How a Solar Storm Two Years Ago Nearly Caused a Catastrophe On Earth 212
schwit1 writes: On July 23, 2012, the sun unleashed two massive clouds of plasma that barely missed a catastrophic encounter with the Earth's atmosphere. These plasma clouds, known as coronal mass ejections (CMEs), comprised a solar storm thought to be the most powerful in at least 150 years.
"If it had hit, we would still be picking up the pieces," physicist Daniel Baker of the University of Colorado tells NASA. Fortunately, the blast site of the CMEs was not directed at Earth. Had this event occurred a week earlier when the point of eruption was Earth-facing, a potentially disastrous outcome would have unfolded.
"Analysts believe that a direct hit could cause widespread power blackouts, disabling everything that plugs into a wall socket. Most people wouldn't even be able to flush their toilet because urban water supplies largely rely on electric pumps. ... According to a study by the National Academy of Sciences, the total economic impact could exceed $2 trillion, or 20 times greater than the costs of a Hurricane Katrina. Multi-ton transformers damaged by such a storm might take years to repair." Steve Tracton put it this way in his frightening overview of the risks of a severe solar storm: "The consequences could be devastating for commerce, transportation, agriculture and food stocks, fuel and water supplies, human health and medical facilities, national security, and daily life in general."
"Analysts believe that a direct hit could cause widespread power blackouts, disabling everything that plugs into a wall socket. Most people wouldn't even be able to flush their toilet because urban water supplies largely rely on electric pumps. ... According to a study by the National Academy of Sciences, the total economic impact could exceed $2 trillion, or 20 times greater than the costs of a Hurricane Katrina. Multi-ton transformers damaged by such a storm might take years to repair." Steve Tracton put it this way in his frightening overview of the risks of a severe solar storm: "The consequences could be devastating for commerce, transportation, agriculture and food stocks, fuel and water supplies, human health and medical facilities, national security, and daily life in general."
FUD filled.... (Score:5, Insightful)
" disabling everything that plugs into a wall socket. Most people wouldn't even be able to flush their toilet because urban water supplies largely rely on electric pumps"
Every single water filtration plant has very large diesel generators that can run the place for months without electrical power. And no, a solar flare can not burn out giant motors and generators, all that can be ran easily without the SCADA system. In fact we used to run drills operating the place by hand, as most of the guys that did it from 1940 until 1990 did it mostly by hand.
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Re:FUD filled.... (Score:5, Informative)
A solar storm isn't like a local EMP happening everywhere at once. It has a much lower intensity. It affects things like power grids is because they're spread over an enormous area, so the induced currents add up, but it won't even tickle systems that are disconnected from that grid.
Re:FUD filled.... (Score:5, Funny)
Real transformers dont die from EMP unless it is a direct hit by a megatron.
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The effect of a large CME impacting Earth isn't an EM _pulse_, it's more like a never-ending surge: the sustained driving of DC ground loop currents through transmission lines as the value of "ground" shifts along their length.
If this CME had hit Earth, every part of the long-range grid that wasn't shut down and physically open circuit would've (a) biased connected and powered transformers into saturation, causing them to incinerate their windings and (b) driven enough current through connected unpowered tr
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http://www.yousephtanha.com/bl... [yousephtanha.com]
Re:FUD filled.... (Score:5, Informative)
And no, a solar flare can not burn out giant motors and generators, all that can be ran easily without the SCADA system. In fact we used to run drills operating the place by hand, as most of the guys that did it from 1940 until 1990 did it mostly by hand.
You should research the Carrington event before you declare this all FUD
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S... [wikipedia.org]
In March 1989 much of Quebec lost power for the same thing.
Related are EMP pulses. We can make these ourselves. The Starfish prime and Soviet Project K tests got some old school electrical equipment all goofed up.
In short, huge induced currents in places where they shouldn't be can knock out the old school equipment - it just takes a big enough event. The little, more sensitive stuff we use today? Maybe we should look at it as a huge job creation plan fixing/replacing all the stuff that gets broken.
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The question becomes: how many people would die unnecessarily before we could recover, and how much of our annual GDP would it cost to perform the recovery?
Someone in the US energy department, at the very least, almost certainly has rough estimates of those questions, don't you think?
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The question becomes: how many people would die unnecessarily before we could recover, and how much of our annual GDP would it cost to perform the recovery?
Someone in the US energy department, at the very least, almost certainly has rough estimates of those questions, don't you think?
No doubt. As much as I might joke about job stimulus, it would be an awful situation. Almost like the worst case Y2K scenarios. But no doubt there are a lot of people who just won't believe it is possible. Can't see it, so it isn't there. So we'll just sit back and watch what happens.
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Roll eyes and move on. I'm sorry you don't know how nuclear power plants work, nor how solar flares cause damage, but get with the program, son.
Critical electrical components in nuclear power plants are more than sufficiently shielded from electrical spikes, and EMPs don't cause magical explosions. Nor, if a melt down were somehow to occur, an explosion an expected outcome.
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Roll eyes and move on. I'm sorry you don't know how nuclear power plants work, nor how solar flares cause damage, but get with the program, son.
Critical electrical components in nuclear power plants are more than sufficiently shielded from electrical spikes, and EMPs don't cause magical explosions. Nor, if a melt down were somehow to occur, an explosion an expected outcome.
Actually professor you might want to take a second look at those figures. A nuclear plant relies entirely on *already produced electricity* for safe operation. With a normally functioning grid, this is not an issue. Take that out of the picture (in a scenario like a CME hit) and it will have to fall back on site generators (the local turbine generation is likely to go down with the grid) which hopefully will have been isolated from the effects of the CME and can be instantly switched in to the site syste
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Actually professor you might want to take a second look at those figures. A nuclear plant relies entirely on *already produced electricity* for safe operation. With a normally functioning grid, this is not an issue. Take that out of the picture (in a scenario like a CME hit) and it will have to fall back on site generators (the local turbine generation is likely to go down with the grid) which hopefully will have been isolated from the effects of the CME and can be instantly switched in to the site system to take over and shut the plant down. However, if any of those switching components went bad during the CME hit, it could be hours before they are repaired, which starts to push the cooling safety margins to the limit (the plant is, after all, still producing heat as if it had a job to do). There are certainly good disaster plans in effect at nuclear plants for situations similar to this, but do you really want to test them all at once? There are bound to be holes. Mushroom cloud style explosions are out of the question, but we know from experience with Fukushima that all kinds of bad things can happen (including lots of little explosions of errant hydrogen) when plants go dark and can't be shut down safely.
I'll update a couple of points, when a plant loses off-site power, it immediately scrams and they have to remove decay heat [wikipedia.org] (the neutrons stop reacting), which drops exponentially from 6-7% core power to less than 1% in about a day, and far less than 1% in 10 days. The generators are normally sized to handle shutdown cooling until power could be restored (but your comments are true, everything can fail, in the case of Fukushima, the entire emergency generator system was destroyed by the tsunami). I would
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the Fukushima 'explosions' were actually by design
Are you actually claiming it was considered okay for large explosions to burst open containment in a nuclear plant in melt-down?
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No, it wasn't by design.
By design (back in 1962) it was supposed to use steel-clad fuel rods. Which didn't work as well as they hoped, so they were replaced by zirconium cladding. The impact of hydrogen being formed during the meltdown of a zirconium clad core was later judged to be non-catastrophic from the point of view that the containment wouldn't be destroyed. But that's about it. There were clear warnings that the destruction of the building around the containment would make handling the situation muc
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Hardened electronics (Score:3, Interesting)
Actually, we know how to make hardened electronics, and we do make them.
But it does NOT come cheap, you have to add a number of protection (clamp) diodes to *EVERY SINGLE GATE* inside integrated circuits, for example. You've read that right: on a modern microprocessor, that's close to a billion extra diodes at the very least. These not only take up die space, they also cause other nasty issues re. signal integrity and low-voltage operation, especially at very high frequencies. Any interconects have to be
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Re:FUD filled.... (Score:4, Informative)
it still worked at the street level, high rises have to have supplmental pumps to lift the water to upper floors, so ask your apartment manager where his generator was
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You make a good point. However, just playing devil's advocate here, your generators will only run so long as you can keep them supplied with diesel fuel. If the transportation and distribution system that the pipelines and trucks rely on to get the fuel from point a to point b is disrupted, you may have trouble keeping those generators running.
Most disaster preparedness is built on the assumption that help will arrive from the outside. But when EVERYWHERE is affected, help may not be available.
Neverthele
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I dont know about his area but here they are supplied by natural gas
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Which, one assumes, also relies on pumps.
I doubt natural gas gets from point a to point b by magic.
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I doubt natural gas gets from point a to point b by magic.
Natural gas is generally pumped around by turbines burning natural gas, it's cheaper but also happens to be immune to electrical problems. Failure of controls cause valves to stick in their last commanded position though so expect at least some problems with pressure fluctuations, etc.
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As someone that works on engines all the time... the rule is:
You need Air, Fuel and Spark
All engines have electrical systems and depending on how complex (efficient) the engine is the electronics can be as minor as a magnet and magneto all the way up to vastly complex computer controlled ignition systems.
But more importantly, neatly all the valves in those plants are controlled by electricity. So losing power would be a problem if it weren't fixed fairly soon.
Re:FUD filled.... (Score:5, Interesting)
"You need Air, Fuel and Spark"
You must not work on many engines then....
Diesel does not need spark.
"but more importantly, neatly all the valves in those plants are controlled by electricity. " And they have geared handwheels on them for emergency backup.. Have you ever been in a Water filtration plant? I worked in one for over 7 years, during that time I had to operate the whole place by myself during two extended power outages, one actually blew up the main transformers on the premise and melted the 7200 volt power lines coming in to run our 350hp electric motors. I had a very hectic 30 minutes to run the 1/2 mile to the other end of the facility during a major thunderstorm to start the generators manually as we did not have auto start back then. Then run all the way back and manually close 4 60" gate valves by hand to shut down half of the water plant as water consumption dropped way down as most of the town was out of power. By the time the emergency response guys showed up and I opened the gates I had the 500,000 Gallon per day pumps running and the water towers in the city above a 75% full point.
What is fun is when you are in a pumphouse and the check valve fails and a 350hp motor is running backwards at full speed and someone does not answer the radio up at the control house and hits START on that motor. the smell of vaporized copper and ozone in the air when the breaker arms exploded and vaporized because 7200 volts at insane amps met a motor running backwards and acting like a direct short. My ears were ringing for a week.
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my cousin worked in one for years, they even had wall of 1930s knife switches in roped off area , and motor generators with open shafts where you could see the blur of the couplings....no idea if they've upgraded in the past two decades but I suspect solar flare not going to take out most the gear in my hometown's filtration and pumping plant. of course, in emergency the biggest concerns while running around would be either electrocution or getting snagged and chopped into hamburger.
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The 1920 pumphouse at the one I worked at was like that.
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Depends on the size of the Diesel engine, you know? No you don't it seems ...
Car Diesel engines have a "glowing plug" similar to a spark plug, that is heated up shortly before ignition to give the final 'spark'.
I would bet even 500hp Diesels in trucks have a "glowing plug".
However for really big Diesel engines or suitable optimized small ones, they are completely self igniting.
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The glow plug is not even close to similar to a spark plug as it does not go inside the compression chamber and it is not absolutely required for the facilitation of ignition; even on a stone cold engine in Canada in the depths of winter (provided there's at least a block warmer of some kind). It's a wire that preheats the fuel in the injector to ensure that it's of a temperature that when it is injected into the cylinder that the pressure and heat within the compression chamber will cause the ignition. O
Re:FUD filled.... (Score:4, Interesting)
A CME is not an EMP event.
CME are dangerous because the stream of charged particles interacts with Earth's magnetosphere. The interaction causes the magnetic field to vary, and the changing magnetic field as everyone knows results in induced currents. Earth's magnetic field is weak, but the charged particles cause it to vary, and because of the variance, long lines (like power transmission lines) are the ones most affected.
Or telegraph lines, where the operators suddenly get shocked when the induced currents cause a large potential difference to build up (voltages of 50+V during the Carrington event).
Now, the problem is that the grid has enough circuit breakers to actually handle this - they're sensitive enough that disruptions will cause them to open. The issue is that once you start having grids, loads and generators islanding themselves, it causes further disruption down the line. Like the blackout of 2003 where one power generating plant caused the whole east coast to lose power for 3 days.
Having the grid shut down - it might actually be difficult to restart it since it's never happened before.
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I'm sure they've thought of that eventuality. Probably something involving an engineer-sized hamster wheel strapped to the axle and a cat-o-nine-tails.
Re:FUD filled.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Not hard at all. EMP does not blow up starter motors and does not blow up lead acid batteries. Hell all I have to do is connect jumper cables from the battery to the starter lugs to start the generator.
Granted that's far more difficult for the typical person that cant get past the "I pushed the button, it most be broke" thought process, but that is why most places actually hire competent employees to manage that stuff.
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Not hard at all. EMP does not blow up starter motors and does not blow up lead acid batteries. Hell all I have to do is connect jumper cables from the battery to the starter lugs to start the generator.
Granted that's far more difficult for the typical person that cant get past the "I pushed the button, it most be broke" thought process, but that is why most places actually hire competent employees to manage that stuff.
I'm sure all your competent employees will have no trouble rewinding the cores of every last transformer in America themselves. That takes an entire years' supply of copper.
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silly, they have battery start
Re:FUD filled.... (Score:4, Interesting)
When I toured the Union Electric hydropower plant in Keokuk, Iowa back in the 1990s when they still let you into places like that (with a camera, no less) the guy showed me a hand-crank the size of a bicycle wheel that was originally designed to dead start the plant when it was self-powered.
Apparently spinning that generated just enough power to get one of the turbines generating electricity and that was enough power to boot strap the entire plant.
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We've never attempted a cold start of the electric grid.
Only starting up plants to match the phase of what they're already receiving.
that said, I think we'll be fine.
Other countries, not so much.
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Known this forever (Score:3, Insightful)
And yet nothing changes, there is no hardening of infrastructure, no preparation or planning.
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And yet nothing changes, there is no hardening of infrastructure, no preparation or planning.
Most people just don't believe it's possible. Smart people can put two and two together, but most of us won't think a thing about it until their smartphones quit working and they can't access Facebook.
Even then, they'll likely assign it to something political like the Illuminati taking over, and disabling all the electronics so they can put everyone in FEMA concentration camps.
Goddamned liberals anyway! >sarcasm
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But then we'd have to RAISE TAXES (horrors!) to pay for it.
USA USA (Score:5, Funny)
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Can we get the politicians to lead the charge?
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It happened before (Score:5, Informative)
In the 80s, Quebec's power grid got taken out by solar storms. It was particularly susceptible because we have a ton of really long-distance runs:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
That one was just bad enough to flip circuit breakers on the grid, but it still caused a 9 hour power outage. Some satellites also lost control.
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which occurred on 2003 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northeast_blackout_of_2003) caused by a software bug. Anyone in Quebec and to the east of them weren't affected.
Conspiracy (Score:2)
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To keep people calm and inactive and not blaming the government while they complete their police-state maneuvers.
Actually, its just been a stupid week, and crap articles like this having me blaming "the man" for everything that's wrong with the world.
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Nothing calms people down like cutting off all their entertainment, food, and sanitation. ;) If I was going to take over a country I'd offer them all cheap energy, bountiful food, and as much entertainment as they could consume.
Some would say that this has already happened.
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Ah, yes.
The Welfare State.
Keeping people down by giving them enough to live comfortably whilst simultaneously destroying their self-respect and ambition.
Though that's not even a conspiracy...
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Quite the opposite; I was thinking of the contented Western middle class* - the scholarly class if you will - that's so settled into its world of aspirational brands, entertainment media and convenience that it has forgotten that its forefathers used to be politically and socially active.
Shit, people dependent upon the "welfare state" can't even change jobs without checking whether it clashes with the terms and conditions of their funding.
*I believe the American expression would be more like "upper middle c
I wish it had happened (Score:2, Insightful)
Yes, for 6 months the world would have been thrown into chaos. Millions might have even died. But we would have emerged from it stronger and more united as a planet. Imagine just in the USA.
Would Ted Cruz have shut down the government to protest Obamacare after having lived through an event like that? Do you think the Republicans would be global warming deniers if they had gone through an event where the sun struck back at earth and nearly destroyed us?
Suddenly american politics wouldn't be about immigratio
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In the USA you had 'you loot, we shoot' signs everywhere regardless if displaced 'owners' in 'you neighbouhood' had any use for the looted stuff. ...
Most people would not die to the 'event' but to self proclaimed gun swinging warlords picking up the remaining pieces for them selves.
See the wide documented footage of New Orleans after Kathrina
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Spot the idiot who doesn't have any chronic medical conditions that are a death sentence without a steady supply of medicine, and who's wearing rose-colored glasses about human nature.
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Do you think the Republicans would be global warming deniers if they had gone through an event where the sun struck back at earth and nearly destroyed us?
Bro, this sort of reasoning is exactly why we have global warming deniers.
We can cut C02 emissions all we want and it's going to do nothing to stop an event like this from wiping us out: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S... [wikipedia.org]
FUD alert (Score:4, Informative)
"Most people wouldn't even be able to flush their toilet because urban water supplies largely rely on electric pumps. "
Um, no.
First, the normal flush pressure comes from the water tank on the back...so EVERYONE would be able to flush at least once. (Actually, in a disaster, that tank isn't a bad source of freshwater, at least for a while.)
Most communities have water tanks above their population, either on a nearby height, or in water towers. This makes the system - at least in the short term, until that tank is drained - impervious to power outage. Even NYC has tens of thousands of rooftop tanks with the same function, but on a per-building level.
GRAVITY, not electricity, produces water pressure that refills that local toilet tank. So until the community tank is emptied, and electric pumps are required to fill that large tank, everyone would be able to flush just fine.
http://www.howstuffworks.com/w... [howstuffworks.com]
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Depends on where you live. Over here (.nl) most water towers have been decommissioned by now, so water pressure does rely on electricity these days.
Space Weather Forecast (Score:2)
Don't get caught unaware by the next major CME. Read the space weather forecast [noaa.gov] from NOAA.
Harden the grid (Score:2)
Why don't we harden the electrical grid for this? What technologies could be used to protect electrical systems from this? Maybe this would involve a system to suppress the surge but also a system of disconnect switches that could be remotely activated to disconnect the electrical grid? What sorts of systems could be installed to prevent such a catastrophe? Could we install disconnect switches around transformers and such? What about unplugging your household appliances and electronics? Would that protect t
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shunting devices could be installed, and monitoring satellites specifically intended to give 30 to 45 minute lead time warning to grid operators to shut down
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We already have that: http://sohowww.nascom.nasa.gov... [nasa.gov]
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no we don't, we can see CME with those tools which often can be used to predict the geomagnetic storms but is not the same as true warning system. for now we really on aging ACE for short term geomagnetic storm warning, replacement has been put off until next year or later
Objoke (Score:3)
Bunch of astrophysicists walk into a bar. First one orders a gin and tonic, and gets it. Second one orders a red wine, and gets it. Third one orders a Mexican beer, at which point the bartender yells "all right, that's it, everybody out!" Another bar customer asks the first astrophysicist "what's going on?" He responds "Coronal mass ejection."
Movie time! (Score:3)
I expect Morgan Freeman, Tom Hanks, Uma Thurman, and Cameron Diaz (with cameos by Dolly Parton and Emma Watson) to make a movie about this immediately. "The Corona"
I'm hoping for a massive blackout. (Score:3)
No, see - the thing about such natural disasters is that they tend to bring out the best in us, sometimes we need a crisis like that when we're too spoiled and too set in our ways to help fellow man (or nature) out, history shows that these disasters often bring out the better in us and replenish life and give jobs and hopes to those who have none.
It will also serve as a reminder that will be remembered for decades - how vulnerable we are, and that we should prepare and stop taking everyday life for granted.
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If by "brings out the best in us" you mean a "huge wave of crime, vandalism, and looting because the po-po can't do shiat", then you are correct.
Correction (Score:2)
Most people wouldn't even be able to flush their toilet because urban water supplies largely rely on electric pumps
Correction: they'd be able to flush once. Make it count!
Low probability of getting hit by CME (Score:5, Informative)
Google says:
Therefore the probability of being hit by a given CME is (2.8 x 10^17) / (5.1 x 10^8) = 5.5 x 10^-8, or a 0.0000055% chance.
Now the number of CMEs per year is actually higher than I expected, which I suppose explains why we do in fact get hit between 0 - 70 times per year. However the number of annual large CMEs is quite low, with none of the sites I visited actually agreeing on the number (most seemed to agree it's less than 5 per year in a solar maximum.) Let's say there are 5 per year. That only brings the chance of being hit by one of them up to 0.000028% per year. So if I live to be 100, the chances I'll see one in my lifetime are only 0.0028%.
caveat: These calculations ignore CME cross-section (essentially width and height) and duration (essentially length), since I couldn't find any accurate information on those. If you find those, you can factor them into these calculations by multiplying by the cross-section, multiplying by the % duration that the CME's strength is high, and multipyling by the Earth's average orbital velocity. That will modify the probility to take into account the volume of space the Earth occupies while the CME is traversing the edge of our 1 AU sphere, and how much of the surface of the sphere is touched by the CME.
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1) The CME doesn't have to directly hit the Earth since disrupting the magnetosphere [wikipedia.org], which is many times the size of just the Earth, is what would be required.
2) I don't believe CMEs are uniform in the direction they occur since they are created by anomalies in the Sun's magnetic field, which like the Earth's, has poles. I could not however readily find a
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CMEs are hitting the earth 'all the time'.
Luckily only 3 times the previous 200 years. No idea what you want to point out with your 'math'.
The problem is not how often they happen or how likely they are, the problem is the massive impact they would have on our modern infrastructure and society if it would happen right now.
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Problem is, the world would pretty much need to bootstrap itself out of the mechanical age again.
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Maybe, maybe not. We know that companies, such as electrical suppliers, have extra equipment lying around for general maintenance and upgrade. Also, the people who manufacture these products have supplies on hand.
While it would be tedious, you would use this spare equipment to repair the most critical connections (from power plant to factories), thus enabling you to begin resupplying everyone else.
I'm not trying to minimize the nightmare scenario of getting things back up and running, only pointing out the
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Every time I see one of these new doomsday scenarios pop up, I know there is a media-savvy researcher somewhere looking to score a big grant.
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And in what kind of society, environment, state ... how ever you want to call it, would he get such a 'grant'?
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Re:We can't live without these things? (Score:5, Insightful)
Really? This would be devastating? We can't live without electricity, electronics, water pumps? It's amazing we're here today!
Yes, it very likely would. All those urban areas that grew as big and relatively healthy as they did, thanks to clean water and efficient sewage systems? If that wasn't brought back online, fast, they'd start moving toward their pre-sanitation population levels. The hard way.
Same would apply for agricultural areas and yields that depend on powered irrigation. Unless that was brought back online, and quickly enough to avoid damage to the crop, you'd see yields plummet toward historical levels, with population following suit shortly thereafter. Very unpleasant.
Hopefully there would be enough enough backup systems to restore function relatively quickly; but if not things would be unlikely to go well.
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Really? This would be devastating? We can't live without electricity, electronics, water pumps? It's amazing we're here today!
Yes, it very likely would. All those urban areas that grew as big and relatively healthy as they did, thanks to clean water and efficient sewage systems? If that wasn't brought back online, fast, they'd start moving toward their pre-sanitation population levels. The hard way.
Same would apply for agricultural areas and yields that depend on powered irrigation. Unless that was brought back online, and quickly enough to avoid damage to the crop, you'd see yields plummet toward historical levels, with population following suit shortly thereafter. Very unpleasant.
Hopefully there would be enough enough backup systems to restore function relatively quickly; but if not things would be unlikely to go well.
Generator-powered factories producing generators would suddenly be very very valuable.
The real question we should be asking is; why doesn't NASA have the authority to order a nationwide grid shutdown in the event that one of their several satellites dedicated strictly to predicting and identifying solar disruptions actually works and warns us before it happens? We have spent billions on this already, why not put that to use instead of fear mongering about how long it would take to manufacture a bunch of hi
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To be blunt, politicians. Everyone who agreed with the establishment and supported the ongoing maintenance of a solar storm readiness plan would get to be the bozo whose big scheme sat there wasting money, and only once in a while would any of them get to play hero.
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Because NASA isn't in charge of the energy sector? They monitor and advise. DOE via FERC is in charge of the electrical sector. The ES-ISAC, run by the FERC-appointed ERO, NERC, and the regional Reliability Coordinators (PeakRC in the western US, formerly the WECC RC).
More to the point, there are NERC standards being developed which deal with geomagnetic disturbances. A TPL and EOP standard: http://www.nerc.com/pa/Stand/P... [nerc.com]
The bigger issue is cost. We can prepare for anything, but at what cost? Are you ready for your electricity rates to double to cover a 12% chance in the next 10 years? It's a tough balanacing act.
Why would rates double as a result of putting into place a plan (and probably a few layers of communications systems on top of already existing infrastructure) to mitigate the problem before it starts? Oh right, because we would have to pay for a team at NASA, a team at FERC, a team at each of the regional ISO, etc. to all do the same thing? Ugh. Put NASA in charge, they got us to the moon damnit. If rocket scientists cant fix it, no one can.
Re:We can't live without these things? (Score:4, Insightful)
The problem is, we as a civilization are no longer set up to live without those things. Before air conditioning, windows in office buildings could be opened and there were fans everywhere. The fans are gone and the windows don't open now. People live in apartments way too far up to be practical if you have to take the stairs. Nearly nobody has a well and bucket anymore, so yes, we depend on water pumps. In theory, we could, given time, adapt to do without (+/- having centers of population too dense for that) but 24 hours really isn't enough notice.
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Let's leave the "well and bucket" approach in the past please. I don't think having your water supply in an open-air hole is the most sanitary way to do it. All you really need is to push a point down into the water table and attach a hand pump. Just don't forget to always keep an extra jug of water on hand in case you need it to prime the pump.
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Can't you just find a fresh water stream and drink that? Hell there are like 10 just in my area, not including fresh water lakes that are technically drinkable within 15km.
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The windows don't open now.
The hell they don't. The problem is, when I'm done opening it, it can't close. Bwahahaha. *goes to look for hammer*
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Really? This would be devastating? We can't live without electricity, electronics, water pumps?
Can you farm without electricity? Gasoline? Do you have all the pre-electricity farm equipment that would allow you to grow food without a tractor, power tools, etc? Does your well pump even work without electricity? I'll bet it doesn't. I'll bet you can't really live off the grid unless you're Amish or Mennonite. You simply don't have the pre-industrial technology to get along in such a world.
Many in cities
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I suppose you don't age then? You will keep working until the day you die?
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That was only in North Carolina.
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They did, so now they are going to sue the sun.
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Old fellow Tesla is bound by the same laws of physics like the rest of the mortal world ... ...
Dream on
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The sun's rotational period is about 25 days, meaning if it missed pointing at us by a week, then is was shooting into the solar system at a 100 degree angle from us. That doesn't sound to me like a "barely".
Somebody please mod parent "Insightful". TFA is a bunch of FUD.
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A CME event is not a 'one second' thing but an hours or days long one. ... ... fresh food in the next best supermarket, too!
We got hit 3 times in the previous 200 years, means roughly every 65 years
The problem is not the hit, but the effect to our way of living.
If your fridge goes off, your food starts rotting
If you have no fresh water even using flour which is durable for centuries if airtight stored wont give you a bread or a pancake save or at least pleasant to eat.