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comment by user-inactivated
user-inactivated  ·  2209 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: The Worsening Cosmic Ray Situation

    It's not just the usual 11-year cycle.

One thing that you have to understand reading an article like this is that we have been measuring cosmic ray impacts on the earth's atmosphere for fewer than 50 years. In the general scheme of things, that is nothing. If the sun has a 200 year cycle of magnetic pulses, we have not seen but a quarter of the cycle.

There has been an uptick of "OMG MAGNETIC FIELD DOOOOOM FLIPS!!!" lately. Since there was not a mass extinction, or even any long term damage to the planet from the last flip, we as biological critters are going to probably be fine. Our tech is going to have a rough time, but tech exists because smart people solved problems and came up with solutions to expected difficulties. Since these problems are solvable, I'm not worried about them per se. We are talking more hardening of orbital satellites and resources, requiring more launches (Thank you SpaceX) and heavier manned capsules and living quarters to compensate for the changing radiation environment.