The Underappreciated Risks of Severe Space Weather 361
circletimessquare notes a New Scientist piece calling attention to a recent study by the National Academy of Sciences, which attempts to raise awareness of the dangers of severe solar electromagnetic storms. "In 1859, amateur astronomer Richard Carrington noticed 'two patches of intensely bright and white light' near some sunspots. At the same time, Victorian era magnetometers went off the charts, stunning auroras were being viewed at the equator, and telegraph networks were disrupted — sparks flew from terminals and ignited telegraph paper on fire. It became known as the Carrington event, and the National Academy of Sciences worries about the impact of another such event today and the lack of awareness among officials. It would induce un-designed-for voltages in all high-voltage, long-distance power lines, and destroy transformers, as Quebec learned in 1989. Without electricity, water would stop flowing from the tap, gasoline would stop being pumped, and health care would cease after the emergency generators gave up the ghost after 72 hours. Replacing all of the transformers would take months, if not years. The paradox would be that underdeveloped countries would fare better than developed ones. Our only warning system is a satellite called the Advanced Composition Explorer, in solar orbit between the Sun and the Earth. It is 11 years old and past its planned lifespan. It might give us as much as 15 minutes of warning, and transformers might be able to be disconnected in time. But currently no country has such a contingency plan."
Re:Doomsday situation (Score:5, Informative)
I remember when the northeast US had a power outage that lasted a few days just a few years back. It was no where near as dramatic or dire as this summary suggests the situation could be. I still had water and gas in Ohio.
Then you should RTFA. I read this article yesterday and toyed with submitting it but didn't bother. One of the things that could happen with a large enough space weather event is the destruction of distribution transformers on a region wide (nationwide in the case of small countries like the Scandinavian ones) scale.
No power utility has enough spare distribution transformers on hand to replace all of them after they go. They are usually built to order and take 12 months or more to produce. So why don't you imagine a power outage that lasts for months or years across the entire Northeast United States and tell me how undramatic it is? No refrigeration, no gasoline for your car (no electric to pump it through pipelines or service stations), limited and rationed modern medicine, no pumped potable water, no water treatment plants, no HVAC systems, limited communications, etc, etc, etc.
Sound dire enough to take seriously now?
Our only warning system is ACE? (Score:5, Informative)
That's just flat out wrong.
ACE might have a better ground network (let's face it, it's easier to talk to as it's at L1), but STEREO-Behind can see areas of the sun that aren't visible from any other solar-observing mission. It's also remote sensing (ie, telescopes), so it doesn't have to wait until it gets hit by an event. (at which point, we're looking at the last 1M miles of a 93M mile trip)
There's also instruments that have proven space-weather benefits on SOHO, but that's even older than ACE. I'm not going to say that ACE isn't the most important satellite in NOAA's eyes for predicting space weather (and some of their space weather folks have even mentioned that they might have to put up a similar satellite when ACE finally fails), but saying it's the only warning system discounts all of the other solar-observing missions used for space weather forecasting.
Re:Doomsday situation (Score:3, Informative)
That NE power outage was mostly just load induced (power lines sagging and grounding on trees) disconnects, and a few key damaged lines. What they are talking about is a not insignifigant percentage of the main distribution transformers being damaged enough to be inoperable, plus a number of other effects, if caught unaware.
The reason this would be an issue is not that it would take down the distribution grid due to load effects. The concern with a CME of that size, is that it would destroy a large percentage of the grid's hardware, requiring weeks of work to fix.
A few days isn't a big deal to overcome as most systems have 72hours to a week of backup generator capacity, but that becomes an issue if the fuel distribution is interrupted as well due to similar problems.
quiet sun? (Score:3, Informative)
The risk might not be as great in the near future as described. For one, solar flares large enough to do such damage are rare. Also in now appears that the sun is entering a more quiet phase, the next solar cycle that should have started by now hasn't, and the predictions for max sun spot numbers for the next cycle have been done graded several times. Short wave radio reception will probably not be as good as it was in the past 20 years. The Canadian flare incident happened during one of the more active solar periods, perhaps the last one for next century.
Everybody should learn basic survival skills (Score:3, Informative)
Everyone should know how to build a basic cooking fire. Everyone should have at least one solar panel. Everyone should have spare water. Everyone should be able to kill & gut a fish, gopher, (or neighborhood dog if necessary). It seems like everyone today looks toward the government for help during emergencies when they should be relying on family and community.
If a big earthquake hits or a big solar flare lands... the government isn't going to get help to you for at least TWO WEEKS.
Re:Doomsday situation (Score:3, Informative)
But aren't these things fairly well shielded anyway? I can't imagine a big EMP pulse getting through a zinc wrapper (galvanised steel can, isn't it?) and then I'd think you're dealing with some fairly heavy duty windings. Power line transformers survive lightning strikes sometimes, don't they?
Electronics, yes, some stuff would fry. But electrical supply?
The problem is the really long wires in the power grid. EMP effects are of the form "X volts per meter", so I'd expect your wristwatch and unplugged laptop to be fine. Power transformers connected to miles of wire wouldn't do so well... maybe the voltages wouldn't actually be much higher than the normal multi-kilovolt line voltages, but they'd be DC (or very low frequency) instead of 60 Hz AC which makes a big difference for inductive devices like transformers.
I believe circuit breakers are also harder to make work with DC than with AC. Apparently they arc when first opening, and DC arcs don't extinguish as easily as AC arcs. So even if they do have circuit breakers, they might not work unless opened before it hits.
Re:Doomsday situation (Score:5, Informative)
But aren't these things fairly well shielded anyway?
No, they aren't. The part of the grid that picks up the load is the distribution lines themselves. They aren't shielded in any deployment that I'm aware of and it would probably be prohibitively expensive to do so.
The inductive load imparts a huge amount of DC current onto the AC power grid and trashes the windings in the connected transformers. The defense is to disconnect those transformers from the grid but that only works if you have enough advance warning. Currently we have no formal process to handle this early warning (though the technology does exist) and no plans/procedures in place to disseminate that warning to the power utilities and for them to take action.
RTFA. It's actually a pretty interesting read. It's not a doomsday scenario -- we'd survive as a people and as a country. We'd just suffer some pretty substantial damage in the process.
SpaceWeather.Com (Score:3, Informative)
i think you'll be ok (Score:3, Informative)
the problem with a powerful moving magnetic field is induction: it forces eletron flow in wires. emphasis: wires, or any piece of metal with a large ratio of length/ width/ height to the other two dimensions. a wire is a perfect victim for a moving magnetic field because it presents a very long cross section to the magnetic field, and thats what makes the induction powerful
meanwhile, your medtronic device is small and compact, so it doesn't present a large cross section to the magnetic field as it hits the earth
Re:Doomsday situation (Score:3, Informative)
What part of "built to order" do you have trouble comprehending?
These unit are all custom made.
There is no warehouse stock. The manufacturing plants' max capacity is scaled to meet demand, no more.
The substation transformers aren't even made in North America anymore, they're ordered from overseas.
Re:Don't forget the asteroids. (Score:5, Informative)
Doesn't the tendency of an event recurring increase with the passage of time?
This is a common belief, but it is utterly wrong. Consider flipping a fair coin. The probability of getting heads is 1/2 always. If I got heads the last 100 flips, what's the chances of getting heads again? 1/2.
On the other hand, the probability of getting heads 100 times in a row is 1/2^100. Confusing these two probabilities is the basis of the Gambler's Fallacy [wikipedia.org].
However, there are some natural processes that fall subject to this reasoning. Take the earthquake example. Let's say that the chances of an earthquake happening increase as subterranean pressure increases. Let's say that everyday the subterranean pressure increases by some (small) random amount. In this situation the chance of an earthquake does get bigger everyday, but that's because there is something actively increasing the probability.
Compare with the earth being struck by a cataclysmic asteroid. In this case, there's no analogous process building up over time so it is fallacious to conclude that the chances are getting bigger every day that we don't get struck.
Re:Our only warning system is ACE? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Pacemakers? (Score:1, Informative)
You don't have a long enough antenna on that pacemaker to produce sufficient induced current to damage it. You should worry more about a EMP pulse from a thermonuclear explosion.
Re:I call bullshit... (Score:4, Informative)
You lack the parts? Pillage the dead transformers. There is a PRETTY good chance you can take 2 or 3 dead ones and have 1 working in under 24 hours.
Sorry, I think I missed the part where you said you were a power-systems engineer. For those of us not in the know, can you explain which parts of what is in essence little more than two large coils of wire can be salvaged when the wire has caught light?
Give one half of town 12 hours of power and then turn them off for the next 12 hours while the other half gets their 12 hours. Or 8. Or 6.
How? We're not just talking about supply problems, we're talking distribution as well. With powerlines and substations down, there's no way to switch who gets the power.
Let me tell you... you get used to 4 hours of electricity per day (or less) VERY fast. You leave the lights on to wake you up when it comes on. Charge the batteries, cook, wash clothes, heat up the boiler and then go about your business waiting for better times.
Again, the scenario in TFA is about complete blackout, not intermittent supply -- this is on a completely different scale. But without as many bullets and mortar bombs, hopefully.
HAL.
Re:Don't forget the asteroids. (Score:4, Informative)
... We have one (1) data point for solar flares of this magnitude. We cannot make *any* meaningful statements about frequency.
Not true. Even ZERO observations during a period of time provide information about frequency of occurrence: i.e. it sets a probabilistic lower bound on the frequency of the (hypothesized) event.
One observation during the less than 170 years when this could be detected gives this, roughly speaking, 10-1 odds against being an only one-in-1700 year event.
Might it be an only one-in-a-millenium event? Sure. But the odds are rather against that being the case.