storm today could be.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Five four three two one.

Speaker 2 (00:08):
We interrupt our program to bring you this important message.

Speaker 3 (00:13):
A confirmed attack is taking place against the United States.
Aliens from an unknown location have been reported in multiple states.

Speaker 2 (00:21):
We are controlling transmissions.

Speaker 4 (00:24):
There is another world that awaits, far beyond what we
can see and feel, a place that's anything but ordinary.

Speaker 1 (00:32):
Would you believe.

Speaker 5 (00:35):
I not think?

Speaker 4 (00:38):
Step into the song how the.

Speaker 3 (00:41):
First time knows.

Speaker 6 (00:48):
Expiracies and cover to the pair Red not a weegog
with Jerey's stuff.

Speaker 3 (00:59):
While we are going through a solar storm, a pretty
intense solar storm as we speak. So if things are
feeling a bit off, that could be the reason why.
Friends from the Cool Dark depths of a secret dungeon
somewhere deep in the remote Pacific Northwest. As Friday becomes Saturday,

(01:21):
we could still be seeing those auroras, so keep an
eye out. Maybe they will creep in during the program.
Because as mentioned, this is a strong geomagnetic storm that
we are currently in the midst of. It was all
caused by It doesn't take an X class flare all

(01:42):
the time. In this case, it was an M class
flare seven point four that ejected from the Sun from
a solar flare what's known as a coronal mass ejection
that headed towards Earth, and this is something that is

(02:03):
capable of producing G three level geomagnetic storms. G three
is relatively high. G five is extreme. The one we
had in May of last year was G four. Just
to give you an idea of what we're dealing with now,
It's possible this one could reach G four status if

(02:25):
we have a compound situation where we continue to get
hit with aur auroras and CMEs and these are solar flares,
but right now it's just a G three. It follows
a surprise aurora display that was caused by a weaker

(02:46):
CME and also high speed solar wind which already pushed
activity to G three levels across parts of North America
and Europe. As many as twenty two states in the
US are in the firing line, if not still, they
have been over the past few nights. So this lit

(03:10):
up skies across the northern hemisphere. I saw some pictures
and this is cool stuff. Vivid, green, pink, and purple
auroras were visible from Canada all the way to the
northern United States. As these geomagnetic conditions caused these spectacular

(03:34):
auroras and these conditions, from what I understand, are remaining
unsettled through the coming days, so we could get more
of them as a solar material continues to pass by Earth.
Right now, it's a G three storm watch, as I mentioned,

(03:57):
and that is in effect through Saturday. I was issued
by Noah's Space Weather Prediction Center a couple of days ago,
forecasters that say more auroras could appear over the weekend,
So keep your eyes to the sky. I'm sure it
won't be hard to miss. It might make a nighttime

(04:18):
light up like day, as was happening back in eighteen
fifty nine. In fact, when we didn't know what to expect,
something called the Carrington event that came through witnessed across
thousands of miles and in the middle of the night,

(04:43):
people were out cooking their morning breakfast because the skies
made it appear like it was morning. Not saying that
that is necessarily going to happen here, but these skies
will light up, and if it happens in you know,
the time hours, which is when we see this activity,

(05:03):
typically there could be some scenarios where individuals are woken
by the brightness of the light. Nonetheless, there have been
people who have captured some pretty spectacular pictures and also
images or videos. Rather, images and videos of the Northern Lights.

(05:28):
Sightings have been reported from Ontario, Illinois, Winnipeg. I even
saw one that was caught on a flight from Denver
to Chicago. Just to do a quick Google search, or
if you don't like Google, any other one of your
favorite search engines and you will find some pictures. Over

(05:49):
the past couple of nights, maybe Wednesday night and Thursday night,
but continuing now Friday into Saturday, we could still see
some more of those. Or check your social media feed.
Perhaps one of your friends in one of these places
has posted one that was the case for me. Maybe

(06:11):
that's all social media is worth anymore these days, is
just crowdsourcing it for these cool moments in life, because
otherwise it just appears to be a big, giant distraction.
But that's just my opinion. Forecasters warned that the strength
of the storm, as I mentioned, could reach G four status,

(06:33):
which would be on par with what we had last May.
That is if multiple CMEs interact, and also additional sun
spots are a possibility from this active region of the sun,
which has been considerably active in the past few days

(06:54):
could set additional CMEs toward Earth and that would really
prolong this activet you would be a compound fracture type situation.
There were several strong flares within the past few days
that hit us, including an end point M eight point
six as well right after that seven point four, and

(07:14):
then we had two X flares one point eight one
point one just a few hours apart that originated from
the active region that has been causing this AR four
two seven four. This large and magnetically complex sunspot cluster
is now rotating into direct view of Earth. Perfect timing right,

(07:39):
so we are in the firing line. That's the translation
for you. According to a NOAHS Space Weather Prediction Center,
both X class flares caused large scale radio blackouts, while
the M class flare produced a smaller but still significant event.
So it wasn't the eight point six that caused the CMA,

(08:00):
It wasn't even the the X class flares. It was
at seven point four. So it tells you you never
know what you're going to get. The sunny is unpredictable
and it can take something as large or as small
as a M class or an X class flare, depending
to cause such an event. Noah currently estimates there is

(08:23):
a sixty five percent chance that we could get hit
with additional M class flares in the coming days, and
while a fifteen percent chance of another X class flare
coming this week. So we are not out of the
woods just yet. Even though NASA says there is new

(08:44):
evidence which shows the Sun is emerging from an unexpected
lull inactivity, we know that the Sun has a cycle,
and that is not expected to always be the case.
This activity comes and it goes, but it does seem
it's just ramping up and it hasn't really started to

(09:06):
ramp back down. Maybe the solar maximum, which we were
expected to be in at this time, although it started
earlier than scientists expected, maybe it will just last longer,
and so we can expect that the effects of that
might be prolonged as well. From the cold, dark depths
of a secret dungeon somewhere deep in the remote Pacific Northwest,

(09:29):
we're talking about solar flares, about CMEs, about the northern
lights tonight, and also about the Carrington event of eighteen
fifty nine, which we'll tell you about more when we
come back. Somewhere between the paranormal and the abnormal, I'm
Jeremy Scott.

Speaker 5 (09:55):
Into the parabnormal pair of so.

Speaker 3 (10:10):
Much like life, the Sun goes around and around on
a cycle. It is an eleven year solar cycle. At
one point, we didn't actually know how long these cycles lasted.
It was only through observations that we've been able to
determine there is a cycle and the activity ebbs and flows.

(10:36):
NASA says the Sun is actually emerging from an unexpected
lull inactivity. Researchers from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory analyzed decades
of solar data and found that activity has been rising
steadily since around two thousand and eight. This trend suggests
that the Sun is entering a more energetic era that

(10:58):
could last for decades. So I guess throw out the
book is as far as that's concerned. Maybe we'll have
to rewrite the book, certainly. If the Sun continues to
behave unlike normal we may have to just go back
to the drawing board here. But it's not hard to believe,

(11:22):
considering the current solar cycle, which began in late twenty nineteen,
has already surpassed forecasts. Scientists originally expected that we were
going to have a pretty weak solar maximum this year
similar to the last one, but it arrived, of course
early in twenty twenty four and has been far stronger,

(11:45):
producing the most sunspots and xclass flares that the Sun
has seen in over twenty years. Several major geomagnetic storms
have also struck Earth. You may remember, as we mentioned
the event at last May those vivid auroras unlike seen
in my lifetime, but it also caused more than five

(12:08):
hundred million dollars in damages. Researchers warned that such intense
activity could become the new normal for future cycles, increasing
the risk to modern technologies such as power grids, GPS systems,
and satellites. We see the impacts of this all the time,

(12:29):
even with moderate or minor geomagnetic storms. Right, we're always
in the fire line. This is not like eighteen fifty
nine where we only had the telegraph. No, we have
modern technologies and they are all at risk of a
solar flare of a CME. Now. The cause of the

(12:52):
Sun's recent resurgence remains unclear, though it may relate to
longer or poorly understood solar cycles spanning many decades. As
I've said, we may need to relook things all right.
In eighteen fifty nine, British astronomer Richard Carrington observed an

(13:15):
intense solar flare later identified as a coronal mass ejection CME,
that slammed into Earth's magnetic field, causing the most powerful
geomagnetic storm ever recorded. Think about that. The Carrington event
ignited telegraph fire, shocked operators, and produced Aurora's visible as

(13:39):
far south as Panama and Italy. I mean that is
a massive, massive event. Think of something of that scale
on today's terms. These as storms occur when magnetic energy
on this Sun suddenly releases, hurling charged particles into space

(14:06):
as the suns constantly shifting magnetic fields driven by its
uneven rotation build up tension without eventually snaps and then reconnects,
triggering solar flares CMEs and radiation storms. Yeah, you've always
wondered how that works. There you go. These phenomena vary
in intensity through the Sun's eleven year solar cycle, peaking

(14:30):
during solar maximum when activity is strongest as it is now,
perhaps as it was back in the time. During the
Carrington event, experts warned that a modern event could be catastrophic,
would cripple power grids, satellites, GPS, communications and critical infrastructure worldwide,

(14:54):
and that recovery would take years. It would cost trillions.
So when we think five hundred million dollars in damage
from a solar storm just last year, this would be
trillions of dollars and real damage here, but even smaller
storms would disrupt power and technology. Teams at the European

(15:18):
Space Operation Center, which is a run by the European
Space Agency in Germany, have been running simulations to prepare
for extreme space weather scenarios, including a recreation of the
Carrington event. The situation unfolded in three phases. An X
forty five class solar flare, which is massive, far more

(15:40):
massive than we have seen something like this, disabling communications
and navigation. That was a one phase, high energy particles
damaging onboard systems would be the second, and the third
a massive coronal mass ejection caused atmospheric swelling, satellite drag
increasing up to four hundred percent, and widespread orbital instability.

(16:06):
In a situation like that, all satellites would be to put,
not just those in low earth orbit spacecraft paps perhaps
those two. And what about us down here on Earth
if this stuff comes raining out of the sky. It

(16:27):
has to land somewhere, friends, and that would be right
on top of our heads. You think we have a
space problem now, and we definitely do have a space
junk problem. I don't know if we have a space problem,
maybe we will at one day, but a space junk problem,
we certainly we started to have that going for us.

(16:51):
And we're seeing more reports of this stuff of falling
out of the skies and landing on farms and crashing
through people's skylights and roofs. By the way, but I
said earlier, the cause of the Sun's recent resurgence remains unclear,
though it may relate to longer, poorly understood solar cycles

(17:13):
spanning many decades. We should wonder how much more intense
it can get, because it doesn't seem like we are
understanding why it is more intense and why when it
was forecast for solar cycle twenty five we under sold it. Right,

(17:37):
Folks who take a look at the forecasts and predict
this stuff, they got it wrong. And it's not to
say haha, it's just they got it wrong. Why did
they get it wrong? Is the sun? Well, the Sun
is unpredictable, and largely that is it, But there could
be some other factors as well. We may not know

(18:01):
nearly as much as we do about all this solar activity.
I must say though without Richard Carrington, the English astronomer
who recorded what was known as the Carrington event, and
we have just the right person to talk about this
with us tonight. But I just want to say, all

(18:23):
of this indicates that you need EMP shield because the
Sun is continuing to be more active and EMP shield
can protect you from this emp these solar flares, lightning,
power surges, the whole nine yards. EMP shield can protect
both your home and your vehicle from this. So it's

(18:47):
a good product to have. We endorse it, and if
you want to pick it up, you just go to
pairubnormal radio dot com slash EMP. I mean, unless you
want to pay more, you could find it somewhere else.
But if you go to pairubnormal radio dot com slash EMP,
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(19:10):
EMP shield pairubnormal radio dot com slash EMP. I only
make anything if you buy one of these, So there's
the incentive into the pair of normal. Somewhere between the
pair ofanormal and the abnormal. We're keeping our eye out
for the northern lights.

Speaker 1 (19:27):
Tonight, Pair of Normal News.

Speaker 7 (19:49):
I'm George Henry. Three Chinese astronauts are stranded in orbit
after their return capsule was reportedly struck by space debris.
The crew was due to return earned to Earth this
week after a six month mission aboard China's Tiangong space station.
The China Manned Space Agency is assessing the damage to

(20:09):
the shen Zoo twenty spacecraft and have postponed the return
flight for safety reasons. If the current capsule is deemed unsafe,
a rescue plan could be activated with another shen Zu
spacecraft and Long March rocket already on standby. China has
completed thirty seven space flights and six crewed missions so far,

(20:30):
with plans to send astronauts to the Moon before twenty thirty.
Pair of Normal News. Every hour on into the Pair
of Normal.

Speaker 4 (20:45):
We've got a G.

Speaker 2 (20:46):
Three store a lot of energy releasing from the Sun,
and this in turn has sparked this geomagnetic stormwash. Solar
storms are coming as a major solar ship continue powerful.

Speaker 3 (21:00):
Light show on the surface of the Sun. The burst
of the radiation of the strongest solar player so far
this year.

Speaker 4 (21:11):
Hold on tight, you're about to land somewhere into the
fear of normal.

Speaker 5 (21:17):
Fear of.

Speaker 3 (21:19):
Boy, we're lucky out again tonight because solar storms are
hitting the country as we're on the air tonight. It's
amazing how this seems to happen more often than we
could believe to be a coincidence, in fact, somewhere between

(21:40):
the paranormal and the abnormal. I'm Jeremy Scott. It's always
wonderful when we can talk with James F. Ponder on
the program. We've been doing so for close to a
decade now. We've spent many hours with him, probably more
than twenty over the years, is a safe estimate, talking

(22:03):
about cybersecurity issues, about EMP, about solar flares. In fact,
at one particular time, and what caught my attention was
when James was trying to get off the ground this
concept of selling these boxes that could protect your electronics

(22:23):
from a solar flare if the power grid was hit,
if we experienced an EMP, that sort of thing. And
actually James was the first person who I had ever
heard about the Carrington event from, so who better to
have back on than him. James has worked at the

(22:45):
US Custom Service and Department of Homeland Security, investigating cyber
crimes and performing computer forensics. After retirement, he taught cybersecurity,
digital evidence, and network security at the Federal Law Enforcement Center.
Well versed on the Carrington event, which obviously proceeded both

(23:06):
James and I by quite a number of years. Fascinating
though in the sense that it was one of a
kind and the impacts to that, as we've already discussed
on the program. But looking forward to talking with you
more at length tonight, James about welcome to the program.

Speaker 2 (23:26):
Great to be back on, Jeremy, and you picked an
event that I enjoy talking about a great deal because
it is looming out there like a big earthquake or
a big volcano, but more like a hurricane. We're going
to have some warning when this occurs. We'll have a

(23:47):
number of hours, maybe even a few days, to prepare
for this, and this is something I wanted your audience
to know about. But thank you for the introduction. Please
go ahead absolutely.

Speaker 3 (23:59):
And so you say we will have some warning, I'm
wondering if it will be like the events that we're
going through now. They're saying these are g three conditions. Now,
I believe the highest is what G five.

Speaker 2 (24:11):
In that range. Yes, that's there are different ways of
measuring them, and the categories of a solar flare and
things like that, and these they're pretty big. They need
to be paid attention to.

Speaker 3 (24:26):
Yes, So if we're seeing something on the caliber of
a G four or a G five like event that
is Carrington event caliber, if it.

Speaker 2 (24:39):
Is coming toward the Earth, or if it is in
the band of the ecliptic that is the orbits of
the planets, and it's headed out to an area in
space where the Earth is going to travel to in
the next couple of weeks, it's time to make preparations. Yes,
this is like a category four category five hurricane coming

(25:03):
toward you and you live in the hurricane belt as
I do in northern Florida.

Speaker 3 (25:08):
Yes, okay, I know you're a survival guide too. We've
talked with you about that, and so you can tell
us later on how we could prepare ourself for such
an event. This is only a G three that we've
got coming. But now the European Space Agency, of course,
through their recent analysis, is saying there are no spacecraft
in orbit who would survive such an event. If you

(25:29):
look at what we had back in eighteen fifty nine,
we had the telegraph system, and of course that literally
caught on fire because of the events. If you magnify
that by the satellites and everything that is in orbit,
and the GPS and the communications and the whole nine yards.
In this technological age that we live in, we're screwed

(25:53):
if we get another storm of this caliber.

Speaker 2 (25:57):
That's a good technical term for it. Or Turner used
to do, used to use toasts.

Speaker 3 (26:04):
Yes, very technical term. Screwed and toast.

Speaker 2 (26:09):
They are good single syllable assessments of what would happen
to modern society. Because when Richard Carrington, who was one
of the Royal astronomers, was doing his solar studies and
studying flares and studying these strange storms on Hassan known
as sunspots, he detected a large solar flare, the biggest

(26:35):
one he'd ever seen, in eighteen fifty nine, and about
two days later, all kinds of strange things happened on
the Earth. This was the first extraterrestrial event to ever
occur where something was seen beforehand and it happened to

(26:56):
the Earth. So this was kind of a big deal
historically for astronomy people who are into the history of
it as i am. But when you consider the baby
steps business was taking in electronics right then, of telegraphy,

(27:17):
telegraphs following along railroad lines, and in fact there was
just a little more maturity to happen before you had
the convergence of the late Iron Age, which the middle
eighteen fifties were, and railroads and telegraph lines and how

(27:41):
they impacted the US War between the states, because you
can talk about the rail advantage that the North had
and the gun and weapon manufacturing advantage that the South had.
But Lincoln had an accidental advantage no one in history

(28:01):
it had before, and that was aerial observation. He had
a balloonist, an army captain with a telegraph key above Washington, DC,
and you did watch trouth movements of the North and South,
which was pretty interesting. That was in eighteen sixty three,

(28:21):
eighteen sixty four. We're only going back in time five
years before this, and there was enough outreach around the
world England, certainly western and northwestern Europe, from France to
Germany and then east onward to Poland, throughout the United States,

(28:41):
and the English Empire's telegraphy in North Africa and to
a much greater extent what is now the political boundaries
of India and Pakistan. And something happened that had not
been predicted before.

Speaker 3 (28:57):
NY is that that we'll have you tell us when
we come back back with James F. Ponder, our guest
tonight talking about the Carrington events of eighteen fifty nine.
I'm Jeremy Scott. Somewhere between the paranormal and the.

Speaker 5 (29:10):
Abnormal into the paradormal.

Speaker 3 (29:37):
Parent as that we are on the cusp are actually
going through a geomagnetic storm, a significant geomagnetic storm, not

(30:03):
quite of the extreme caliber. So if you're feeling off
over the next couple of days, there actually is a
correlation between the activity that is happening with the Sun.
As this energy is flung towards Earth, we will get

(30:25):
a warning of some kind that this activity is on
the way. According to our guest tonight, to James F. Ponder,
and we'll ask him how we can prepare ourself. There
are certain things that we can do. But back in
the day of the Carrington event of eighteen fifty nine,

(30:45):
witnessed by English astronomer Richard Carrington, this was the first
time right, James, that solar flares were witnessed, what through
a telescope leave, and then there were effects that followed
on Earth. Is that correct?

Speaker 2 (31:06):
That's correct. That was the first time any cause on
the Sun was seen to have an activity on the Earth.
And this was a pretty significant activity when you had
all the railroad lines and telegraph poles bursting into flame.

Speaker 3 (31:20):
Yes, And nobody had thought to ever study this before then, right,
because we didn't know it was a possibility. It hadn't
been observed, the effects hadn't been experienced. But now you
have an event that has been witnessed and then documented

(31:41):
and since then, you know, in one hundred and sixty
some years that have gone on since then, there's been
a lot of research on solar activity. That's why we
know that there are these cycles of about eleven years
of which we're working our way towards the end of
solar cycle twenty five. But that's how we came to

(32:04):
know is because of observations like Carrington's.

Speaker 2 (32:08):
That's correct. Harrington was one of the Royal astronomers and
his specialty was in solar activity, and most people have
only heard of him because of the event named which
he discovered, but it is important to learn this and
the European Space Agency detections that you mentioned. From the

(32:30):
recent articles that have come out, it shows there's some
pretty serious activity going on. Even though at this stage
they're seeing what's called solar decay, and that is the
decreasing in the intensity supposedly of solar flares and solar activity,

(32:51):
you still get these major events that occur. Now. This
is not unlike you being downwind of a major a
volcano and century upon century it's having smaller catastrophic outbursts,
but it still has one while you're alive near it.
It's kind of like that. And there have been two

(33:16):
since nineteen ninety that would have been world enders, and
more so now than back in nineteen ninety. One occurred
that was observed to go well in front of the
Earth's path in its orbit, and it had dissipated almost
completely by the time the Earth went through the path

(33:38):
of where the solar storm was, but there were a
lot of auroras. A few years later there was again
a storm of equal or greater strength than what Richard
Carrington observed one hundred and sixty years ago, but it
was behind the Earth's orbit. So again, it just caused

(33:58):
a few auroras and it was interesting to scientists observing
solar activity. But if one of those, or Carrington's event
from eighteen fifty nine something of that size were to
hit the Earth now with multiple power grids without most
of them being enheardened with so many of us modern

(34:22):
life of most of eight billion people, even when people
live in the third and fourth world, they have enough food,
they have enough drinking water, and what electricity they have
is because of First World events, it would be a
major step down in our lives for years or even

(34:43):
decades because what would happen to the power grid.

Speaker 3 (34:46):
Oh exactly, it would implode and the effects of that
would be widespread. Everything that goes along with it, as
we've talked about before, everything that requires the power, and
some of that is life saving. So just start to
think about that and it will give you a sense
of you think that we're in dire streets right now

(35:07):
with people not having their snap benefits. Imagine there's no power,
there's no internet, and there's no nothing else that relies
on any of that, and it's not going to be
for weeks, if not months, before any of that comes
back online. This is what would happen if something like
the Carrington event happened in present day. And the reason

(35:30):
it's relevant, well, there's many reasons it is relevant, and
among them are these new simulations as we've been discussing
from the European Space Agency, which suggests that something on
the level of a Carrington event of eighteen fifty nine
could wreak havoc on satellites orbiting Earth and is not

(35:51):
a question of when. Rather, it is not a question
of if, it is a question of when. Experts say
your reaction to this, James.

Speaker 2 (36:03):
That's exactly right. Even if a Carrington event were not
and issues me, I shouldn't even put it in terms
of that strong Even if solar flare activity did not
cause a Carrington authentic did not cause an EMP like
effect with the power grid, with the Internet, with server farms,

(36:26):
with the things that run our lives, hydroelectric dams, hospitals,
things like that, right, just shutting down the Internet, just
shutting down GPS, and I'm talking about the type of
Internet that is coming from satellites, not the ground based

(36:49):
fiber optic cable. It would cause absolute chaos with navigation,
with timekeeping, with all sorts of other things. And I
don't mean like timekeeping like you're cooking a roast. I
mean timekeeping in the specifics of running power plants, let's say, hospitals,

(37:13):
the inner workings of major cities, traffic air traffic control.
It would cause general chaos, even if it did not
take down the power grid. If it only destroyed a
significant amount of our satellites that provide Internet and GPS

(37:36):
and time based data that we have, it would cause
trillions of dollars of damage to the first world and
possible a lot of starvation to the third and fourth world.

Speaker 3 (37:49):
Okay, so James, I'm mean explain what I did to
the telegraph system.

Speaker 2 (37:53):
Yes, the telegraph system in eighteen fifty nine, not a
whole lot lot, Unlike the telephone system or the Internet,
is made up of tens of millions of telephone poles
that have copper wire in them. And of course copper
was a very big deal during the early part of

(38:16):
the telegraph age and all through the telephone age, meaning
AT and T and long lines and things like that.
Not packets traveling along the Internet to make a telephone
call happen. These long lines actually act as antennas and
these antennas capture larger and larger fractions of the solar

(38:39):
flar's pulse coming through the magnetosphere of the Earth, meaning
the longer the line, the greater the surge of electricity
on both ends, which is why it many places along
railroad lines, because railroads are kreosote posts rail pieces of

(39:00):
lumber that hold up the railroad tracks. The railroad tracks
are ironed, really good conductors. They acted as giant antennas
to pick up the electromagnetic pulse from the magnetist of
the Earth caused by the solar flare, and they lit
the kreosote logs, the kreosote railroad posts on fire, and

(39:27):
they caused fires all over the place throughout the world.
We're not just talking the US and England, who led
the world in telegraphy, but throughout Western Europe and India
and Pakistan and places in Brazil where they had railroads
and telegraph and it caused all kinds of problems. And
then because so many of the telegraphs couldn't be used,

(39:49):
they had to buy mail or by horse spread the
news around of what they think might have happened.

Speaker 3 (39:56):
Yeah, so imagine if we go back to the days
like that, whereas Horse and Buggy, and here's your notification
a Carrington event is coming or has already come. Likely
this would be the after effects James F ponder with
us tonight on into the.

Speaker 2 (40:13):
Pair of normal.

Speaker 4 (40:14):
Can you handle another hour somewhere between the pair of
normal and abnormal? Into the pair of normal with Jeremy
Scott will be right back.

Speaker 6 (40:32):
There's a parallel universe fail separation. While we received seriality.

Speaker 5 (40:45):
Over the game. Then the juy know.

Speaker 6 (40:54):
Into the pa of no into the pa.

Speaker 4 (41:11):
Hang on for the ride. You're headed into the pair abnormal.

Speaker 3 (41:22):
Do you always wonder what a solar storm, what a
geomagnetic storm could actually do to us? It is certainly fascinating.
That's why we always report on them as we get news,
such as what is happening this weekend with a several
states in fact likely feeling the effects of this. If

(41:44):
not as we speak, maybe you saw some of the
effects last night or tomorrow night. Because this is not
just a one night occurrence. And in the event of
the Carrington event, we're talking about eighteen fifty nine in
August and in September when this occurred, the first time

(42:11):
that solar flares were witnessed coming off of the sun,
and then what we've come to know is the Aurora borealis,
or the northern lights light up the sky. And where
James is from, down in Florida, that was one of
the first places to witness this.

Speaker 2 (42:30):
James, that's right. It's really interesting. I've seen auroras, but
I've seen them well stationed in Alaska. I haven't seen
them this far south, but during solar storm activity, there
are historic records of aurora's being seen south of Mexico City,

(42:50):
which this was back in the nineteen sixties. This would
be a gigantic problem if auroras were seen as far
south as Mexico City right now, because we have literally
millions of miles of power lines up right now, and

(43:11):
so many of these thousands of miles of power lines
are connecting server farms and the new AI centers things
like that that are going to I believe we said
coast earlier. Yeah, it's going to cost the corporations billions
of dollars, and the corporation the US and First World

(43:34):
economies trillions of dollars, and it will ultimately cost a
lot of lives. Because you keep looking at the logistics
of it. If water doesn't get pumped and you live
in a city, where do you go?

Speaker 3 (43:49):
Yeah, and if it's if you're not able to sanitize
it because you don't have power. I mean, this is
all stuff that we have talked about with the James
over the years at length, the fallout of all of
these kinds of scenarios. So if you're new to the show,
you haven't heard James before, or you're intrigued by what
you're hearing today, I just type in his name into

(44:10):
the podcast search and you'll find many more episodes that
we've done. I would certainly highly recommend those. That's why
we're having James back here. As I mentioned, he was
the first to ever tell me about the Carrington event.
And so now that the European Space Agency is warning
we're doomed if this happens again, not saying we're doomed

(44:33):
in the sense where everyone's going to die, but this
would make life considerably difficult. It may not take us
back to the Stone Ages, but as you talked about
at the end of the last hour, it may take
us back to the days where things are arriving on horseback.

Speaker 2 (44:50):
Yeah, the carrying load of the whole world is probably
only about two billion people without a power grid, because
when you consider the Earth did not hit a billion
people until eighteen oh two, it only took ninety eight
years for the next billion people to show up. In

(45:13):
the year nineteen hundred, we had two billion people and
still almost no power grid throughout the world. There is
a lot more telegraphy than electricity going on, and it
would there would be a gigantic die off. And I

(45:33):
don't mean to make light of this, this is extremely serious.
It would be a world changing event for decades or centuries,
but there'd be a very large die off if the
grid only went down for a year, simply because of
loss of clean water, loss of medication. People live in

(45:55):
environments right now where they shouldn't. In the tropics was
screens and ceiling fans and air conditioning, and well above
the level Le'll say, in Canada, in Alaska, in Russia
and northern Europe, where people could live day to day

(46:18):
without power, it's really not tenable. I mean, I don't
know what the population of Sweden was, for example, or
the northern half of Russia before nineteen hundred, but I
know it's a tiny fraction of what it is.

Speaker 3 (46:34):
Now right now. I mean, consider the space junk problem
we have now, James. Imagine if a Carrington event wipes
out every single satellite that is orbiting our planet and
all of that rains down on us.

Speaker 2 (46:58):
Yeah, well, a Caring's An event could lead to something
else called a Kestler event. Kessler was a physicist who
he's when you read some of his stuff, he's almost
like a chaotician, the character Jeff Goldbloom played in the
first Jurassic Park movie. He dealt with the chaos of

(47:20):
large systems when they actually went chaotic, and the Kessler
event would be an unplanned or unstoppable impact of one
satellite into others, causing a domino effect throughout the belts

(47:40):
of the populated areas populated by satellites around the Earth.
Those would fall to Earth. And while it's unlikely that
any given satellite would land on any given home or
trailer or apartment building or anything like that, when you

(48:02):
have tens of thousands of satellites up there, many of
them inurse, many of them that have been dead for
years or decades, there's still kinetic energy weapons. When they
fall from Earth orbit onto you and they would have
death as a side effects, and there'd be a lot
of them falling down. The Earth is seventy percent water surface. Okay,

(48:26):
seventy percent of them are going to hit water. That
means thirty percent of everything in space is going to
hit lands. And since we live on lands, there will
be a non zero number of people to be hit
by these things. And if it just hits the side
of your house and caves in the trusses and you
happen to be in the house, that would also be

(48:46):
a deadly event effect. So it would be bad, yes.

Speaker 3 (48:52):
Yeah, and especially with our reliance now on technologies of
the day, as we've discussed both on Earth and in space.
Other things we haven't talked about, but like the communications satellites,
all of the planes, the aircraft who rely on those,
a GPS for navigation. If you take all of those out,

(49:17):
you literally put all of these things on a collision
course at the same time.

Speaker 2 (49:22):
Yes, that's right. We don't know how to deal with
that moving parts at any one time, but that lack
of knowledge would be mitigated because we have these things
like the Internet and GPS and proper time stamps to
six digits and everything else. But oh wait, the Carrington

(49:44):
event caused the Kessler effect, and we have no way
of tracking anything unless you have an old fashioned Texas
instruments or Hewlett Packard calculator and you have enough graph
paper to figure things out for your little corner of
the world. Us as good as it gets.

Speaker 3 (50:01):
Going back to high school, basically, remember we all used
to carry around the calculator so annoying. I'm Jeremy Scott,
somewhere between the paranormal and the abnormal.

Speaker 5 (50:25):
Into the paradormal parent.

Speaker 3 (50:43):
Where James I ponder our guest tonight. You've heard him
talking about cybersecurity and other subjects technological wise over the years.
He's our go to as far as that is concerned,
but also about the effects that solar activity would have
on the planet. And really this is a wide spread.

(51:08):
We could talk at length about the effects that this
would have. A Carrington event like event would be more
drastic than an event that happened in eighteen fifty nine.
I mean, take into example what we've heard about the
effects on the telegraph system and then magnify that with

(51:32):
everything that is in the skies, on the ground, and
a situation like even the Kessler effect in play, and
this is something that we don't want to mess around with.
And perhaps it may not even take a G five.
Maybe something like a G four storm could be just

(51:54):
as devastating. I mean, in today's climate, you never know.

Speaker 2 (51:58):
James, Not enough new technology is built with anti fragility.
I'm going to quote Seem to leave here. He wrote
The Black Swan, not the strange movie with Natalie Portman,
but the book about the occurrence of unexpected large events

(52:21):
that cause other events, and he came up with a term.
He talked to a bunch of linguists to try to
find a word in some language that was anti fragile.
He could not find any culture of any language that
had the term or concept or word for anti fragile.

(52:44):
So he wrote a book about it and it was
very good. We need to build any future infrastructure, not
just robust that is, grounded lines, grounded power lines with
backup generators, but anti fragile. Any of the fragility of

(53:07):
this modern technology must be looked at and you have
to bake it into the mix as you go. What
are we going to do to make this Carrington proof
EMP proof terrorist group? I mean, the entire concept of
warfare has changed since I left the army in nineteen

(53:28):
eighty seven. Drones were basically a dumb robot at that point,
and none of them were used as weapons, and most
drones that people had were called RC aircraft. I had
a remote pro aircraft. There were a lot of fun
My engineer partner had like a big two thousand dollars
one that was an RC aircraft and the thing would

(53:49):
fly for miles out over the ocean and come back
and have photographs and everything. Drones have changed everything the
availability of GPS to the centimeter to drop artillery or
mortars or just find somebody that is your enemy. And
artificial intelligence. One more thing, three D printing, so you

(54:14):
can print on the battlefield as you go any object
that you need if you have the right materials. But
then again, droans have changed what used to be called
the foeba, the forward edge of the battle area. We
see now in Ukraine. There are types of warfare going
on between the Ukrainians and their allies versus the Russians

(54:37):
we've never observed before, and a lot of it's never
been written before, even in military type science fiction that
Jerry Pornelli used to write. So we are once again
as the birth of the Internet. We're looking out over
the future and we don't have a clues to what
we're seeing.

Speaker 3 (54:57):
Well, James, here is the actual scenario that the European
Space Agency proposes. The Sun unleashes a sequence of powerful
solar events that starts with a massive X class flare.
Radiation reaches Earth in just eight minutes, disrupting communications radar

(55:20):
tracking systems. Then we get a surge of high energy particles.
These are protons and electrons and alpha particles that hit
orbiting spacecraft, causing false readings, data corruption, potential hardware failures.
And then about fifteen later, fifteen hours later, a huge

(55:42):
coronal mass ejection known as a CME hits Earth's magnetic
field swells the planet's upper atmosphere. The increased atmospheric density
boosts the drag on satellites by up to four hundred percent,
pushing them off core, raising the risk of collisions and

(56:02):
shortening their operational life spans. That is a real world
situation that's not just possible with a simulation. I mean
you look at everything that is in orbit these days,
starlink satellites and everything else, and that's a that's a
real world scenario.

Speaker 2 (56:24):
Yes to all of that, that is correct. A coronal
mass ejection takes one to four days to hit the Earth.
The solar wind travels at just about a million miles
an hour, and as the Earth averages ninety three million
miles from the Sun, it's sometimes closer and sometimes a
little further away, but in that average, it takes just

(56:47):
about four days of the solar wind to hit the Earth.
Normal occurrences on the Sun take three to four days
to hit us, but some solar flares have been detected
to you out there, damaging cloud the energy that they
have in literally one day now. The speed of light

(57:12):
gets light from the Sun to Earth's orbit in eight minutes.
We are eight light minutes from the Sun, or the
Sun is eight light minutes from us. But a corona
mass ejection is actually part plasma. It's part plasma is
the fourth state of matter, solid liquid gas plasma. It's

(57:33):
a semi liquid that primarily exists in space and in
things like research reactors or when bombs go off or
spark plugs create a type of plasma that's very brief
and very tiny and localized. But when that hits the Earth,
when we've never observed an industrialized planet getting hit before.

(57:58):
And unfortunately, we are going to be patient zero. We're
going to have to observe what happens to us and
hopefully survive to be anti fragile enough to rebuild and
to move on from there.

Speaker 3 (58:14):
Well, and you talk about something that would take a
few days to hit Earth, and that's what we're dealing
with after a recent M eight point seven flare that
hit Earth within the past few days. In the situation
of the Carrington event, this went on, from my understanding

(58:36):
for I mean the effects of this for about a week.

Speaker 2 (58:40):
Yes, and it caused auroras much further south in the
northern hemisphere and much further north in the southern hemisphere.
Aurora is where they are rarely seen. And there were
some electrical disturbances. There were some GPS problems. The new

(59:01):
series I think it's GPS three point two or three
point three. The new generation of GPS satellites being set
up are more hardened against this, but are they in
vulnerable to it. No, And because they have to communicate
with other satellites, the satellites to which they must communicate

(59:25):
aren't necessarily enhardened to modern specifications. So even if all
goes well for you as a satellite, if you can't
talk to anybody else but the grounds, you still can't
get all of your job done.

Speaker 3 (59:40):
Yeah and back then. This event was reported in North
America as far south as Panama. In Central America, across
one thousands of miles. It was lit up like daytime.
People were out cooking bacon and exit one o'clock in
the morning. They thought it was it was go time.

(01:00:04):
Carrington event tonight with James F. Ponder on into the
pair Abnormal I'm Jeremy.

Speaker 8 (01:00:10):
Scott, pairubnormal News, I'm George Henry. Two bright meteors slamming
into the Moon were caught on video by a Japanese
astronomer last week. The flashes, visible from Earth for just
a split second, were caused by space rocks striking the

(01:00:32):
lunar surface at high speed, producing brief but brilliant explosions
of light. The collisions happened about two hours apart, as
the Southern and Northern Torred meteor showers approached their peak activity.
This week, meteors are already lighting up Earth's skies and
apparently that of the Moon as well. It is not
yet confirmed whether these impacts originated from the torreds or

(01:00:56):
were simply sporadic meteors per pairubnormal news every hour on
into the pair of normal.

Speaker 4 (01:01:14):
The eight Pring, the largest geomagnetic storm is recorded history.

Speaker 9 (01:01:23):
The solar flares witnessed by Carrington had just sent another
massive dose of magnetized plasma on its way towards Earth.
That evening, the terrifying and awe inspiring lights in the
sky would be seen again around the world.

Speaker 7 (01:01:43):
If we had a Carrington level event now, it would.

Speaker 2 (01:01:46):
Fry our grid line to the GPS systems communications. I mean,
it would really bring us to our knees.

Speaker 9 (01:01:53):
The scariest part such as storms almost certain to describe
within the lifetimes.

Speaker 4 (01:02:02):
The truth is far stranger that we'd like to believe.
You're headed somewhere between the pair of normal and abnormal
into a pair abnormal.

Speaker 3 (01:02:13):
Getting a G three solar storm that has rolled through
following a major solar flare an M seven point four
that also triggered a coronal mass ejection at CMEE, which
is exactly what happened with the Carrington event. To this

(01:02:37):
was the result of a CME was it not? I mean,
not as intense this is a G three storm that
we're going through this weekend, but back in the Carrington
event it was G five, so much more intense, but
still the result of a CME right best correct.

Speaker 2 (01:02:59):
The coronal mass ejection a solar flare is actually a
small coronal mass ejection, but the mass part of it
is when a huge one comes out. It is much
larger in mass in size, and it travels faster out

(01:03:21):
to the Earth's orbit. Normally, like the solar wind, things
take about four days to reach the Earth. Any event
that we can see like that other than light light
takes eight minutes because we're eight minutes away from the
sun light speed wise. But this would be a massive

(01:03:44):
flare with a lot of charged particles, protons, electrons, other
things that are charge particles. They would hit at the
speed of light initially, but again this large cloud of
plasma would come in one to two days and the
plasma would hit Earth's magnetosphere and that would cause all

(01:04:05):
of the electrical problems, the surge in power lines. Remember
a power line, a transmissionine, a telegraph line, which is
what happened during the Carrington era, acts as a big
antenna and it absorbs a lot of this electromagnetic energy.
The longer the wire, the longer the antenna, which means

(01:04:29):
the more energy absorbed. And it would cause things like
the creosote poles on which the telegraph lines were mounted,
caused them to burst into flame, and it would cause
railroad ties, which are kreosote wood, they would burst into flame.
And if you've ever seen kreosoted wood burn, it will

(01:04:50):
burn for a long time, it has a nasty smell,
and it will catch other things on fire. And some
of the historic California fire have happened because a small
forest fire has burned over to a railroad track and
the creosault lines, the railroad ties would catch fire and

(01:05:12):
they would just burn for days, and they would cause
other things to burn that might not have happened, might
have been controlled in a regular small horse fire. So yeah,
there is a large chain of events. But it goes
back to the solar flare hitting the Sun's magnetosphere.

Speaker 3 (01:05:32):
All right, James, So for those who haven't heard about
us talk about the impacts that this would have on
the power grid. It would likely come as a result
of another three letter were not CME but E M.

Speaker 2 (01:05:45):
P very similar. Yes, it would cause a disruption in
the Earth's magneto sphere. The thing is a coronal mass
ejection big enough to be considered a Carrington event that
would hit the Earth's magnetosphere, would affect the entire planet. Now,
if it brushed the Earth on the south side of

(01:06:11):
the Earth, let's say the solar flare were not precisely
in the plane of the ecliptic, that is, the plane
of the orbits of the planets, because all the planet's
orbit in a fairly shallow plane around the Earth's equator.
Then if it, let's say, went to the south, it

(01:06:32):
would affect the southern hemispheres, power grid, electrical server farms,
satellites more than it would those in the northern hemisphere.
But it would still be bad. It's likely it's going
to be wide enough to be enough in the plane
of the ecliptic of the planets of the Solar System.

(01:06:53):
It's going to hit the Earth and affect the whole planet.
That's a coronal mass ejection. That's the carrying to the event.
An EMP is localized over the continent where it blows up. Now,
it's going to be bad for the whole Earth economically,
But an EMP is meant to take out the power

(01:07:15):
grid and electronics of a military's opponent so that their
civilian forces, their industries, their supply lines can no longer function.
And I studied EMP a lot when I was an officer.
I used to teach it. That was one of the
things I taught about up for I was an for

(01:07:37):
a Soviet specialist, and I was one of the Soviet
instructors to talk about their space program and their weapons
and their EMP and their evolution of weapons and so forth.
And an EMP is a local event and really bad
if you're under it. And unless you have a pacemaker

(01:07:58):
or defibrillator planted in your chest or some other medical
implant that you really need to make it week to
week in your life, an EMP is not going to
affect you medically. But the lack of supply lines for food,
the lack of electricity, the lack of water to the tap, Yeah,

(01:08:20):
those are all going to have death as a side
effect sooner or later.

Speaker 3 (01:08:25):
And as far as the impacts of this, it wouldn't
just affect those of us on Earth. Those other members
of the Solar System could also be impacted well.

Speaker 2 (01:08:37):
The members of the Solar System that we've set out there.
Let's say if a coronal mass ejection occurs on the
side of the Sun where the Earth is not but
Mars is, it could literally wipe out the Mars observers,
the rovers that we have, the various satellite that we

(01:09:01):
in the European Space Agency and other space JACKSA the
Japanese Space Agency have on and around Mars. They could
all of a sudden die or go blind, or lose
a significant fraction of their functionality, basically eliminating them. And

(01:09:22):
that would be interesting to watch because we could see
the damage that would occur to Earth. And there's no
life support going on on Mars. We're just observing what's there.
Life support is a very big deal here on Earth,
and it requires for carrying eight billion people. It does

(01:09:43):
require a power grid running water electricity to power things
that keep us alive, the manufacturing of tractors, the refining
of petroleum products, to harvest our food, to move us around.
It would be interesting to watch on another planet that

(01:10:03):
wasn't us, and I don't think we're going to have
that advantage.

Speaker 3 (01:10:09):
We'll wrap up our conversation tonight with the James F.
Ponder somewhere between the paranormal and the abnormal. I'm Jeremy Scott.

Speaker 5 (01:10:24):
Into the paranormal pairent.

Speaker 3 (01:10:40):
You know, we have what's known as the magnetic field,
which does offer protection, thank goodness. So, say if another
planet experienced an event like the Carrington event of eighteen
fifty nine, the largest solar storm on record and of

(01:11:04):
course the first ever to be documented. We didn't really
know what these were or the effects before. Then if
there was an event that took place out there and
it hit another planet, would Earth necessarily feel those same effects,

(01:11:25):
James James up ponder our guest tonight.

Speaker 2 (01:11:28):
Not unless the Earth were in the path of it. Also,
let's say if Mars were in conjunction with the Earth,
it would it would mess us up to whatever degree
the strength of the CME was, and then it would
also wreck the satellites and the rovers on Mars. We

(01:11:50):
have nothing to observe except what's happened in the past.
That hasn't taken us down as a society yet, And
there are some things that the listeners can do to
mitigate the effects to them. But if it takes down
the entire power grid, it's back to a very long

(01:12:12):
hurricane season. And what can you eat out of the freezer? First? Yeah?

Speaker 3 (01:12:20):
Okay, so if we get a warning, I mean there's
probably a G four or a G five solar storm.
Are there any signs that we should look for? I
mean that this could be carrying to devent caliber.

Speaker 2 (01:12:33):
Well, certainly auroras if you're as far south as I am,
and I am south of Jacksonville, Florida, So yeah, I
mean if you have auroras here. As I said, I
saw Aurora as well as stationed north of Fairbanks, but
not quite this far south. There are a few things
the listeners might want to consider doing though. That is,

(01:12:57):
if your data is important to you, and like most families,
if you have most of your photographs on hard drives,
back everything up and put them in any metal box
that you have you're a metal filing cabinet or a
steel garbage can or something like that. Since people don't

(01:13:17):
have EMP cases like I was trying to come up
with a decade ago, the funding just wasn't there for it.
But there are things to do, and that is, the
power may only be off a week or two. That's
enough to cause death to a lot of people. So

(01:13:38):
do what you do when you have a category five
hurricane coming in. Fill up everything you can, including the
bathtub with drinking water. Charge everything that's rechargeable, and in
this instance, try to remove antennas. What's an antenna, any
extension cord, Unplug anything you want to save. A television,

(01:14:01):
let's say, or a computer's monitor may not be killed
by a coronal mass ejiction if it doesn't have a
power cord going into it. So you want to unplug
the power from the back of whatever device, and unplug
everything from the wall, and throw all your power cords
in one place, keep them away from you because they're

(01:14:22):
still going to act as antennas. And we don't have
enough knowledge right now to know what type of power
could emanate from extension cords. If you're sitting on top
of one, even if it's not plugged in, get them
away from you, throw them in the garage if you
have one. There are quite a few things that one

(01:14:43):
could do. But you have to consider what would happen
in a long hurricane scenario. And this is going to
be Katrina times ten or one hundred, but we don't
know yet. If we're fortunate, we'll see some thing happening
on another planet like all of our Venus orbiters getting

(01:15:04):
wiped out or all of our Mars observers getting toasted.
We can watch what happens there and the world can
then start spending some of the military dollars on enhrdening
things that we kind of need, like power and water
and back up and communication, things like that, you know,

(01:15:26):
minor details of modern life. It's really interesting to see
that something like this could happen. But you don't have
to sit there powerless. There are some things that you
could do, and it might just be something horribly inconvenient.
It's not necessarily the end of the world, depending on

(01:15:47):
where you live, how you live, and what preparation you make.
And I plan on living through this. As Pearson and Shaw,
the great health writers fifty years ago said, you want
to long enough to die of something else. I'm planning
on that with a coronal mass ejection.

Speaker 3 (01:16:05):
Jims, why were you recommending people water down their lawns
and houses.

Speaker 2 (01:16:11):
Ah, Yes, if you live next to or within a
few miles of railroad tracks, the railroad tracks are going
to catch on fire. And you can't go out and
wash somebody else's railroad tracks. I mean they're going to
go for miles and the railroad tracks are going to

(01:16:33):
catch gigantic amounts of energy coming from the magnisphere that
have been coming from the sun. So you want to
water the lawn, water your lawn really well, and hose
down the outside of your house before it happens. So
if there's any occurrence in nearby power lines, in your

(01:16:56):
internet lines, if you like, we have elevated internet lines
or I live here, which is nice. They're fiber optics,
so they're not going to carry electricity. They do carry
data though, but any power lines that you have that
are elevated, you want to hose down things around them,
and especially the outside of your house so when something
out there bursts into flame, it won't burn your home down.

(01:17:18):
You at least have shelter.

Speaker 3 (01:17:20):
That is a very good advice. Hey, you want to
have something to come back to, especially if something like
an X forty five class flare, which is what they're
saying in this hypothetical scenario, what they're basing this all off.
That's a pretty massive.

Speaker 2 (01:17:39):
Well, it is. And this is one of those things
that Donald Rumsfeld talked about in two thousand and two.
He used something he was maligned for saying this but
this exactly a twenty first century use of some zoo.
Don't be concerned about the things you can prepare for,
look at the unknown unknowns and try to figure out

(01:18:01):
what the other guy is doing. Well, in our case,
the other guy is the Sun, and how the earth
and the structures we have on the Earth are going
to react to a Carrington like effect or an EMP
and that we can do something about it. We can
at least see, Oh, this is flammable, and there are

(01:18:22):
power lines that are right across the street from me,
and yeah, they can catch on fire. And those telephone
poles they are not concrete there, wood poles were creasode
in them. I need to water that side of the house,
and I need to water my lawn. Just doing something
low tech like that can save you a lot of
heartache later on.

Speaker 3 (01:18:42):
Yeah, James, we really appreciate you coming on the program tonight.
Get out and water your lawn. All right.

Speaker 2 (01:18:49):
It's been a pleasure talking to you and your audience. Jeremy,
It's always great to speak to this audience, and I
look forward to your telephone calls and emails, and I
appreciate you're keeping me up the speed on what you're doing.

Speaker 3 (01:19:02):
Thanks absolutely always get to talk with you as well.
Like I said, the first person to ever tell me
about the Carrington event, when I saw that they had
done an analysis on this and said, basically, in today's time,
the effects would be a whole lot worse. I knew
we had to get to James a call, and that

(01:19:23):
we did, and he answered as always. And the cool
thing about James is he has nothing to sell. He
does it out of the goodness of his heart. And
so not only did we have that M class flare,
of course, but as I mentioned, we had those two
X class flares that came less than twelve hours apart.

(01:19:43):
The result of this is a coronal mass ejection and
potential northern lights and geomagnetic storms arriving across much of
the United States in the hours and the days to come.
There are some impacts of that, of course, that are

(01:20:04):
to be felt as well. If you're feeling a little off,
that could have something to do with it. From the
cold dark depths of a secret dungeon somewhere deep in
the remote Pacific Northwest, friends, until we talk to you
next time, somewhere between the pair of normal and the abnormal,
I'm Jeremy Scott. Find this show free on all of

(01:20:24):
the podcast apps. Search into the Pairabnormal Good Nights and
God Bless a Pa.