Companies that have invested in all kinds of new technology are trying their hardest to foist it on the rest of us, promising improved processes and savings galore.
In reality, things don’t always work out as well as we would like.
These farmers, for instance, did not expect their tractors to behave like absolute demons when affected by signals from a solar storm.
We’re currently experiencing an extremely active portion of our sun’s 11-year cycle, which means it’s tossing out charged streams of plasma and particles toward Earth.
NASA says it will continue for all of 2025 and into 2026 before it begins to ebb back into a calmer phase.
These storms not only produce auroras in the night sky, but they can cause problems for high-tech equipment as well.
Modern tractors, for example, are dependent on GPS provided by sensitive satellites in our planet’s orbit. One storm in May of 2024 affected their tractors right in the middle of a hectic planting season.
Aurora chaser Elaine Ramstead said people were calling her to complain all the time.
“Our tractors acted like they were demon possessed. All my cousins called me during the May 10th storm to tell me that ‘my auroras’ were driving them crazy while they were planting.”
The tractors rely on GPS to navigate fields for planting, so the charged particles distorting radio signals from the satellites disturbed their communication. The tractors started to act erratically, stopping in the middle of a row or weaving back and forth like they’d had some spiked motor oil.
And John Deere service manager Ethan Smidt confirms this affected a whole lot of people.
“I would guess 80 percent or more of all farmers in the Midwest use at least basic GPS for something – whether it’s auto-steer or yield mapping, at least 50% of all farmers are VERY reliant on GPS and use it on every machine all year long.”
Some solar storms are so massive that the charged particles fill our planet’s ionosphere, which creates a protective barrier between us and the electrically-charged particles from the Sun.
The ionosphere is also responsible for transmitting GPS signals from satellites down to the surface, so the changing density caused by the massive amount of charged particles resulted in distorted radio signals on our end.
Ramstead confirmed that her measurements were off all day.
“My GPS was off by close to a foot all day, and by nightfall, there was no controlling the Autosteer.”
Since these storms are set to continue and even increase in size and violence, engineers are looking for ways to reduce farmers’ reliance on GS signals.
Instead, they’re going to try to sell them machine learning and AI for navigation instead.
Let’s hope the demonic tractors don’t grow a brain of their own, too.
That sounds like the plot of a movie – a scary one.
If you thought that was interesting, you might like to read about a quantum computer simulation that has “reversed time” and physics may never be the same.