On Jan 22, 5:25*am, dave wrote:
wrote:
The first ''Radios'' were Telephones.(Telephone, Telegraph, and
TellaWoman)

As long as there are People on Earth, and when Earthlings start setting
up Housekeeping on other Planets, * (http://www.devilfinder.com
Hijacking the Red Planet) *there will always be a need and also a use
for Telephones and also for Shortwave Radio.

http://www.krud.com

ET, Phone Home!
cuhulin

What transpired during the dog days of summer 1859, across the 150
million-kilometer (about 93 million-mile) chasm of interplanetary space
that separates the Sun and Earth, was this: on August 28, solar
observers noted the development of numerous sunspots on the Sun's
surface. Sunspots are localized regions of extremely intense magnetic
fields. These magnetic fields intertwine, and the resulting magnetic
energy can generate a sudden, violent release of energy called a solar
flare. From August 28 to September 2 several solar flares were observed.
Then, on September 1, the Sun released a mammoth solar flare. For almost
an entire minute the amount of sunlight the Sun produced at the region
of the flare actually doubled.

"With the flare came this explosive release of a massive cloud of
magnetically charged plasma called a coronal mass ejection," said
Tsurutani. "Not all coronal mass ejections head toward Earth. Those that
do usually take three to four days to get here. This one took all of 17
hours and 40 minutes," he noted.

see captionNot only was this coronal mass ejection an extremely fast
mover, the magnetic fields contained within it were extremely intense
and in direct opposition with Earth's magnetic fields. That meant the
coronal mass ejection of September 1, 1859, overwhelmed Earth's own
magnetic field, allowing charged particles to penetrate into Earth's
upper atmosphere. The endgame to such a stellar event is one heck of a
light show and more -- including potential disruptions of electrical
grids and communications systems.

Back in 1859 the invention of the telegraph was only 15 years old and
society's electrical framework was truly in its infancy. A 1994 solar
storm caused major malfunctions to two communications satellites,
disrupting newspaper, network television and nationwide radio service
throughout Canada. Other storms have affected systems ranging from cell
phone service and TV signals to GPS systems and electrical power grids.
In March 1989, a solar storm much less intense than the perfect space
storm of 1859 caused the Hydro-Quebec (Canada) power grid to go down for
over nine hours, and the resulting damages and loss in revenue were
estimated to be in the hundreds of millions of dollars.

"The question I get asked most often is, 'Could a perfect space storm
happen again, and when?'" added Tsurutani. "I tell people it could, and
it could very well be even more intense than what transpired in 1859. As
for when, we simply do not know," he said.

http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2...superstorm.htm

Dave, not sure what your point is - a temporary and relatively rare
disruption does not obviate an otherwise useful technology.

I don't doubt his claims, and this is not a challenge, but I am
curious as to how the scientist relating this tale of 19th century woe
has determined the specifics so well that he can "predict" the solar
mass ejection travelling through space at half the speed of light.
That is crazy FAST for anything heavier than a photon. It must have
been ridiculously energetic to achieve that velocity. How could we
determine this 150 years after the fact, and with no reliable
recording equipment at the time? Was it based purely on observations
of the flare and timing of the disruption, whatever form that took?
Was the telegraphy disrupted? Did keys everywhere begin to chatter
chaotically? And if so, was it certain that it was the particular
observed flare that resulted in the CME, or could it have been a
slighlty earlier flare?

Bruce Jensen