I hope everyone’s having a terrific holiday weekend, cookouts, hanging out by the pool, and so forth.

I stumbled across a bit of news last night that recent sunspot activity has created conditions where the Northern Lights may be visible further South than usual tonight.  That’s a fairly fashionable prediction of late, which I suppose shouldn’t be too surprising since we’ve only recently passed the peak of the sunspot cycle. (space weather forecast)

September 1st going into the 2nd also marks the 166th anniversary of the Carrington Event; that was an event in 1859 when a pair of solar flares sent a coronal mass from the Sun to the Earth in just 17 hours (this usually takes 3-4 days).  The resulting geomagnetic storm was so powerful that it caused parts of the telegraph system to catch fire.

I don’t recall the Mad Max films having a canon explanation for what caused their version of the apocalypse, but a high tech civilization would tend to be sensitive to magnetic storms….

Time for one last dip in the pool before it closes.

(Cover image is a solar flare, captured on May 8 2024 by NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory.)