U.S. and U.K. Controlled Blackout .

[Turk]

For all of us that have tin foil hats
Controlled blackouts from solar activity.

http://www.naturalnews.com/032711_solar_storms_power_supply.html

[Kali-Jax]

This might be a stupid question.

When and where did one of these solar activities happen. And what electrical did it destroy?

Links?

[jmlivingston]

1989 in Canada, took out the grid for the whole Quebec province.

http://www.ips.gov.au/Educational/1/3/12

[OHOD]

Nothing to worry about.

http://solarscience.msfc.nasa.gov/predict.shtml

[xgi1991]

This might be a stupid question.

When and where did one of these solar activities happen. And what electrical did it destroy?

Links?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_storm_of_1859 if this was to happen today, you would wake up to a very different world

more info here http://science1.nasa.gov/science-new...rringtonflare/

[GrizzlyGuy]

A couple of weeks ago we had the biggest eruption ever seen on the sun. Had it been pointed in our direction, it could have easily taken out the grid.

Power companies have contingency plans for this happening: they would take the grid down for hours or days (as needed) to protect it. This is a good thing, no tinfoil is needed. If they left the grid online, the large voltages induced in the lines by geomagnetic activity following the flare would cause large currents to flow through the distribution transformers, effectively frying them. Few transformer spares exist, and the manufacturing lead time for some of them is months or years. So, the choice for them is:

1) Go offline for a short period of time until the danger has passed.
2) Stay online and risk the grid going down and staying down for months.

I'm hoping that they choose option #1.

[problemchild]

Dont worry guys NObama will blame it all on Bush and start a 6th war not OK'd by congress.
Al Gore will blame it on global warming climate change.