Out in space, coast to coast

[sovay]

Leaving the jewelry store this afternoon with a couple of options for repairing the clasp on my necklace which has finally broken down beyond my abilities with needle-nose pliers, I got back into the car just in time to catch an interview with a geophysicist that not only tipped me off to the 1859 Carrington Event which sounds like the science fiction of its day with its spark-throwing wireless sets and tropically lapped auroras and telegraphers communicating through atmospheric influence alone, it introduced me to the Pangaean block of the Piedmont Resistor which seems to lie beneath most of the Eastern Seaboard, just one more piece of deep—two hundred million years down to the mantle—strangeness underfoot. I may never have heard of the United States Magnetotelluric Array and I understand its utility to the fragile electrical grids we have made to stand between the crochets of solar flares and the conductivity of the earth, but in a country that preserved any care for knowledge its map of melted, sutured, fractured time would be its own payoff. I love how much is banked and shifting beneath the surfaces we interact with, from earth and sea to the structures of the universe. I have missed so many meteor showers this year.

Comments

[thisbluespirit]

The Carrington event sounds fascinating - definitely like S&S assignment material, or similar. <3

[sovay]

The Carrington event sounds fascinating - definitely like S&S assignment material, or similar.

Yes! The sun itself in the telegraph lines: something too old in something too new.

[moon_custafer]

Portland [having confirmed that at the moment their equipment works more smoothly if they disconnect the batteries and use the aurora current instead]: "Very well. Shall I go ahead with business?"

Boston: "Yes. Go ahead."

Classic telegraph-operator behaviour, that.

[asakiyume]

What marvelous links. I love the maps in the article on the magnetotelluric [great word] array. I haven't read the one on the Piedmont Resistor, but right now I'm imagining a giant subterranean resistor, and loving it.

And communicating through atmospheric influence only. OMG OMG

Boston: "Mine is disconnected, and we are working with the auroral current. How do you receive my writing?"

Portland: "Better than with our batteries on. – Current comes and goes gradually."

Boston: "My current is very strong at times, and we can work better without the batteries

This is so, so wonderful! Imagine!

[asakiyume]

Just so .... so ... ! WOW !

[asakiyume]

The sun itself in the telegraph lines: something too old in something too new. HEART VERY FULL.

[redbird]

Thank you!

I knew about the Carrington Event, but not about the Megnetotelluric Array or the Piedmont Resistor.