The air in Reggie Waite’s office felt oddly stuffy. One look at the panel of the life-support systems monitor told him that everything was nominal: temperature, pressure, partial pressures of oxygen, nitrogen and carbon dioxide. Even humidity was well within normal range.
Which meant that it was psychological. Probably because he was trying to sort through the data Dr. Doorne had sent him, and even with all her annotations, he was still finding it heavy going.
She’d had one of her junior TA’s run it up here, mostly because she was helping supervise the effort to relocate or harden the electronics in the upper levels — when she wasn’t helping put together procedures for all the various outlying settlements and research outposts that were associated with Shepardsport but had their own command.
Quite honestly, he couldn’t blame her. Solar astronomy was not her specialty, and her choice of data reflected her much stronger background in deep-space objects, and the use of statistical techniques to study massive amounts of radio data from them. It made more sense for her to concentrate on her EE skills, which could help with the more immediate issues of protecting their equipment from overloads and damage if they did get hit with a major solar storm. Even shutting down might not necessarily protect equipment from an X-level CME, especially if it were to induce system-generated EMP in the wiring. During the Carrington Event of 1859, disconnected telegraph lines had still transmitted messages as a result of such induction.
The data Dr. Doorne had sent was not for the Sun. Instead, she had selected a wide variety of G-class stars of comparable age to the Sun, all going through similar activity levels to a solar minimum. She’d highlighted certain patterns in the data, particularly related to frequency of flares and magnetic storms associated with what few starspots those stars were having.
Which looks very much like we’re going to be in for a wild ride for the next month or two. Right while Earth is still in disarray from the ongoing diablovirus pandemic and effectively unable to help us if we lose anything vital.