eli5 If solar flares basically EMP electrical infrastructure, why can’t we turn it off before it hits?

1.04K viewsOtherPlanetary Science

Like how you can fry your electronics if they’re plugged in when the power comes back on from an outage, why can’t we “unplug” everything so to speak?

In: Planetary Science

22 Answers

Anonymous 0 Comments

I’m not seeing this mentioned in the first few comments. The electromagnetic radiation that damages electronics gets here at exactly the same time as any flash of light or radiation that we could detect as a warning. You would not see a flash of light and “oh no, the EMP” run to turn off your computer before the EMP reached you. The flash of light is the EMP. Your computer’s already dead. You’re too late. The visible solar flare is gas and matter that moves slowly and lasts longer. By the time some scientist sees that flare in a telescope, the EMP has already been here and done its damage.

You are viewing 1 out of 22 answers, click here to view all answers.