March 6, 2006 4:58 AM PST

Next decade of solar storms could be much stronger

Astronomers warn that next 11 years of sunspots may cause mayhem with power, communications.

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Scary!
So, all those foreign call centres go off the air, as the COM satellites are either switched off to safe mode for days at a time, or the sensitive electronics are literally fried by the ultra high energy ion streams or the secondary electron excitement radiation from it's metallic structure!(sat com's have a very limited bandwidth, and routinely loads are shunted to balance the system)

Think of the worlds communications compressed to one quarter by using the old telegraphic and undersea coaxial communications net,and the restricted buried networks as the ion storms severely disrupt all radio communiction networks from HF to Microwaves, as the high energy particles streams totally disrupt the Ionosphere and it's Heavyside layers!

The internet will be ruduce to localised networks only, mind you the the aurora's will be visible in the lower latitudes quite literally

Scary, since the world's major coreporations are now thoroughly dependent on all current communication networks being fully functional all the time, with the breakdown of one link causing a massive chain reaction overload, with each succeeding link! Man the financial markets would go into a death spasm of epic proportions making wall street '29 look like a picnic!
Posted by heystoopid (691 comments )
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doubt it
The internet was created to withstand nuclear war I doubt very much if a few solar storms will reduce it to local networks, there are always ways around using affected satellites, the most that will happen is a little bit of reduction in speed. And 3/4 of the world wont be affected all at once so no communications will be compressed that much.
Posted by enakiusonayr (2 comments )
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