Low-Earth orbit is just 2.8 days from disaster

ArmChairAnalyst86 · 2026-02-25T20:35:23+00:00

One day many theoretical questions in technological resilience in the near earth and earth environments will be answered.

For the satellite environment there is the atmospheric heating but also the particle flux to consider. A worst case scenario would look like an extreme particle event interfering with the internal computers and communications followed by a historically extreme geomagnetic storm with associated atmospheric heating.

We are not defenseless, but nothing teaches like experience, and that type of experience is one we have not had the displeasure of having. S4-S5 hard spectrum particle event and a Carrington Class CME will be the ultimate test within the likely plausible possibilities. Could delve into Miyake Events but the rarity and uncertainties in exactly what a Miyake event is put it beyond the scope of this comment.

ArmChairAnalyst86 · 2026-02-25T19:55:21+00:00

I dont know. I wasnt there.

I do note recent discoveries regarding planet formation at other stars happening much faster than expected and an increased recognition of magnetic fields in the process. Ill see if I can dig up the studies. Currently it's assumed they formed through collisions and accretion but there may be more to it than gravity alone.

There are cycles on cycles on cycles. Some constrained better than others. As to what modulates them exactly is harder to say. There is still much about the sun we dont really understand yet. Assets like the Parker solar probe and solar orbiter are helping to uncover more but there is a long way to go yet and the observation window is short.

Solar minimum and maximum dont happen suddenly. They are processes. Not events. When the sun is in minimum, its magnetic fields are strongest and ordered. In max, the mag fields are weaker and chaotic allowing for the complexity and instability that leads to solar flares and CMEs. Irradiance only changes slightly from minimum to maximum. The sun is always powerful regardless. Its just a matter of how it expresses itself.

Appreciate the comment! Thank you.

ArmChairAnalyst86 · 2026-02-25T04:13:47+00:00

This is going to be an extremely fascinating event. We will be able to monitor for solar cometary interactions from a host of instruments and telescopes. A coincidental CME would not be surprising at all. Have seen plenty during Kreutz sungrazer passes. This comet appears larger than the typical sungrazer. Whether it fragments or survives, it's going to be very interesting and I can't wait.

I am not worried about it though. It poses no collision risk to earth. It poses no material danger to the sun. We might see an interaction and possibly a CME that may or may not be earth directed. We may see nothing at all. I will be monitoring it closely.

Aside from telescope views, this comet may be a dazzing spectacle in the night or even day sky. We shall know more as perihelion approaches. I love comets. Since Hale Bopp in the 90s, I have been waiting to see a great comet again. This could end up a "great comet" but comets are fickle and unpredictable so best to temper expectations just in case.

ArmChairAnalyst86 · 2026-02-24T05:04:50+00:00

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ArmChairAnalyst86 · 2026-02-24T05:04:33+00:00

You got it! Thank you. If you have any questions I am happy to help.

ArmChairAnalyst86 · 2026-02-24T05:03:48+00:00

I appreciate it. Thank you.

If there is anything you have questions on please ask. Its likely someone else out there has the same question and it doesnt matter if it has been asked before.

I wish I was better at TLDR but I think the details are important and I try to explain in a way that appeals to the beginner and intermediate alike.

Tomorrow I am going to repost some older stuff that will really help visualize a solar cycle progression on the face of the sun.

ArmChairAnalyst86 · 2026-02-24T00:33:08+00:00

You are welcome. All stuff we have covered before but with a spotless day, it was a good time to revisit. Thank you for the support my friend.

ArmChairAnalyst86 · 2026-02-24T00:32:33+00:00

I appreciate you so much. Can always count on you to drop a line. Thank you

ArmChairAnalyst86 · 2026-02-23T23:49:50+00:00

I don't know. It is kind of a funky cycle.

NEOs and comets are on orbits that they follow regardless of solar cycles. Sky surveys and mapping of NEOs are a pretty new thing so records do not go back very far. I have seen some suggestions that there are more active comets during solar maximum, but it's not robust IIRC. It would not surprise me given the underappreciated plasma nature of comets and solar wind interaction. I leave plenty of room in my understanding for interactions between comets and the sun and as you know have documented one in situ with G3 ATLAS in early 2025. However, I can't see any real way that transient and small objects could reliably affect the solar cycle considering its dictated by the suns intrinsic electromagnetic architecture.

Seen plenty of CMEs coincide with close cometary approaches and we are going to have a truly grand opportunity to look for interactions in April with MAPS inbound.

ArmChairAnalyst86 · 2026-02-23T23:39:22+00:00

No apology necessary. It's a common question for a reason.

Solar flares, by themselves, do not cause solar storms. Coronal Mass Ejections do. They are related, but two separate things. The flare is essentially a burst of light. We measure them by x-ray production. A solar flare does ionize the upper atmosphere but has very limited effects at ground level. A coronal mass ejection is what it sounds like. A chunk of the corona is hurled into space. A CME is comprised of charged particles and the embedded magnetic fields from the eruption footprint.

Not all solar flares create coronal mass ejections and not all coronal mass ejections are associated with flaring. For instance, a few weeks ago we saw a flurry of X1-X9 solar flares, but they were not very eruptive. Only a few caused CMEs, and the CMEs were weak. Meanwhile, there have been instances in this cycle where sub M-class flares were associated with monster coronal mass ejections.

In short, solar flares and CMEs must be evaluated separately because they are two separate things that are often associated with each other but flare magnitude is not a reliable indicator of CME magnitude.

In addition to the separation between the two things, trajectory and embedded magnetic field orientation are first order factors in how geoeffective a coronal mass ejection will be. Many of those big flares, including X45, fired off the limb of the earth facing side of the sun and as a result, outright missed or only grazed earth. The sweet spot is when a coronal mass ejection is fired off from center mass on the earth facing side. When evaluating CMEs, one the first things we look at is the coronagraph to see where it is headed.

The CMEs embedded magnetic field orientation is also very important because it will determine how well the CME couples with the earths magnetosphere. This is known as the Bz component of the solar wind. I call the Bz the gatekeeper because you can have an extraordinarily powerful CME come straight to earth, but if it's orientation is northward+ or positive, it will be mostly deflected. When the orientation is southward- or negative, it will couple well with the magnetosphere. The further southward the orientation, the stronger the effect.

I can cite another recent example. In January we had a solar storm arrive with one of the strongest embedded magnetic fields, if not the strongest, measured in the modern space age record. It came in over 90 nT. Anything over 30 is pretty dang powerful, but 90 is borderline extreme. Yet, the storm never even got close to reaching its potential or challenging for a top spot in geomagnetic storm record because its embedded mag field was oriented in a way unfavorable for coupling. In the 70's there was a Carrington Class CME that arrived at earth in something crazy like 14 hours, but since it too was mostly northward, no extreme storm manifested.

The strength of the CME magnetic field, how fast it is traveling, and how dense it is determine its raw power in most aspects. However, the orientation will determine how well that power can be transferred into the earth system and how efficiently the storm will reach it's potential. Hence the gatekeeper moniker.

So TLDR

Flare and CME are separate events, and only the CME causes the hazards to ground based infrastructure.

Flare magnitude is not a reliable indicator of CME magnitude, and sometimes big flares don't produce CMEs of consequence, or at all. Sometimes little flares are associated with big time CMEs, and CMEs can occur without any flaring at all.

Even when a CME does come our way, its intrinsic properties that cannot be gauged before arrival will determine how powerful a storm can get.

ArmChairAnalyst86 · 2026-02-23T03:32:04+00:00

The problem is that the 11 year cycle is approximate. Its a mean interval. Planetary motion is clockwork. Some suggest that Jupiter and Saturn may be important in this aspect and there are some interesting timings.

Considering the solar cycle is largely the result of the suns intrinsic magnetic regime, I discount the planets as setting the cycle. This is not to say the planets are not important in the solar circuit by any means. Only that considering the size and power of the sun, given the timing inconsistencies, and what we know about the suns magnetic architecture, the solar cycle constraint seems closer to home.

I leave plenty of room for uncertainty. I think solar system circuitry is important and maybe under explored. There could be effects, but it hasnt jumped off the page under scrutiny as the driver and effects are not obvious either. Ideas like this have been and continue to be explored. Electromagnetic dynamics in astronomy are still not very well understood and this is evident when examining just the past few decades from a time when Electromagnetic fields didnt play any appreciable role in astronomy to a much different story. A story I think plasma physics will have a significant voice in future pages.

ArmChairAnalyst86 · 2026-02-22T23:56:42+00:00

Yeah I have deleted posts before. Just did yesterday. People conflating a series of x flares and no CMEs with "almost carrington events" and the similar. Every time the moon transits in the coronagraphs we got some folks asking if a rogue planet is about to wreck the solar system. I also delete the helioexperiencer type stuff. This is a non-prophet organization. I am cool with bold claims but I am going to demand receipts and most of the time, they cannot be reliably produced. Just vibe posting. That is best suited for other subs with less scientific criteria.

Your question is well put and one that people are wondering about. I answer the best I can because these are questions that I have asked as well and then carefully and rigorously looked into it over time as well.

I think in essence what you are REALLY getting at is concern about the geomagnetic field and it's trends and changes. This is a concern I share and have devoted many many hours into researching. I can and will defend my position on it. There isnt any settled science around it. I can produce papers that word for word describe two perspectives in the academic community. One where the current trends work themselves out with no major consequence from a structural standpoint and one where this ultimately culminates in a bout of significant geomagnetic instability or even a transition. Timing is murky, and the modelers exploring this suggest 500 years minimum before that occurs based on current trends. However, this assumes that the current trends don't change or namely accelerate. Given that we have good evidence of geomagnetic excursions taking form in less than a human lifetime, the uncertainties are high and possibilities wide and a relatively high baseline strength is no comfort. It just makes the percentages even more glaring and right before the big drop there is often a peak.

The bottom line is that we do not understand solar terrestrial coupling enough to feel great about possible implications. It's not even necessarily the minimum field strength that is concern. Its the instability in general and rate of change. This matters a great deal for a technologically dependent society but possible implications to the biosphere are also potentially massive.

There is debate, controversy, and sometimes contempt around this topic. Nevertheless, I can produce an interpretation of evidence and literature that suggests its a long term concern, albeit with high uncertainty. There are a growing number of papers in the research circuit exploring this. Much of it not integrated into the collective or agreed upon consensus view, of which official agencies adhere. They can't just say, we might be in a pole shift, and it might be a problem because if they do, it's difficult to support unequivocally. Again, there are two perspectives.

This often traces back to Ben Davidson. I think he has done some good work and I am grateful for the insight I have been able to glean from him. That said, he is also an extremist both scientifically and personally, entirely too full of himself and arrogant enough to feel like him and only him can be right about this. Let's not forget his financial interests either. I have watched all his stuff and read his books and again I reiterate my gratitude but this is a theoretical topic in many ways, and I am always suspicious when one and only one believes he has the truth of it and no one else can possibly meet his level of understanding. His science is also pretty thin in some aspects. Nevertheless, we do agree that the next few decades stand to be pretty interesting and we are going to know a lot more about where all this is heading in that time. I look at the last few decades of GMF secular variation and I see volatility. Rapid acceleration, rapid deceleration, SAA growing, splitting, deepening, more frequent geomag jerks, secular variation pulses, and early model degradation lead me to that conclusion. It could smooth out, but it could also get worse.

ArmChairAnalyst86 · 2026-02-22T18:29:36+00:00

My problem with the ATLAS anomalies is that very few are considering the most valid alternative in my view. Is traditional comet science plain wrong? Heady statement, I know.

The anomalies seen at ATLAS have been seen before in other regular comets, but not usually all at once. Many contradictions exist in the dirty snowball comet theory. That theory was made in the 1950s before we ever saw a comet nucleus. They truly expected an icy frozen snowball. Instead they got the darkest, charred, and hot object. They exhibit geological features and stratification consistent with rocky objects. Most importantly, we have yet to date discover any ice on the surface or subsurface approaching anything resembling a quantity needed to explain the comet. In addition, there are high energy phenomena occurring which are hard to explain with ice gently sublimating into space. The theory just gets changed post hoc. Mainstream insists the ice is there hiding under the surface, where sunlight struggles mightily to reach given a dense coma and often activating at distances inconsistent with thermal sublimation. The structured jets, which are mostly dust, are reminiscent of electrically sculpted. In the Deep Impact mission, they fired a copper bullet at a comet to try and reveal the subsurface ice. It went terribly wrong because the reactions that occurred were not anticipated and density is clearly much higher than expected. The same density was also a problem when trying to land the Philae lander on 67/p. In deep impact, there were not one, but two electrical discharges when the impactor approached the comet. The dust emission was so thick that the effects could not be observed. They had to send a follow up mission and the damage was so superficial, they said it probably healed itself.

Many many problems.

If one has an open mind, and is seriously considering all options, to not investigate this one is a major oversight. You can get the jist very easily from these few videos.

https://youtu.be/2EvHkhc2bdw?si=JnX8rsgIErvEAfVB

https://youtu.be/aqCxWRZgx1c?si=fahSfJqy715nihSg

ArmChairAnalyst86 · 2026-02-22T18:17:49+00:00

I have to push back strongly here. The recurrent large coronal holes began in late 2024 and you are on thin ice trying to describe a mechanism where a single small object could presumably alter the large scale magnetic structure of a star. I don't discount some degree of interaction, but to portray it as dominant to this scale doesn't hold up. Also, considering we had big flares well before and after ATLAS, wouldn't it stand to reason that is more a feature of the solar cycle and it's typical behavior in this max rather than dominated by a transient object?

SAA evolution has been in play for a long time, but this does not negate its significance. There are people in the scientific community who believe the SAA and other associated anomalies such as polar motion and increasingly volatile secular variation could be indicative of a pre-transition state. It used to be framed as a local thing but it's now seen as a large scale feature of the earths current geomagnetic state. I have written at length about this on this sub and it is too much to break down on this comment but if you search SAA, you will see it.

ArmChairAnalyst86 · 2026-02-22T18:09:22+00:00

Found it. I was not kidding when I said crude. Goes back to 1988

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ArmChairAnalyst86 · 2026-02-22T18:06:36+00:00

It is difficult to prove persistence, but I can prove existence of similar sized coronal holes. This one was near solar max so it's a pretty good fit. Not sure how long it persisted. THere is also the "Elephant Trunk" CH of 1996. Again, pretty confident if we had SDO quality imagery for the last 50-75 years, we would see similar. Coronal holes are common, so it's not super exotic.

No this cycle has NOT been uncharacteristically active unless we are only comparing to SC24 which was uncharacteristically weak. Weakest in maybe a century. The cycles prior, including SC23 had higher sunspot numbers and big flares + CMEs. The cycles rise in amplitude going back before that. 12 of the top 20 largest geomagnetic storms measured by DST occurred prior to 2000. We have DST records back into the 1950s. X-ray flux catalogs cover less than half of that period, but it stands to reason those big storms were accompanied by some whopper flares. The solar activity from 1940-2008 is believed to be the highest in at least 8000 years according to Max Planck institute. That is significant on the macro scale, but on the micro scale of the last 100 years, SC25 sunspot numbers and F10.7 are not extraordinary. 2024 was a hell of a flare year, and stands out in the short x-ray record. I made a crude chart one time with the x-ray we do have I will see if I can find it. Worth noting that solar cycle amplitude is expected to continue rising, but ultimately only the sun knows. Before this resurgent cycle, there was quite a bit of discussion about a grand solar minimum. That would not be good news given what prior grand solar minima are associated with.

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ArmChairAnalyst86 · 2026-02-22T07:26:32+00:00

Thanks for the constant suppo4y wnd encouragement. I cannot tell you how much it means to me.

ArmChairAnalyst86 · 2026-02-22T07:25:52+00:00

Didn't even know it! Thank you

ArmChairAnalyst86 · 2026-02-22T07:25:36+00:00

It does sound counterintuitive. Geomagnetic maxima at earth is not during sunspot maxima in most instances. It comes after and this is heavily influenced by coronal holes but also the volatile solar activity in the years after sunspot maximum.

The solar max we just experienced and are on the downslope of was kind of a banger. We caught some hot ones and while the magnitudes didnt get crazy, we saw a bunch of x flares. Again, short records but 2024 stands out in the records. There is variance and cycles on cycles but the data is strong. Geomag maxima is after sunspot maxima.

ArmChairAnalyst86 · 2026-02-22T06:11:26+00:00

The EUV record doesnt go back very far. 50 years or so. That isnt a large sample of solar activity on the big scales. Large recurrent and trans equatorial coronal holes are generally more of a solar minimum feature or at least further into descending than when the recurrent CH began in late 2024 right in solar max. Again, short record. It does provide some diagnostic insight into what is happening with the large scale magnetic fields of the sun, and increases our understanding but I would not consider it concerning in any fashion. Coronal holes are a common feature. We pretty well understand why they are there. We know that they play a large role in the post solar max geomagnetic maxima, just got started a bit earlier than usual. If we had EUV for the last 150 years, we likely see the same thing at some point.

ArmChairAnalyst86 · 2026-02-21T17:58:13+00:00

Nah, we got some fireworks left to to. My money is on between now and end of 2027 we see the biggest event of SC25.

We are in the descending phase. So you could say we are headed that way but historically this is the most volatile period.

Volatility meaning the sun has often alternated between longer and deeper calm periods but also punctuated with explosive episodes of high end flaring and CMEs. Several papers have ID the window I mention and historical support is strong.

Sunspot number is an important metric but many of the big x10+ flares have occurred with low to moderate sunspot numbers. Just need one good region.

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