No Big Deal

These events occur every 11 years. The industrialized world has had electric grids for many, many of these periods and there are only a handful of instances where large numbers of households found themselves without power. The electric generation and distribution industry has been improving from it's beginning it's ability to cope with this peak in the sunspot cycle. These events are so relatively insignificant that the vast majority of the population has lived through them every 11 years without ever noticing anything more significant than occasional strange radio and TV reception. Our radios don't burn up, nor do all those AM, FM, short wave, and TV receivers. My computer didn't burn to a crisp or even notice the last event 11 years ago.

What IS different this time around is the extent to which satellites touch our lives. There are a vast number of services we now take for granted that depend on these satellites, like cable TV, pagers, cell phones, and the Internet. Eleven years ago we either didn't have these services or they were mostly provided by wire lines. There is a great danger to satellites from this event; but designers of satellites for the last 10 years have known about the sunspot cycle and have designed in what they believe is necessary to protect the satellites. Sure, there may be some outages and disruptions from time to time; but unless this coming cycle peak is 3 or 4 times stronger than the last two, it isn't that big a deal.

Offered by Ron.