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Is a 'Katrina-Like' Space Storm Brewing?
Posted by
CmdrTaco
on Mon Jan 12, 2009 10:19 AM
from the or-maybe-thats-just-a-nice-cup-of-tea dept.
from the or-maybe-thats-just-a-nice-cup-of-tea dept.
pilsner.urquell writes "A newly released NASA report warns that the world has forgotten the power of the sun, creating a technological society susceptible like never before to large infrastructure damage from solar storms.
According to the report, the world has grown so dependent on modern technologies without respect of what the sun can and has done, that it's risking major communications, finance, transportation, government and even emergency services disruptions."
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I know the solution (Score:5, Funny)
Re:I know the solution (Score:5, Interesting)
How many people here truly think that if there were an anomaly that they would be able to survive without
A) Electricity
B) A grocery store
C) Modern medicine -and most importantly-
D) Fresh (clean) water
I know for a fact that I'd safely have A, B and D. I live in the woods anyway, huge garden, plenty of animals to slaughter for tasty bbq and we have a very high water-table with multiple ponds around. Not the cleanest but I'd figure out a way to survive.
I'm just wondering about statistics here.
Parent
Re:I know the solution (Score:5, Interesting)
Parent
Re:I know the solution (Score:5, Funny)
WRT to item C on your list: birth control pills. It would be a completely different world without that medical wonder. Suddenly having hundreds of millions more fertile women in this world would cause lots o' problems.
Parent
Re:I know the solution (Score:4, Insightful)
WRT to item C on your list: birth control pills. It would be a completely different world without that medical wonder. Suddenly having hundreds of millions more fertile women in this world would cause lots o' problems.
Hardly. The vast, vast majority of women on this planet (measured in billions) do not use any form of birth control. A few percentage points' worth more would make zero difference.
Parent
finance (Score:5, Funny)
who needs the sun for that?
Re:finance (Score:4, Interesting)
Parent
Rather dramatic (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Rather dramatic (Score:4, Informative)
Parent
Re:Rather dramatic (Score:5, Informative)
It wouldn't. The damage isn't from the particle cloud itself, it's from the ripples it sets up in the Earth's magnetosphere. This makes the magnetic field move relative to any conductors (like power lines and circuit traces) in it. That causes an electric current to be induced in the conductor. The atmosphere doesn't affect the magnetic field at all, so it won't provide any protection from the disturbance.
Parent
Re:Rather dramatic (Score:5, Interesting)
Lessen? Yes. Could it still be catastrophic? Yes.
First, every satellite would be "down". That means no GPS. No communication satellites. No weather satellites.
Second, a violent storm can overload the power grid. Which means days without electricity - assuming important components aren't overloaded and destroyed.
Third, cell phones, radios and other wireless devices could go down. Your home network will probably be fine. But forget using your 3G phone for anything. Your cordless phone will probably be OK to call emergency services but they won't be able to get them on the radio to tell them where to go.
So, as long as you don't depend on modern technology, you should be fine.
Parent
Re:Rather dramatic (Score:4, Insightful)
Third, cell phones, radios and other wireless devices could go down. Your home network will probably be fine. But forget using your 3G phone for anything. Your cordless phone will probably be OK to call emergency services but they won't be able to get them on the radio to tell them where to go.
It won't affect terrestrial radio, only satellite communications. If you can call 911 then they have power, if they have power their radios will work. Cell phones won't work well if at all, you'll likely not have any long distance phone service at all.
It won't bring us back to the stone age, only back to about 1960. It will be an inconvinience, not the end of the world.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Rather dramatic (Score:5, Interesting)
Think the report is kidding around? Go lookup what happened in Quebec on March 13th, 1989. The whole power system was knocked out in seconds. Then go read about the kind of storm they're worried about - the solar storm of 1859.
It actually caused telegraph wires to short out across Europe and the Americas - some even caught on fire. If that happened now, it would cause global power outages, fried computer equipment (including the ones that control your fancy electronic car), and everything except for milsats in orbit could be knocked out.
So will people be directly killed? No. But when the fly-by-wire planes fall out of the sky, your new car won't work, your cell phones are dead, power is dead, the internet is down, and landlines fried - I bet it won't take long for a lot of people to die anyway.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
It actually caused telegraph wires to short out across Europe and the Americas - some even caught on fire. If that happened now, it would cause global power outages, fried computer equipment (including the ones that control your fancy electronic car), and everything except for milsats in orbit could be knocked out.
Power outages, yes.
Fried computers, only if they're plugged in. And even that's questionable, since I'm pretty sure there are surge protectors now that are good enough to protect things from lightning strikes on the power lines.
Things in orbit, might actually include military stuff (unless they use vacuum tubes or something). The problem here isn't the magnetic fields, it's the charged particles. A transistor can only take so many hits from charged particles before it breaks (depends on how big it is),so th
Re:Rather dramatic (Score:4, Informative)
Please check the NOAA solar storm warning levels. They explain how far back to the stone age we will go when a big (X level solar flare) is going to hit the Earth.
http://www.swpc.noaa.gov/NOAAscales/index.html#GeomagneticStorms [noaa.gov]
On the communications. It is not just satellite communications that will get disrupted. But also HF, UHF and other type of communication. Your GSM (2G or 3G really doesn't matter) might work, but then it might not work. It is any body's guess.
People might be out of power for days or weeks in the worst case.
Parent
Re:Rather dramatic (Score:4, Informative)
Once a surge protector trips, its off until its manually reset.
Not necessarily. Many simple surge protectors just use a couple of varistors and gas discharge tubes connected between the wires. These devices have a variable resistance that is extremely high during normal operation but decreases sharply above a certain threshold voltage, and thus provide a short-circuit path for excess current to take. After the voltage returns to the rated level, the resistance again becomes extremely high, cutting off the short-circuit.
You are probably confusing surge protectors with circuit breakers. The latter are far too slow to protect sensitive electronics from damage from a voltage surge.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Only thing to do (Score:5, Funny)
I guess there's only one thing to do - Destroy the sun!
And now for something completely different (Score:5, Funny)
A study funded by NASA has flagged up yet another terrible hazard for those no longer able to get excited about nuclear war, global pandemics, terrorism, climate change, economic meltdown and asteroid strike.
I for one welcome our weekly disaster overlords.
confirmed (Score:3, Funny)
Cold War & EMP (Score:3, Interesting)
It seems that with the end of the cold war, and the fact that an EMP can occur naturally, has been forgotten.
Greg P
There's no Canada like French Canada (Score:5, Informative)
Quebec [solarstorms.org] knows what they're talking about.
Re:There's no Canada like French Canada (Score:5, Funny)
Dude, I live in Québec and I've never had any such prob{#`AX%$G{%5&`+'2h${`%&NO CARRIER
Parent
the term "katrina-like" makes me angry... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:the term "katrina-like" makes me angry... (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Why is the term inapropriate here? Just like Katrina, the authors are describing a serious, but forseeable weather event, that could be almost completely mitigated with better planning.
Plus Katrina was one of the bigger hurricanes you could expect to see, while the event they describe is one of the bigger CME's you could expect to see... seems like a good analogy all around (except one effects a small area and dunks a small city, and the other the entire world and will destroy civilization as we know it).
Re:the term "katrina-like" makes me angry... (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re:the term "katrina-like" makes me angry... (Score:4, Insightful)
For the most part, there was no way to save most of the victims of the tsunami.
Many of the victims of Katrina could well have been saved had their been ample planning and communication in regards to a disaster that they knew was coming sometime.
Most of the deaths of Katrina were caused by failure to plan, failure to listen, or failure to implement disaster plans.
I can see where the author is coming from.
Parent
Bread (Score:3, Interesting)
Given that (a) the average journey for food items from production to plate is supposedly over 1000 miles in my country, (b) I live in area with few farms, and (c) Space Katrina is going to knock out transportation and probably the electical grid (I have an electric stove and oven), I have to wonder: Can the smoker I got for Christmas be used to bake bread? And what other essentials should I stock up on?
Re:Bread (Score:5, Funny)
I think the standard protocol for these sorts of things is to sell everything you own, stockpile as many guns as possible, and move into a cabin somewhere deep in the mountains. Disconnect from all power sources, and discontinue use of any electronic devices. Grow or hunt all your own food, and try to avoid contact with the outside world as much as possible. Also, if you could learn to enjoy drinking your own urine, that would be a big help.
Parent
Mr. Faraday reporting (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Mr. Faraday reporting (Score:5, Funny)
Hey you, how did you get out?! Get back in your cage!!!
Parent
Katrina (Score:3, Funny)
Man, New Orleans can't catch a freaking break!
Arthur C Clarke anyone? (Score:4, Interesting)
I hope it happens. (Score:3, Insightful)
Private and semi-private energy companies, like all lnstitutions promoted by competition to cut costs, suffer the malady of products and infrastructure "built by the lowest bidder".
Because of the nature of pure capitalism and even mixed economies, it is against the interests of any individual actor to create a more robust electronic infrastructure.
This is a role for the dreaded "R" word..ok i'll say it.. RRRegulation.
This is why i hope a solar storm like the one this article fear-mongers about happens.
When it does, various electronic infrastructure companies (power, telecom, etc) will happily welcome a law which sets a minimum level of EMP hardening and other standards.
It's important to note that, despite raising their costs a bit, it won't matter to them so long as their competition suffers the same way.
The cost will likely be passed on to the consumer, but "main street" will also be happy to pay an extra 3 bucks on a few bills knowing region-wide blackouts of power, phone, and internet will no longer be common, especially with a catastrophic failure fresh in their minds.
Kanye West says: (Score:4, Funny)
"George Bush doesn't care about BlackBerries."
Re:Kanye West says: (Score:4, Insightful)
Kanye West was wrong. George Bush cares about Oprah Winfrey, Bill Cosby, Condoleesa Rice, Barack Obama, and their ilk. It's poor people George Bush don't like, and their skin color is unimportant.
Racism is a tool of the rich, meant to take your eye of the real problem, classism, and meant to keep poor and middle class whites and blacks at each others' throats so they won't see the REAL enemy, the rich bastards who are keeping the poor and middle class of all races down.
Bernie Madoff stole fifty billion dollars and got out on ten million bail, if I get caught stealing fifty thousand dollars will I get out on ten dollars bail? And why am I the only one asking that question?
Parent
My bogus hypothesis (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:My bogus hypothesis (Score:5, Interesting)
Parent
Answer the summary (Score:3, Insightful)
In answer to the ridiculous summary:
No, a "Katrina-like" space storm is not brewing, because for a storm to remotely resemble an Atlantic Hurricane, it would need to occur inside of a frikkin' atmosphere.
Bad journalism should be painful to the perpetrator.
Never under estimate the power of a gun (Score:3, Funny)
That's why I keep a loaded AK by my home servers and my passport is right beside my 45.
I can imagine the uproar... (Score:3, Funny)
Destroy the sun (Score:4, Insightful)
We must destroy the sun immediately to avoid these disasters (it will also correct global warming).
The Amish manage to live without electricity, perhaps we should learn how to live without it ourselves for a few weeks. That skill might come in useful in the future.
Hurricane Katrina/Ike (Score:4, Informative)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Screw cyberpunk, we're switching to steampunk!
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Just a thought (Score:5, Insightful)
Right. If people had lower taxes, the first thing they'd think of to spend the money on would be EMP-resistant electronics.
They would forgo extra vacations, faster cars, Jacuzzis, expensive Champagne and plastic surgery, so that they could upgrade to a rad-hardened TV set. They would show off their Faraday-enclosed gear at parties to impress their friends.
I'm 100% confident that's what everyone would do, and solar storms would be no longer be a risk to anyone.
Parent
Re:Another fine mess... (Score:5, Funny)
Parent