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Space Science

The 'Perfect Space Storm' Of 1859 129

Posted by timothy from the market-disruption dept.
Polyploid Pimp writes "Bruce Tsurutani of JPL recently published a paper on the 'perfect space storm' of 1859. Apparently, this solar superstorm was so massive that it knocked out telegraphs across the Northern Hemisphere, and the aurora borealis could be seen as far south as Hawaii, Havana, and Rome. Among other interesting notes, the amount of sunlight produced in the region of this solar flare actually doubled! Although the article does not discuss in detail the effects of a solar storm of this size on our current technologies, we can all imagine (maybe something like Escape from L.A.?)"
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The 'Perfect Space Storm' Of 1859 More

The 'Perfect Space Storm' Of 1859

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  • Should be interesting (Score:5, Interesting)

    by jamesjw ( 213986 ) on Saturday October 25, 2003 @11:57AM (#7308162) Homepage

    Should be interesting to see what happens when the next large barrage of solar winds and large EM fields hit, as everyone may recall a few years ago with one storm a large number of pager satellites and base stations were disrupted, something bigger could certainly bring down large amounts of sattelite based internet infastructure and play havoc with ground based equipment (most notibly WiFi networks.)

    Should we be testing equipment now to minimise the unknown impact of such a natural event?

    -- Jim.

    • Re:Should be interesting (Score:5, Informative)

      by LiquidCoooled ( 634315 ) on Saturday October 25, 2003 @12:03PM (#7308193) Homepage Journal
      They are already planning for it, as it happens, there is a storm occuring at the moment (Classed as a Level 3 out of a scale upto 5).
      The interested parties (ie utility/communications companies) all know about this and are monitoring the situation. They also estimate Aurora to reach very far south in the next couple of weeks. The article is here [startribune.com].
      • hmmmmmm its turned all subscription on me - i found an alternative link via google though.
        If this [startribune.com] doesnt work for you, you will have to register.

    • Re:Should be interesting (Score:2, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward
      NASA and the airline industry have run extensive tests on the subject.

      At the same time, it's almost like testing for massive floods, earthquakes, fires, and other dieasters. Yeah, it'd be bad if it happens. If it happens. Fortunately these events are rare. We just deal with them when they happen.

    • Re:Should be interesting (Score:5, Insightful)

      by MikeDataLink ( 536925 ) on Saturday October 25, 2003 @12:21PM (#7308264) Homepage Journal
      (most notibly WiFi networks.)

      Really? That's odd. I would have placed a lot higher importance or "notability" on cell phone networks and emergency comminucations such as police radio, etc.

      Mike

    • Re:Should be interesting (Score:5, Informative)

      by twiddlingbits ( 707452 ) on Saturday October 25, 2003 @12:29PM (#7308290)
      I suspect there will be a few problems with some older birds and some of the newer ones too that are not well shielded. Less shield = less weight = lower cost to launch, but also shorter lifetime due to increased radiation exposure for the electronics. Some birds are just turned off until the solar event is below critical levels. SEUs (Single Event Upsets, or bit flips) due to EM levels are handled by special circuitry to minimize the loss of data. The excess energy charge on the spacecraft due to the radiation is dumped in many different ways. Purely mechanical systems are not affected by this storm. Most folks don't know but many LEO sattelites go thru a place called the South Atlantic Anomoly where the Earths own Radiation Fields are very intense and systems have to be turned off for several minutes each orbit. But it can be worse, when the earth gets hit with huge amounts of ultraviolet radiation from geomagnetic storms, the upper atmosphere heats up. This heated air rises, and the density of lower satellite orbits (about 1,000 kilometers) increases significantly. This causes drag to increase on satellites; they slow down and gravity pulls them in towards earth. Unless these satellites are boosted into higher orbits, they'll fall and eventually burn up in earth's atmosphere. Remember Skylab? It was a victim of premature entry just because of higher than expected solar activity. This effect can last for several weeks as the earths electrical field is still expanded from the flare. Systems on the ground are also well shielded, since the incident in Quebec in the 1980s where an intense solar storm knocked out the electrical grid! This is NOT to say NOTHING will happen it's just to say it won't be back to the stone ages. Now if we all lived on Mars we'd be hiding in some DEEP hole. Solar flares and how to handle them will be something that needs intense study prior to a Mars mission.
      • This causes drag to increase on satellites; they slow down and gravity pulls them in towards earth.They actually speed up. But they still fall in. Basically, the drag allows them to trade gravitational potential energy for kinetic energy.
        • Nope, grandparent is correct.

          Drag force ALWAYS slows down an object. In this case, it produces a negative acceleration in the tangential direction. Because of its lower velocity, the radius of orbit decreases, and there may be an acceration (smaller than the deceleration in the tangential direction) in the normal direction as a result until the new orbit is reached. Overall, the net speed is decreasing.

          The only reason a satellite will continue falling into the earth is because the air becomes more an
          • Not always, friction is just a means to lose energy. When the energy input for the object is purely kinetic energy, we say the object is slowing down.

            That's not the case for satelites. When satelites are falling, the energy input are BOTH kinetic and gravitational potential (radius decreases, g potential decreases, work done is positive). Since gravitational potential energy is constantly converted into kinetic energy, we're losing both kinds of energy. Whether the satelite is slowing down or not depends o
            • You're forgetting that only a fraction of an orbiting satellite's energy is in the form of gravitational potential energy- most of the energy is in the tangential direction (ie going sideways, across the sky like an airplane). A satellite is "flying" at a speed close to 30 000 km/h when it is in orbit. A huge chunk of this speed must be lost before it can gain a tiny component of speed downwards. kinetic energy in orbiting satellite: = 1/2 *mass * 9.81* ~6 500 000 metres = ~ 30 million * mass of satell

    • Besides testing for the impact, we ought to try to hang on to the resources we have to track these storms. I work in satellite ops, and one of the best resources I've got is The Space Environment Center [noaa.gov], which was referenced in the story and provides real time solar monitoring and space weather predictions.

      What wasn't mentioned in the story is that there is a move afoot in Congress to either drastically reduce it's funding or eliminate it altogether: U.S. Space Weather Service in Deep Trouble [spaceref.com]. All fo

      • I work with science satellites and we don't want the first warning of a space storm to be when we you can't talk to our mega-million dollar birds. However, to me it looks like the Space Weather Service is redundant with a lot of things NASA and the Air Force are doing already so I agree with the cuts. Several solar observing satellites are already in orbit and I know of at least one more to come. Just transfer the "warning" responsibilty to NASA or the Air Force.

  • Escape from L.A.? (Score:3, Funny)

    by naitro ( 680425 ) <slashdot@gluon.se> on Saturday October 25, 2003 @11:57AM (#7308164)
    (maybe something like Escape from L.A.?

    You mean... complete crap?
  • There heading to my desktop for a while...

  • Affect on computer systems (Score:3, Interesting)

    by treat ( 84622 ) on Saturday October 25, 2003 @11:59AM (#7308174)
    I saw several highly improbable hardware failures over the past week, particularly on the 22nd.

    What is the likelyhood that this is related to recent unusual solar activity, as opposed to being a simple coincidence?
    • I just posted something about this further up - the link is here [slashdot.org].
    • The storm didn't start until yesterday (the 24th) as far as I know, so I don't think it's related to the storm...
    • I saw several highly improbable hardware failures over the past week, particularly on the 22nd.

      What is the likelyhood that this is related to recent unusual solar activity, as opposed to being a simple coincidence?

      Seeing as the flare/storm would take a couple of days to reach the Earth, I'd say pretty much 100% that it was a simple conincidence.

      Besides, what the article talks about is not an Electro-Magnetic Pulse type effect, where all electronic systems are affected. It's mostly orbiting electronics,
      • Seeing as the flare/storm would take a couple of days to reach the Earth, I'd say pretty much 100% that it was a simple conincidence.

        Actually, the X-rays produced by the flare travel at the speed of light, and would only take minutes to reach the earth. It's the ball of gases from the coronal release that take 2-4 days to reach Earth you are referring to.
      • At aprox 11 AM Pacific yesterday I was checking out the real-time graphs of both the X-Ray flux and the EM flux from the NOAA.ORG site based out of their high-altitude observatory in Colorado, just when their site went down [a few min before /.] and had the 48 hour graph showing the levels at the time of the crash to compare to the previous two days. Two days prior was lower by less than one half an order of magnitude [they were graphing by -.05 so half a division would be...?] That seems like more than en
    • we had a SCSI drive self destruct on Monday or Tuesday of this week. the rebuilding of that server and the headache on our network was what I spent my week doing.
      on the good side, it helped me argue for a much better backup system and a new server to add - so perhaps it was a good thing.

      that drive was at least 5 years old though, so perhaps it was just time for it - if the new drive that in there dies, soon, then I will certainly wonder.

    • Comment removed (Score:4, Interesting)

      by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Saturday October 25, 2003 @01:33PM (#7308596)
      Comment removed based on user account deletion
      • I am curious if your radio works now? if not probably the radio, if it came back on after a while it might be related to the storm.
      • And on the road right before my house a bunch of street lights were flickering. I was listening to the radio, then as soon as I went under the first light, I heard a weird pop and my radio stopped working.
        Happened to me too - just as this old guy in a bathrobe was waving his lighter around.

  • Solar Activity and Humans (Score:3, Interesting)

    by ch-chuck ( 9622 ) on Saturday October 25, 2003 @12:02PM (#7308185) Homepage
    I'm really starting to thing there is a close connection between solar activity and economic patterns - all the recessions I can remember, 80-81, 91-92, 2000-2002 have all occured after the peak of a sunspot cycle. What happened after this storm of 1859: The US Civil War.

    • Threres a lot of documentaion and specualtion out there about this. look up sunspot cycles and econnomy and youll find a lot. There does seem to be some sort of very loose correlation between them.
    • Most US recessions of the last 200 years have started in the first 2 years of their decade.

      Do sun spots also follow a 10 year cycle?

      [Not that I necessarily justify economic technical analysis... it just seems to purvey].

      • Sunspots follow an 11 year cycle. The economy also tends to be cyclical, though I'm not sure of it's period. I'd be very skeptical of a causal relationship between sunspots and the economy, at least until there was an explanation that made sense and could be tested.
        • I'd also be sceptical about such a relationship.

          The economic observation comes down to 'technical analysis' - in this case fitting an ARIMA process over GDP. Each recession can be justified theoritically over what has happened over the past 10 years but why it is always 10 is a strange thing. Other economies (although being influenced by the US - the saying is "if America sneezes Europe [UK] catches a cold" via US demand for products/services in general) do not necessarily follow this cycle (the UK skipp

        • Re:Solar Activity and Humans (Score:4, Informative)

          by ShadowBlasko ( 597519 ) <shadowblaskoNO@SPAMgmail.com> on Saturday October 25, 2003 @02:44PM (#7308996)
          Not only does solar activity follow an 11 year cycle, it also *appears* to follow an annual cycle, with solar activity (CME's, sunspots) appearing to peak in late October, early November.

          Why is this so odd?

          Because a year on the Sun obviously is not the same as a year on the Earth, and scientist (as of yet) have not been able to pin down why solar activity seems to peak this time of year. At the moment (at least, last time I read up on it, which was during the big Auroral display in November of 2001) scientist were at a loss to explain a 12 month cycle in solar activity.

          For more information, and very up to date info on the current situation with the storms, current solar wind patterns, and a gallery of GREAT pictures, try spaceweather [spaceweather.com] or also
          Spaceweather Now (NOAA) [noaa.gov]

          Okay, typing that out made me feel stupid, so I went and re-read the article on seasonal variations, and found out I was somewhat wrong, there is a terrestrial reason dealing with OUR magnetic field that makes solar activity seem to affect us more. If you would like to read the article, it can be found Here [nasa.gov]

          Anyways, keep looking up this week, (unless you live in Cincinnati like I do, and it will be cloudy most of the beginning of the week) and you might be suprised at what you see.

          • It seems fairly obvious that the sun is being tugged on by the planets. We have been detecting planetary systems surrounding stars by measuring this wobble.

            Surely some scientist studying our observations of apparents cycles in the sun has evaluated the effects of the planets. Jupiter, for instance, has an orbital period of ~11 years.
          • Does the sun spin?

            Maybe one side of the sun has more activity than the other.
      • 11 years.
        And the first study on sunspots and economics was on cotton prices, which varied in some regular pattern (I can't remember what right now).
    • Is that why my microsoft shares were down $2.30 on Friday? If it comes in 10-11 years cycles maybe I should get out of the market in say...2009.
    • Read Robert Heinlein's "Year of the Jackpot." It's an interesting story about statistics, cycles, and whether the human race has any more free will than lemmings do.
    • Old news - read Robert A Heinlein's YEAR OF THE JACKPOT. But then, what _didn't_ Heinlein write about in the 40s?

    • all the recessions I can remember, 80-81, 91-92, 2000-2002

      Maybe a recession is bound to happen at the beginning of every decade in the US? unless the sunspot cycles are affecting every other country, then your theory is flawed.

    • Um, we just pulled out of a recession, like last month. It started during the middle of your posted time span (9/11/2001).
  • The submitter had to mention Escape from L.A, bringing back a trauma I had successfully surpressed for many years. I saw it in a theater, for free at a preview screening, and still felt ripped off. I want those two hours of my life back! What an enormous waste of talent for everyone involved. I was hoping for the guilty, trashy fun of Escape From New York. Nope. It was just sad, limp and stupid. You've heard of straight to DVD? Escape from LA should have been straight to Mystery Science Theater 3000. A really crummy movie...
  • I thought every body tried to do that.

    Seriously, the solar flares would wipe out most of the communications in the northern hemisphere. They help in the ionization of the stratosphere which ruins any chance of tropospheric scatter radio, the flares mess with LOS and satellite comms as well. We would all have use land based lines for a while. Damn, there goes any chance of me getting satellite net!
    • Except that GIC (Geomagnetically Induced Currents) would likely render landlines unusable and possibly hazarous ;)

      For the less catastrophic failure modes, see http://www.spaceweather.gc.ca/effects_e.shtml which has some quite nice resources on the "normal" effects of space-weather events.

  • I've read a book about this! (Score:5, Informative)

    by arvindn ( 542080 ) on Saturday October 25, 2003 @12:12PM (#7308235) Homepage Journal
    National academies press (nap.edu) has thousands of free (public domain) books online, in pdf format. Many of them are reports of some government committees etc., but if you are prepared to dig around for a while you can find some real gems. I've read about a dozen of the books on the site, and they're really good. Check out Storms from the sun [nap.edu]. Its an excellent book, both highly informative and very readable. Chapter 3 in particular ("A sudden conflagration") is about the 1859 storm in question. Enjoy.

    • Telegraph and flux (Score:4, Informative)

      by goombah99 ( 560566 ) on Saturday October 25, 2003 @01:58PM (#7308737)
      When I first read of the telegraphs carching fire I thought BullShit. Afterall the telegraphs were all magneticly driven, low impedance devices--there were no small gaps to arc across or high-impedance low-voltage elements to explode. Moreover the usual situation is that a large loop is relatively hard to induce a lot of current in (transformers try to concentrate flux not spread it out, hence they are made as small as the materials allow).

      but then I started thinking about it more carefully. If one had a magnetic event from the sun then what hit the earth would be an earth-wide, coherent magnetic pulse. In this case the larger the loop of wire the greater the current induced. And telegraphs had miles and miles of wires with macroscopically separated loops. thus the induced current must have been enormormous, hence the fires at the low impedance inductors at the ends.

      On the other hand, the magnetic flux per area might not have been very large. hence modern electronics which are small, and generally have ground or back planes closs to the wires wont receive much induced current.

      in other words the telegraphs were the optimal energy absorbers but modern devices should receive much lower energy coupling.

      • The induced current (and emf) should be proportional to the area. if a telegraph ran, say, 50km and had a 1 meter separation between the poles then the area is 5x10^4 square meters. I would imagine that in order to start a fire the current would need to be perhaps 10 amps sustained or 100 amps pulsed. And lets imagine that the impedance was 100 ohms. so the emf was by these wild guesses in the neigborhood of 1000-10,000 volts. that sort of sounds high but lets assume that's an upper bound.

        if a mod

      • Re:Telegraph and flux (Score:3, Informative)

        by Donwulff ( 27374 )
        Terrestrial electronics are at practically no risk from solar flares; that's thanks to our atmosphere and magnetosphere. However, yes planetary fluctuations of the planetary magentic field (geomagnetic storms) caused by the proton flux from such an event can and are known to induce huge currents into any large-scale conducts. There's a nice pic near the end of http://www.spacew.com/gic/index.html about what one 1989 geomagnetic storm did to some transformers.

        An interesting overview of the threat to power n
      • Don't forget that most early telegraph used a single wire, not two. The return path was an earth connection. This makes the above ground wire a very large antenna, static current collector. Over a large distance, this could collect several amps of current. The low impedance (several hundred ohms) sounders were not made for several ten's of amps at several hundred volts. Needless to say, they went out in a blaze of glory.

        For samples of this single wire connection, check out some of the old western movi
        • I just did a google search. The telegraph did use a single wire with an earth return. Details are here;
          http://sd.znet.com/~cdk14568/mpet/chap3.htm l#para0 45

          from;

          Entered according to act of Congress, in the year 1872, by
          D. VAN NOSTRAND

  • (maybe something like Escape from L.A.?) (Score:5, Funny)

    by papasui ( 567265 ) on Saturday October 25, 2003 @12:51PM (#7308367) Homepage
    Holy shit! I hope I never get trapped in a space storm that traps me in the same city as John Carpenter and Kurt Russell.
  • a sequel to that 'classic' the perfect storm... i hope they die quicker this time!

  • We don't care (Score:1, Funny)

    by lpret ( 570480 )
    We don't care, we just want our okama game sphere back.
  • Don't you wish reporters and scientists would quit naming theories and events after movies?

    It's getting to be so bad that the first step in research seems to be, "find a catchy name." It's more important than funding, more important even than the subject of the research. A catchy name will help get funding and therefore should determine the direction of research.

    Perhaps it started in the 80s when reporters derided SDI with the title, "Star Wars." It continued with "Out of Africa" in anthropology. No

    • The reporters aren't necessarily stupid. It's the audience to which they write. If the average American drops his jaw and says "wha?" when you mention a solar ion storm, you make an analogy that he'll understand. Rather than complain about reporters dumbing down material, you should complain about the education system that produces people who need it dumbed down.

  • Telegraph disruption? (Score:3, Funny)

    by Tablizer ( 95088 ) on Saturday October 25, 2003 @02:00PM (#7308745) Journal
    Telegram: "THE BRITISH ARE CEUBLSJF SLKJF SJ"

    City Official: Hmmm. I wonder what that meant. Try again, please.

    Telegram: "GET FREE PENIS ENLARGER"

    City Official: Damn ad-makers. Oh well. Back to work everybody. Nothin' here.

  • an answer to a question (Score:2, Interesting)

    by CAIMLAS ( 41445 )
    Hrm, interesting. I've been feeling really distracted for the last couple of days - unable to concentrate and the like. I've heard that this is sometimes the effect of solar activity in people that are sensitive to their environment (dusts, molds, odors, light, and the like), as I am.

    Additionally, it explains why I've been noticing a significant number of 500 errors while browsing the web (particularly slashdot). Anyone else notice this over the last couple days? Any flakey internet connectivity? My connec
    • My internet connection was up and down all last night... then I realized that my cat was sitting on my router. Cats like to play with cables. I chased the cat off and it got all better.
  • I use a charcoal grill for cooking, have a land-line which gets one call every week, tops, don't use the internet except when I really wish I had the self-control not to, don't always even use my computer as I'm a writer, don't own a car as I travel by bike, have gas heating for my house...

    "maybe something like Escape from L.A.?"

    Maybe not.
    • ...have gas heating for my house...

      Ahh, but...you're forgetting that the fan is powered by electricity.

      It's ok, you can panic now. We won't watch...

      :)
  • Does anyone remember seeing the Northern lights one night in late December 1991? There were faint blue bands that appeared to travel across the sky from the North pole heading Southwards. At a point in the sky 180 degrees opposite to where the Sun was, there was what appeared to be a + shaped glowing patch in red and green hues. Anyone else seen this?
  • Eek!

    Solar storm = we all have to play a game of "death basketball".

    In boots, no less.

  • Causes.... (Score:2, Funny)

    by ThesQuid ( 86789 )
    Cripes, now global warming is causing more severe storms in SPACE also!
  • but it's north of New York. Aurora borealis there doesn't sound that spectacular anymore, hrmm?
    • Well, it still does to me. I live in Ohio at a latitude only a few minutes south of Rome's and we rarely see Aurora borealis. I admit that a aurora borealis being observed in Rome may not be incredibly unusual, I found it striking that it was observed in Rome and Hawaii and Havana. From reading some other stuff on this topic, it seems that the Northern Lights were also seen in Honduras and Panama, which would make this really a global event (as it was seen very far to the north in the Southern hemisphere
  • At least it wasn't caused by some twit who wanted to alter the dynamics of the center of the earth. For more info see movie in title.
  • I wonder what physical effects these are having on living creatures...Will cancer rates rise as a result of these? If there's a hole in our shield, then we're getting blasted by Gamma and X-Ray's...That's generally not good..
    And how about the pilots flying commercial planes? They get a higher dosage than we ground dwellers would!

    SPF 5000 anyone? Break out your aluminium melon shields!

  • Been there. That's the reason I rarely drink Mexican beer anymore.
  • Escape from LA? Man, I'm sure there are other movies--which don't suck--that describe the phenomenon better... Escape from LA: one of the worst movies I have seen :(

    Sivaram Velauthapillai
  • On the topic of strange pre-industrial weather, wasn't there a year where summer was skipped? Winter for an entire year? The thames froze solid, IIRC...
    • I believe the year with out summer was when the island Krakatoa (sp?) blew it top. My guess is it was 1886.
      • But wasn't the winter when the Thames froze over a different event? I remember that taking place at a time when the sunspot activity had hit an all-time recorded low.
        • I know what you are refering to but I can not place the date, The 1700's come to mind but I am not sure. You mignt try British weather records on google.
    • "It has been estimated that at least 21 cubic Km (appr. 11 cubic mile) was ejected from the eruption of Krakatoa and that at least 1 cubic mile of the finer material was blown to a height of about 17 miles (27 Km). The volcanic dust blown into the upper atmosphere was carried several times around the earth by air currents. This volcanic dust veil not only created the spectacular atmospheric effects described previously but acted also as a solar radiation filter, reducing the amount of sunlight reaching the

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