New ESA simulations suggest that a solar storm on par with the 1859 Carrington Event could wreak havoc on Earth-orbiting satellites — and it is a question of "when," not "if" this will happen, experts say.
  • Maeve@kbin.earth
    4·
    5 days ago

    While it would be painful, honestly, good. We are too dependent on devices tied to questionable cloud services. A Carrington Event would be a timely reminder.

  • PowerCrazy@lemmy.mlEnglish
    2·
    5 days ago

    So what? Most internet users today do not rely on satellites. All the services that use satellites can be replaced in a few years at most. It’s just an opportunity for ESA, Starlink, and other governments to launch new ones. In the interrim, Weather forecasting suffers a bit, so instead of having 10days of notice, we would have 3. Bad but not catastrophic. Shipping may suffer additional yearly losses, resulting in more expensive costs, but shipping for 90% of goods shouldn’t happen anyway.

    I’m struggling to thing of how the destruction of all existing satellites would actually affect me. The closet would be GPS, but even that could be re-implemented with terrestrial cell-phone towers.