[HN Gopher] Digitized Continuous Magnetic Recordings for the 185...
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       Digitized Continuous Magnetic Recordings for the 1859 Carrington
       Event
        
       Author : simonebrunozzi
       Score  : 50 points
       Date   : 2024-04-23 19:50 UTC (3 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com)
        
       | TheAmazingRace wrote:
       | I'm amazed that the scientific community of the time happened to
       | have some kind of equipment to measure this phenomenon... all
       | right before the time of the American Civil War.
        
         | pvg wrote:
         | _happened to have some kind of equipment_
         | 
         | Maxwell's _A Dynamical Theory of the Electromagnetic Field_ was
         | published in 1865 - it 's mostly your perception of the history
         | of the relevant science that might be a few decades off.
        
           | iyn wrote:
           | Why so snarky? The paper you refer to was published _after_
           | the event. I 'm also amazed that it was possible to record
           | such event at that time.
        
             | pvg wrote:
             | I'm not sure where you got snarky, I'm just giving a little
             | info on the state of scientific development of that
             | particular field at the time. You need plenty of previous
             | work to get to a theory of electromagnetism, as Maxwell
             | did. If you prefer something a little earlier and more
             | experimental Faraday published his seminal result in 1831.
             | It took him about 10 years of fiddling with wires and
             | magnets.
             | 
             |  _I 'm also amazed_
             | 
             | Which is wonderful! So were 19th century scientists,
             | though, and they also figured it out.
        
       | xattt wrote:
       | Given the topic, is it possible for a solar flare to happen that
       | is so large that aurora reach sea level? Or does it turn to
       | Cherenkov light at that point?
        
       | londons_explore wrote:
       | A big open question appears to be "how often do storms of this
       | magnitude occur"
       | 
       | If we wanted answers to that, I think we could inspect chunks of
       | iron containing mudstone deposited anytime in the past few
       | million years. By looking at the magnetic alignment of iron
       | particulates, you will learn the magnetic field when the particle
       | was laid down. With particles being so small, it seems likely one
       | could reconstruct 5 minutely magnetic field angle, albeit with a
       | big linearity error on the time axis due to the uncertainty in
       | rate of silt deposits.
       | 
       | However, such a measurement should still give a good estimate of
       | the frequency and magnitude of geomagnetic storms.
        
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       (page generated 2024-04-23 23:00 UTC)