When Space Weather Attacks Earth 176
Lasrick writes "Brad Plumer details the 1859 solar storm known as the Carrington Event. Pretty fascinating stuff: 'At the time, it was a dazzling display of nature. Yet if the same thing happened today, it would be an utter catastrophe...That's not a lurid sci-fi fantasy. It's a sober new assessment by Lloyd's of London, the world's oldest insurance market. The report notes that even a much smaller solar-induced geomagnetic storm in 1989 left 6 million people in Quebec without power for nine hours.'"
Infrequent (Score:4, Informative)
The Carrington Event caused aurora borealis to be visible around the world. I'm not aware of anything else like that being reported in recorded human history. Even if it had happened before the development of writing, you would think it would be the sort of thing that would have a major impact on legends across all world cultures. So my best guess is that from the span of time from, let's say, 3000BC to 2013AD, this has happened exactly once.
Wikipedia says that ice core studies show that events like this which produce high energy protons comparable to the Carrington Event occur with a frequency of roughly once every 500 years, however it briefly mentions that these other events aren't necessarily comparable in terms of geomagnetic impact.
Re:Infrequent (Score:5, Insightful)
Worse, even events less powerful than the Carrington Event occur more frequently than the Carrington Event and can cause significant damage to our high voltage infrastructure.
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The next Carrington Event could be tomorrow.
No it can't, sorry.
NOAA forecasters estimate a 40% chance of polar geomagnetic storms on July 13th when a CME is expected to hit Earth's magnetic field. Computer models of the incoming CME anticipate a sharp increase in solar wind plasma density around the time of the crossing. This could spark bright auroras at high latitudes.
Sorry, there were no ejections in our direction three-four days ago, much less direct on of higher intensity that will hit tomorrow, or the day after, or the day after that.
Granted, a
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Scientists have a pretty good estimate for how common Supernovas are, but that number does not match well with how many were reported in history. We know that the Chinese observed at least one supernova that nobody in Europe bothered to write down. There's evidence suggesting that a lot of the 'plague of this, plague of that' events in Exodus are concurrent with a massive volcanic eruption on the isle of Santorini and that the Egyptians were, at the very least, informed about this eruption by traders, but i
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Yes, you would think somebody should have recorded an event like the Carrington auroras, but we do have examples where a large and well developed culture seems to have just stuck their fingers in their ears and ignored the whole plague of miracles/mind-numbing-problem/disaster/end of the world/whatever till it went away.
Or a subsequent pharaoh scrubbed that record clean because it wasn't his plagues and miracles.
Re:Infrequent (Score:4, Interesting)
Even if it had happened before the development of writing, you would think it would be the sort of thing that would have a major impact on legends across all world cultures. So my best guess is that from the span of time from, let's say, 3000BC to 2013AD, this has happened exactly once.
Okay, first off, if we're talking about legends and mythology, there's enough ambiguity about all sorts of tales that have to do with sky phenomena or gods/heroes/whatever who interact with stuff in the sky that there could very well be accounts buried somewhere in those mythical stories... we just can't separate them out from all of the other weirdness.
Even among Norse mythology [wikipedia.org], where you'd expect at least some significant discussion of aurora phenomena given where they lived, historians aren't even sure what -- if anything -- may be referencing auroras in those legends.
And if we're talking about recorded history, there are a lot of "lights in the sky" kind of events, with Chinese records in particular going back thousands of years. Figuring out whether such things could be supernovas or comets or perhaps auroras is often not easy -- descriptions can be ambiguous. And events that were visible globally often weren't recorded with the same detail -- for example, the Chinese clearly record the apparently significant appearance in 1054 C.E. of the supernova that has led to the Crab Nebula, but I don't think anyone has found a clear reference to that in European astronomical records.
In sum, whether we're talking about history or pre-history, there's plenty of stuff that went on up in the sky, and plenty of stories about it. But I don't think we can come anywhere close to saying for certain that no one observed unusual auroras or whatever due to some event like this in the entire history of civilization.
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Joshua 10:13
So the sun stood still, and the moon stopped, till the nation avenged itself on its enemies, as it is written in the Book of Jashar. The sun stopped in the middle of the sky and delayed going down about a full day.
It is not impossible that oral tradition changes an event where it was bright enough to read at night into an event where the sun was shining all night.
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Hmm. Possibly a supernova event, somewhat nearby (astronomically speaking, where nearby could be pretty far out)? The amount of radiation that would put out could light up the sky for some time. And it's not like people of that age had the equipment (solar filter) to look directly at the sun...the earth would continue rotating, as it usually does, but the continued light in the heavens would convince an earlier peoples that the sun must still be directly above them, because all light comes from the sun, or
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So, based on conjecture it was a unique event, but you then say that based on actual science it is a 500 year event, so why bother with the conjecture at all?
At the time of the Carrington event there were various tribes that weren't in contact with the modern world, but are now. How many of them have a legend or belief based on the Carrington event? I am aware of none but would be interested if there are any you know of.
Fuses (Score:3, Insightful)
Or we could start protecting our central power infrastructure the same way most homes are protected - by having it switch off rather than blow up when overloaded for any reason.
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Brilliant! Why haven't the grid operators thought of that one?!?
sPh
Of course, large power transformers can be damaged by electromagnetic storms even when fully disconnected from the grid...
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Bull.
Known problem, already dealt with. (Score:5, Informative)
The last time someone got wound up about this on Slashdot [slashdot.org]. And, last time around, I linked the PJM power grid training document on geo-magnetic disturbances. [pjm.com] They know about the Carrington Event. They know all about the problem in 1989, which happened on their system and damaged some transformers.
The problem shows up as DC current on long AC lines, because voltage at "ground" differs across points hundreds of miles apart. This can damage transformers. So they have DC current monitoring in place at some key points on their system. Corrective action is taken when "DC measurement of 10 amps or greater measured at Missouri Avenue in Atlantic City and/or Meadow Brook Station near Winchester Virginia". Some long-distance lines have to operate at reduced capacity. Some generating plants are told to reduce output. Others have to crank up to compensate.
Medium sized disturbances of this type happen a few times a year (more at the high point of the sunspot cycle). Only one warning so far this year, on June 29th. April 11, 2010 was the most recent disturbance event that required that action be taken. The warning came in from NOAA's Space Weather Center, and people in power grid control centers (the US has seven) reconfigured the power grid to prepare for it.
think big (Score:4, Interesting)
Understandably, the later half of the article talks about current solutions utilities and governments are considering to protect the infrastructure. However, let us just suppose for a moment that we are a type I civilization on the Kardashev scale. What type of conceptual solutions could be used to protect the whole planet instead of just small patches of people?
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What type of conceptual solutions could be used to protect the whole planet instead of just small patches of people?
Lots of spare parts. Make a grid that can shut down safely under the loading from such solar flares. The more I read of this, the more overblown I think the concerns are.
OMG Sharknado! (Score:3)
From SPACE!!! Alienado. I'm not just going to sit here and write about it. I'm going to throw bombs into space.
You see, kids? (Score:2)
'Telegraphs in Philadelphia were spitting out âoefantastical and unreadable messages,â'
That's why, today, we have error correction.
actual evidence (Score:3)
So I work for a telco, and I used to work in the NOC. I got all the alarms for all the equipment all over the country and would call out techs to fix it or fix it myself when there was a problem. After a particularly bad day a few years back I read that there had been some elevated solar activity that day. We always knew that solar activity effected our equipment, after all our giant nationwide network was basically a huge copper net for all those stray electrons. But I realized that now I had a large dataset to play with.
To my surprise there was actually a NASA space weather website with large datasets you could download that would show solar output over time. So I dumped all this into a database along with logs of our alarms. Without getting into all the details of it, I found that we indeed did have spikes when solar activity went up but there were other spikes as well. Realizing our #1 cause of equipment alarm or failure was electrical storms, I then filtered out all alarms that were resolved as "Storm related" by the repair tech and re-ran my report. There, clear as day were 2 graph lines that were very similar in their trajectory. Solar activity and our alarm activity. It wasn't perfect but I'm no research scientist but it was compelling enough that I took this to my boss, very excited. He was impressed "That's really cool!" I was giddy... then he looked up and said "well?" and I was like "Huh" and which point he made the obvious point that I had missed in my excitement "there is absolutely nothing we can do about this. You just wasted several hours of your time... it's still really cool though!"
Ah well... but it is a fact, solar activity has a direct impact on copper networking equipment. Even our fiber optic networks had an increase in alarms, I suspect because the routers and such are metal and plugged into the electrical grid.
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Attack of the Space Weather (Score:2)
We are canceling the space weather apocalypse!
Switch on the GlaDOS!
Re:OMG 9 hour... (Score:5, Insightful)
9 hours no electricity? what a catastrophe. I've done that for 9, 18, 24 or so hours, it was called camping
Depends. If your oxygen concentrator doesn't run for 9 hours or you can't keep your insulin cold for 9 hours, yeah it could be a catastrophe. If you have lederly parents to care for or young children, yes it could be a problem. But if you are just thinking of no light bulbs or tv, yeah, then it probably isn't a big deal. OTOH, no subways, elevators, mass transit, gasoline heating or cooling (depending on the time of the year and your location), no emergency response or telephones to even contact them. Would that be a catastrophe? For some it could very well be.
Re:OMG 9 hour... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:OMG 9 hour... (Score:5, Insightful)
You sort of missed the point. A full-blown Carrington Event, like in 1859, could result in many months or perhaps a year without electricity. It's relatively easy to sit out a few hours or perhaps a week without power, but I think that you would find it a different story with out power for half a year or year (or tightly rationed power for that period of time). Like, perhaps you wouldn't have a job, and there would be signficant food shortages...
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A full-blown Carrington Event, like in 1859, could result in many months or perhaps a year without electricity.
Or it might be just a couple of days till the event is over. It apparently is not that hard to protect this sort of equipment against the sort of surges that a Carrington Event would generate.
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A full-blown Carrington Event, like in 1859, could result in many months or perhaps a year without electricity.
Or it might be just a couple of days till the event is over. It apparently is not that hard to protect this sort of equipment against the sort of surges that a Carrington Event would generate.
Only if you do it. And it will only be done if those responsible for it are aware of the danger.
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Only if you do it. And it will only be done if those responsible for it are aware of the danger.
They'll have at least a day or two of warning. Possibly much more. Even if they do nothing to prepare, that's enough time to take critical components off the grid.
And if we're talking about it on Slashdot, then they're aware of it to some degree.
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Not if they no longer have the means which provide the warnings, due to cost-cutting.
Great logic. "You've warned us and thus now we are aware. Since we are aware, you should not have warned us."
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And if we're talking about it on Slashdot, then they're aware of it to some degree.
Great logic. "You've warned us and thus now we are aware. Since we are aware, you should not have warned us."
No, I have to disagree. That's terrible logic. And completely irrelevant to what I wrote. For example, I said nothing about what anyone "should" do.
Re:OMG 9 hour... (Score:4, Insightful)
It's a long article, I can understand why you might not have gone through it. Here's some snipsthat might be important to note and that caught my attention when I was reading up on it previously.
So yeah, Lloyd's of London and the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission disagree with you for good reasons.
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Second, I don't buy that it'll take a year to replace such components. My take is that a competent, large machine shop can crank out a replacement inside of about a week. It won't be up to whatever specs they have for those specialized transformers and other components, so don't load it like fresh from the factor
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Whether you "buy" it or not is irrelevant to the veracity of the notion.
*A* replacement part. Singular. Scale that. Where a power station has to replace over half of its components, not just one or two. Further, practically every major power station in the entire world would be affected by the event... and these machine shops generally
Re:OMG 9 hour... (Score:4, Informative)
Even if the machine shop is getting electricity. This isn't detailed in TFA but is well documented elsewhere. Take this article [larouchepac.com] where they explain:
A further example to make it more obvious that khallow doesn't actually understand what the problem is.
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Even if that large machine shop is also not getting electricity?
Why would that happen? Get some portable generators and that problem is solved. Solar flares won't nail most electrical equipment unless that happens to connected to the grid and gets fried as a result.
And where does it get the needed materials in such a short time?
We have an industrial society. There's plenty of crap lying around in junk yards and warehouses.
BTW, can you explain how you get to that assumption?
Sure. As I understand it, transformers of this class consist of a pile of wound copper or aluminum wire, usually bathed in some sort of oil or other electrically nonconductive, heat conducting fluid. And they often
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To start with, you want to control the phase, because that's how you control how much power is flowing (and in which direction -- you don't generally want the power to flow from the grid to the power plant, after all).
That is more complicated. But it's still possible to build them in a machine shop. I grant the first one probably wouldn't be made in a week, but it's not going to take a year. I'm more concerned about components that use semiconductors (such as the "static VAR compensator" [wikipedia.org] which uses thyristors). Again, it's still possible to make such things in a machine shop, but now you need some sort of experience in making and doping semiconductors by hand to specification. There would be a lot of trial and error for
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Provided the protective measures are implemented in time. Note that the protective measures include shutting the grid down, so it's only going to be done if they feel quite sure there's a problem.
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Actually, no. They could have as little as an hour notice to an actual event. It used to be no warning at all, but data from SOHO at the Earth Sun Lagrange point is now being analyzed in real time for that reason.
There is actually some effort to put a proper advisory system and emergency protocols in place, but that isn't complete yet.
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They could have as little as an hour notice to an actual event.
Do you have an example of this? I've been hearing of lead times of almost three quarters of a day for the Carrington event (and perhaps longer) and that was apparently because a previous flare had "cleared" a path.
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Sure, we can see it coming but until it reaches SOHO (the space probe), we don't know how severe it will be. How many times a year do we want to drop the grid when we see an event coming?
The majority of such events are handled fine by existing procedures where specific lines are dropped based on measured currents. That happens as often as 24 times a year. However, if an exceptionally strong event occurs, system damage might happen before those procedures come into play.
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It isn't uncommon to lose power for about a week with storms in this area. We loose power for about 9 hours probably once a year or so and for a week about once every 10 years. We all manage to survive. You can't stop the storms, so you deal with it. I don't see these solar storms as any worse and they are MUCH less frequent.
You are talking about a small geographic area, they are talking planet wide and actually for an entire year.
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if you can generate local power and the utility goes out regularly it's not a problem.. the power needed to keep the city running(as a functioning social concept, police etc) and hospitals you can still get as long as it doesn't fry everything, totally, everywhere, which it doesn't seem to(since spares aren't affected).
if your generator gets fried then it becomes a bit of a bigger problem. unless your refrigator runs on gas and you have an ample supply. but it doesn't seem a carrington event would fry every
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The problem is telluric currents [wikipedia.org], electrical current induced in the conductive layers of the Earth and in long conductors either on or under the surface.
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It isn't uncommon to lose power for about a week with storms in this area. We loose power for about 9 hours probably once a year or so and for a week about once every 10 years.
6,000,000 people at once???
It's not just the duration, but also the extent...
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In a normal weather storm induced blackout things generally work once the downed power-lines are repaired, in a space weather induced blackout, there are tremendous current loops transformers exploding, lines melting, electronics frying; things are not going to work.
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If your oxygen concentrator doesn't run for 9 hours
There are other reasons that solar flares that cause power outages. If one's life depends on concentrated oxygen one should have a backup supply to last a few days.
you can't keep your insulin cold for 9 hours
According to the FDA [fda.gov] insulin will last quite a while without refrigeration.
Insulin products contained in vials or cartridges supplied by the manufacturers (opened or unopened) may be left unrefrigerated at a temperature between 59F and 86F for up to 28 days and continue to work. However, an insulin product that has been altered for the purpose of dilution or by removal from the manufacturer’s original vial should be discarded within two weeks.
There are many reasons power can be out for quite a while; weather, earthquake, equipment failure, etc. The point is that short term, less than a few days, without power should be able to be handled by individuals. If a catastrophe is going to happen if the power goes out
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There are many reasons power can be out for quite a while; weather, earthquake, equipment failure, etc. The point is that short term, less than a few days, without power should be able to be handled by individuals. If a catastrophe is going to happen if the power goes out for a few days there is a much bigger issue than space weather.
PS. I see this as another misuse of a word to sensationalize a story. Space weather may cause local problems but not catastrophes.
Yes there are, but with the exception of equipment failure when sever weather or earthquake occur, don't we call those natural disasters? Maybe disasters and catastrophes are two different things? From the article, though, they aren't talking about power being off for a few hours in a small area, but the power grids being destroyed world wide and taking a year or more to rebuild them. Satellites would be destroyed, so most communications would be out, even if power were restored. It might not be a catastrop
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If you cannot survive without electricity for 9 hours, you have to expect to die.
Hell 3 days would be my absolute minimum, with multiple backup plans planned.
Sure, there are broader cases, and legitimate reasons.
I think here in Canada, they strictly recommend that you are capable of surviving one or two days if you go out driving in winter. Because there is a chance that you and hundreds of others will be stuck in a blizzard and trapped without outside help for at least that long.
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Gasoline heating or cooling via electricity? Where is this common practice?
Most gasoline is stored below ground at stations for the purposes of preventing vapor volume loss. I'm not aware whether transport trucks employ cooling systems, but I doubt it's terribly necessary due to the volume of liquid we're dealing with.
Now, diesel heating is another matter. But even diesel is stored below ground, and the heating is usually done by inline vehicle systems.
I'd be interested in knowing more about this if you hav
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That gasoline goes below ground, but the pumps to get it out are electric. No power, no pumps.
The gas station operators could open the fill hole and stick a hand-pump in, but it'd be very slow to dispense - and with panic buying inevitable, the queue could take hours to get through.
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Hand pump out enough gasoline to start a generator, and use it to power the pumps for dispensing?
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Hand pump out enough gasoline to start a generator, and use it to power the pumps for dispensing?
I'll play. And where do you get the generator from? I'm pretty sure if it were as simple as hand pumping or using a generator to get gas from the storage tanks, then when there are natural disasters, people would do exactly that. However that is not the case.
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I'm pretty sure if it were as simple as hand pumping or using a generator to get gas from the storage tanks, then when there are natural disasters, people would do exactly that. However that is not the case.
What do you mean that's not the case? Is there some disaster where they were unable to do this?
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That really should have read no gasoline, heating or cooling... instead of no gasoline heating or cooling. The heating and cooling was referencing climate control depending on what time of year this hit (or hemisphere).
Still, while it would be possible to use a generator to power the gas pumps, you won't be able to run down to the local Home Depot and pick one up and just wire it in. For one, they just don't stock that many. And secondly, it is unlikely that they would have one large enough for a gas statio
Re:OMG 9 hour... (Score:5, Insightful)
basically a global EMP
I was starting to think I was on the wrong website, I had to read down this far before someone finally understands the threat is more than a just a mess of power line knocked down in a storm. Sure humans were built to survive without electricity, but not in the vast numbers created by our invention of civilization. The numbers supported by a civilization are directly related to its technology level. Without electricity we will be metaphorically back in the 1920's with 7X the number of people on our little rock requiring food and shelter.
If the damage takes too long to fix civil war and mass migration is a likely outcome, which will be hard to believe for people who think that drought [scienceblogs.com] has nothing to do with the Syrian war.
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which will be hard to believe for people who think that drought has nothing to do with the Syrian war.
This seems a bit out of the blue. Sure, mismanage your vital infrastructure enough (be it water mismanagement or not taking down your electricity grid in the face of a Carrington event) and yes, you'll screw your society. Sure, it's bad when such things happen, but there's a ready solution - don't do that. Developed world societies (of which Syria is not part) have been pretty good at not doing that.
My view here is that let's look at actual responses to real world emergencies and similar issues. If those
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You are correct, thank you.
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Don't forget roads in urban areas. No power means no traffic signals.
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there are emergency systems for such situations. be prepared, those you really care about are your responsibility
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9 hours no electricity?
. . . means 9 hours of no light pollution. Awesome, for watching the amazing aurora borealis! No TV? No Internet? Get outside, and look at a sky that you will never see again!
Of course, let's hope that hospitals and such are prepared . . .
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9 hours no electricity?
. . . means 9 hours of no light pollution. Awesome, for watching the amazing aurora borealis! No TV? No Internet? Get outside, and look at a sky that you will never see again!
What if it's cloudy?
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9 hours no electricity?
. . . means 9 hours of no light pollution. Awesome, for watching the amazing aurora borealis! No TV? No Internet? Get outside, and look at a sky that you will never see again!
Of course, let's hope that hospitals and such are prepared . . .
... for the triffid uprising after everyone goes blind!
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During the Carrington event, the aurora was so bright people thought it was dawn and you could read newspapers by their light. The Aurora could be seen in Cuba and Hawaii.
Re:OMG 9 hour... (Score:4, Insightful)
In the worst case, it could leave 20 million to 40 million people in the Northeast without power — possibly for years — as utilities struggled to replace thousands of fried transformers stretching from Washington to Boston.
Nine hours was the relatively minor 1989 event. Something like the Carrington event could be much, much more damaging.
I'll leave it to your imagination how it might be to live and work in major urban areas with a severely damaged grid.
Re:OMG 9 hour... (Score:5, Interesting)
Nine hours was the relatively minor 1989 event. Something like the Carrington event could be much, much more damaging.
Nine hours Is about the maximum duration and the Carrington event wasn't much longer than that. Once your part of the world rotates into the dark you are shielded from most of the the CME effects. (Not all, but the most damaging high energy flow is diverted around the earth).
Further CMEs don't tend to last more than a couple days at worst. And they take 3 to 4 days to arrive, so people have time to unplug stuff, and even to de-energize and temporarily ground long transmission lines. Your local power company already knows where every manual disconnect switch is, and can have the local grid broken into small segments and de-energized in mere hours. Some of these are in cabinets in your neighborhood, and some are on power poles (long rod running to a locked lever arm near the ground).
Long un-grounded transmission lines (or similar structures, even electric fences) are the most easily effected. But anything that is grounded periodically (every few miles) is not particularly affected. Nobody thought of this in the era of telegraph, but its built into every system these days with the possible exception of highpower transmission lines.
Modern building wiring, with GFI and GFCI would probably all trip, preventing a lot of infrastructure damage, and if not, you've got 4 days to plan manual breaker tripping.
These surges won't affect big pump motors as the story suggests, because 1) you know they are coming ahead of time, 2) its easy to disconnect the pump motors from the mains, and start your local diesel generators for the duration. The disconnect switch gear and the local generators are already built into critical infrastructure. Short runs between the backup generators and the pumps would not build up any induced currents.
The story is a great deal of hyperventilating by people who don't really understand how infrastructure is built these days.
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The CME that caused the Carrington Event followed a preceding CME that "cleared the path" which allowed the CME to arrive in just 17 hours.
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allegedly. It was s long time ago.
And as I mentioned, the first CME happened more than three days earlier, and was already causing problems, so there was already reason to put their plan in action.
But with telegraph in its infancy, they had no plan, and no knowledge of these events. And yet a day later the Telegraph system was back to normal, with no need of repair.
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How does one ground a power line without shorting to ground?
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Will you still accept bitcoins? Paper bitcoins, maybe? :)
Re:OMG 9 hours? 9 days? Half a year? (Score:3)
I lieved in Montreal during that blackout. The weather was fine that evening. I turned the power off on my computer (in case the power came on flaky) and went for a walk. A block or so away there was someone who had decided to sit on hos porch with a guitar. Several of us gathered around to listen.
Much later I went to bed. In the dark, natch.
It wasn't much of a problem for me, no.
But if it has been longer, and in midwinter, it would have been a problem.
Come to think of it, I've lived through such an e
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Landlines are powered from the exchange. All exchanges have backup batteries and generators for just that situation - because in an emergency, you really want the phones to work so the injured can call 911.
It could become a serious concern with the loss of landlines in favor of cellphone and VoIP though. The infrastructure for those is much more distributed, and generally doesn't have much in the way of backup power. It's not practical to put a generator in every street cabinet and base station - those gene
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I arrived at the airport, which was powered with emergency power, and tried calling my wife on my cellphone. Apparently cell phones still worked at the airport, because I reached my wife, who turned out to be at an emergency shelter at the hospital, which also had some kind of emergency power (she's a doctor there).
The first I really knew about the ice storm was in the newsreels on the flight from Heathrow, where I say huge hydro towers falling over one after another like dominos.
-- hendrik
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Having lived through various natural disasters that caused electrical power to be out for many days, I've found the situation to be workable if there is somewhere nearby that still has power. It can be very inconvenient, but if you can get somewhere nearby that has power it lets you solve most of the problems you run into. (The house I grew up in had a wood stove for backup heat in just that type of situation.)
An event that caused serious damage to any number of substation transformers would be a totally
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I managed to get to a shelter. That made a huge difference. Getting to a place where there was heat was essential. I remember looking out of one of the shelter's windows, and seeing ice everywhere. Crystal trees. It was beautiful. But it was austere beauty, deadly to be stranded in.
When the electricity came back I managed to be one of the first to get the plumbers in, as well as nine kilowatts of electric heaters. They managed to get the regular heating on after disconnecting two busted radiators. But
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Sounds like you had basic necessities, such as heat. Without that my place became unlivable.
And did you have a huge stock of nonspoiling food? Or did you have the miracle of an accessible functinoing groceryy store?
-- hendrik
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Wow, with that kind of forward thinking you could run for Congress, or be a pundit!
Hey - I have some land on Mount St Helens that I'd like to sell - want some?
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Wow, with that kind of forward thinking you could run for Congress, or be a pundit!
Hey - I have some land on Mount St Helens that I'd like to sell - want some?
Yeah, I'll take that land. Its probably safe for another 30 thousand years.
Look, you are being unfair.
CMEs do not affect earth suddenly without warning. You get 3 to four days before the effect reaches earth.
That is plenty of time to announce and plan for 1 one day power grid shutdown. You trip every breaker in the local grid, and you can protect the local transformers as well as the residential electronics. (Most grids can do this remotely.) You need several miles (10 or 50) before the effect of the CM
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From Wikipedia [wikipedia.org] (emphasis by me):
From August 28, 1859, until September 2, numerous sunspots and solar flares were observed on the sun. Just before noon on September 1, the British astronomer Richard Carrington observed the largest flare,[3] which caused a major coronal mass ejection (CME) to travel directly toward Earth, taking 17.6 hours. Such a journey normally takes three to four days.
So much for thre
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In 1859 we didn't have sun watching satellites.
Further the the first solar flare was August 28, and the big one was first noticed on September 1st.
So there were in excess of 3 days warning.
The first flare also caused enough disruption that telegraph didn't work, so in the modern era we would have been preparing for that one, long before the second one started.
But, hey, nice selective quote.
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Since you just practiced during the small one, and having history as your guide, 17 hours is plenty of time.
Like I said, there was easily 3 days of warning.
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The only reason we get any warning at all is because people with more foresight than you understood that it is a serious matter. We do NOT yet have a proper protocol in place to have power companies take appropriate action in response to solar observations. That is, someone somewhere will see it coming, but he'll be that 'crank' that officials at the power company are busy ignoring. Or worse, they'll decide he must be a terrorist that wants to trick them into shutting the grid down.
Re:About as much damage as Y2K (Score:5, Insightful)
1) Smaller solar flares have affected the grid before. It's not unthinkable that a big one as mentioned in TFA can break a lot more stuff. Stuff that isn't exactly off the shelf in quantity. Might be a rare event, but if we can plan against it, maybe we should? Beats sitting in the dark for weeks.
2) Speaking of Y2K... the reason nothing happened is because companies took action. I've been involved in Y2K work at the time, and while a lot of it was bullshit ("Make sure the coffee machines are Y2K-ready or we're doooooomed"), the power plant and telco I worked for would have been severly affected by Y2K if nothing had been done. Some of that was simply being prepared for any disaster; their systems had never been offline completely (only parts of it), and there was no procedure for a cold restart.
In other words, when doom is called, consultants scramble to grab a piece of the hyped pie, companies take rational stock of their own situation and apply fixes as needed, and the general public scoffs as the event passes as another non-event, because of preparation and planning
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I suspect the general public sees the hyped claims of various consultants a lot more than it sees the rational steps being taken. Why? because those "consultants" are trying to get free advertisments for their services by using the news. As long as the news facilitates this, the public either gets a distorted view, or has to go to the much more radical step of rejecting the basic trustworthyness of ALL news. Deciding the whole of mass media, entering your home for hours every day, is trying to con you, is a
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Deciding the whole of mass media, entering your home for hours every day, is trying to con you, is a much bigger step than deciding a bunch of power companies, scientists, and odd little government agencies you seldom think about (i.e. the National Institute of Standards) are doing it.
Depends on which media and scientists we're speaking of. For example, CNBC apparently spent a lot of time selling the Facebook IPO, including all day coverage on the day Facebook hit the stock market. Fox News is notorious for its bias. CNN just airs "live coverage" rather than actual news these days. And just about everyone notices that when news coverage from most sources actually brushes on knowledge that you know, they tend to get it very wrong - often in ways that are convenient for them. Con artists d
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, the power plant and telco I worked for would have been severly affected by Y2K if nothing had been done.
The billing system would have been doomed, but power generation and call handling would have gone on just fine.
Worst case would require a reboot of computerized call switching gear.
I made a significant amount of money running through code in many different data systems preparing for y2k, and
my analysis indicated that the systems we dealt with would have continued to run, but results would be wrong, people wouldn't get
paid, or would get paid too much, sure. But if we just waited out the month of January, mo
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In other words, when doom is called, consultants scramble to grab a piece of the hyped pie, companies take rational stock of their own situation and apply fixes as needed, and the general public scoffs as the event passes as another non-event, because of preparation and planning -- by JaredOfEuropa
God bless those Europans.
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I suppose you've also heard about plague, AIDS and the measles
Plague? I stopped sleeping with punk rock girls with pet rats in their beds back in the '80s.
AIDS? What do middle aged white guys care about AIDS? Not even their wives will have promiscuous sex with them.
Measles? Kids get inoculated before they can worry about becoming autistic from the inoculation.
It will be very difficult to rid the world of all human beings . . . we're like the toenail fungus of Mother Earth. Sure, take away our electricity and a lot of folks will suffer and die, but we'll still
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I always hear about solar flares/storms etc. and the damage they can/will cause, but I have never once been affected by them. Seems like much ado about nothing.
You've probably hear alot but never been directly affected by terrorist attacts either. Doesn't mean that the risk isn't real and that society shouldn't prepare for it just incase.
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Meh, US society would be a hell of a lot better off if we did absolutely nothing to mitigate terrorist attacks than as things stand now. Sadly, "give me liberty or give me death" has largely been replaced by "keep me safe at all costs" in popular sentiment.
That's besides the point. But as Benjamin Franklin said: "They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
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Over reacting *IS* just as bad or worse than under reacting in many cases.
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The reason Y2K turned out not to be a big deal is because millions of programmers worked round the clock to fix their code in time. I would expect that people on Slashdot, of all places, would understand that.
Unfortunately, we won't get sufficient advanced warning of a major solar storm.
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Well, if you lived in Quebec or worked for any of the Canadian electric transmission providers your viewpoint might be a bit different...
sPh
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If DOOM happened and say 1billion died, only one in 7 would be gone. Would you even notice it all that much? I mean even some big event taking a billion of people away would be a major catastrophe and yet we could go on without noticing the real impact. (Seeing piles of dead people in the news isn't real impact). With a little bit of doom you could still justify your view - remarkable.
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Astronomical events could do that easily. For example a big asteroid collision, direct hit by long gamma ray burst, change in (supposedly) cosmical constants and others.
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wrong (and I'm a firearms hobbyist / gun nut)
Most important things:
1. water
2. food
3. protection from elements (shelter, clothing)
4. tools including weapons
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One of my neighbors is kinda of a minor league "prepper" he's got water and ramen noodles and... some other stuff... who knows. Anyways, he was over one day and I was cleaning my pistol... he doesn't like guns much and was telling me it would never do me much good. I asked "what about the disaster you're always getting ready for?" He went on to tell me a gun wouldn't do me any good, I'd need food water, etc... what good were bullets when I was starving. I asked "Couldn't I just use my gun to shoot you and t
Solar Physics naming schemes .. (Score:3)
Carrington Event : ~ August 28, 1859 to ~Sept 2, 1869
Bastile Day Event : ~July 14, 2000 to ~July 16, 2000
Halloween Storms : ~October 19th, 2003 to ~Nov 7, 2003
Of course, when someone says they 'studied the Halloween Storm', they might've only studied 7 days instead of the full 3 weeks.
(disclaimer: I've been pushing for better data citation in the solar physics community for years ... this is one of my pet peeves)