[HN Gopher] The Carrington Event of 1859 disrupted telegraph lines
___________________________________________________________________
The Carrington Event of 1859 disrupted telegraph lines
Author : Thevet
Score : 144 points
Date : 2023-09-08 21:35 UTC (3 days ago)
(HTM) web link (daily.jstor.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (daily.jstor.org)
| denton-scratch wrote:
| > and in the event we would lose the data almost as soon as we
| had found it.
|
| Why? I suppose because the equipment to capture the data is
| electrical (or electronic).
|
| But given that a Miyake Event is something that's never been
| observed, even using non-electrical detectors, I don't see why
| ordinary optical detectors (e.g. eyes) couldn't capture at least
| a lot of useful data. And if we can make detectors that work in
| the environment of the LHC, surely we can make detectors that are
| screened against a solar storm.
| forgetfreeman wrote:
| What is technically possible and what actually gets done bear
| very little relation.
| Afteriasi wrote:
| [flagged]
| piva00 wrote:
| > but, sure, keep worrying about co2 levels
|
| I believe you are very aware that humanity is able to worry
| about many different existential threats at the same time,
| right? CO2 levels, nuclear proliferation, Solar storm EMPs,
| asteroid impacts, each one has a different risk profile.
|
| But sure...
| rsynnott wrote:
| > but, sure, keep worrying about co2 levels
|
| Yes, very sensible attitude. Similarly, when I'm crossing the
| road, I don't bother to look to see whether there's oncoming
| traffic, on the basis that I could be hit by a meteorite at any
| time...
|
| Seriously, presumably you are aware that more than one thing
| can be a concern at the same time? CO2 levels are probably more
| of an immediate and addressable concern, in this particular
| case, but both should be a worry.
| Maken wrote:
| ?Who cares about anything else if the Sun could kill us all
| tomorrow?
|
| _Proceeds to walk directly into oncoming traffic._
| bigyax wrote:
| A 1 percent chance of happening in the next decade. It's the
| inevitability of it that's most terrifying, society will
| fundamentally collapse, there's no way we could prepare for how
| rapidly our lives would be changed, and absolutely nothing we can
| do to to stop it.
|
| Only hope is that for when it happens it's far enough down the
| road for technology to have adapted to bring enough resiliency
| and/or redundancy into the grid such that we are not so
| completely vulnerable
| alted wrote:
| The probability may actually be much higher: about 12% per
| decade for a -850mT event; 1.5% for -1700mT [1].
|
| Wikipedia estimates the Carrington was anywhere from -800 to
| -1750 [2].
|
| [1] "On the probability of occurrence of extreme space weather
| events", Pete Riley, 2012, doi:10.1029/2011SW000734
|
| [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carrington_Event
| JohnClark1337 wrote:
| [dead]
| delfinom wrote:
| As long as it kills cryptocurrencies, I'm more than happy to
| live without electricity.
| dwaltrip wrote:
| Are you willing to living without food?
| namlem wrote:
| We could decouple transformers to stop them from being
| destroyed. Wiring is easy to repair, it's the transformers that
| are vulnerable.
| pixl97 wrote:
| We 'could' at least in theory. The actual response I expect
| is something closer to "don't look up"
| bigyax wrote:
| That would certainly be the most immediate mitigation
| strategy. I wonder though would there be enough time? Would
| it be possible to isolate the transformers so completely such
| that they would not be affected by an event of this magnitude
| ankitg12 wrote:
| This does sound quite scary and impact of such a even would cross
| the impact what COVID-19 had on all of us.
| hunter2_ wrote:
| In some respects it would have an opposite effect: no more Zoom
| calls; if you want contact with someone, go out and find them.
|
| Seems like it could require additional police presence, and
| they'll find it difficult to be effective without radios. We
| will need to look at centuries-old playbooks for virtually all
| aspects of life, temporarily. Hoaxes will spread without rapid
| fact checking.
| graemep wrote:
| It would also lead to the collapse of vital systems:
| transport, utilities, payments....
|
| > Hoaxes will spread without rapid fact checking.
|
| They already do. I think you have found the silver lining:
| hoaxes will spread a lot slower.
| piva00 wrote:
| It would lead to the collapse of modern society until/if we
| manage to rebuild it. Nothing in the modern world works
| without electronics and computers.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| I think you'd be surprised to see how quickly people
| adapt - I mean, big parts of the world do just fine
| without electronics and computers. The biggest risk would
| be the water supply, followed by infrastructure - think
| grocery store deliveries.
|
| And these have / are already happening, so contingency
| plans are already there, or should be made. Water
| supplies have been failing in a lot of places due to
| droughts, heatwaves, and dwindling supplies.
| Infrastructure took a big hit when COVID started, in part
| because some people started hoarding (toilet paper, for
| some reason), but the bigger one was "just" because
| people changed their habits a little - buying a little
| extra (toilet paper), working from home (lunch options),
| baking their own bread (flour), etc. And the office real
| estate issue took a hit as well, but I don't think anyone
| will really miss that.
|
| Besides that, the biggest risk will be other people.
| We've seen in recent history that it takes only a small
| disturbance - a natural disaster, a protest gone violent,
| a football match - for people to stop following the
| social contract. It's often depicted in zombie survival
| themed media, people losing their morals quickly for
| their and their family's survival. And with Covid, it
| wasn't even survival, it was toilet paper.
| RugnirViking wrote:
| "the biggest risk will be other people."
|
| Idk from my understanding of natural disasters, failed
| states, and others, it seems to me that people continue
| to form social contracts continuously. It's kinda our
| whole thing, as a species. People absolubtely can be
| brutal, but a majority of people just kinda try to keep
| going, and often do extrodinary things to help people in
| their community continue.
| AtlasBarfed wrote:
| Well, one of the big issues is just in time logistics.
|
| India and lots of other countries have a lot of local
| agriculture and would probably be fine. The US and other
| countries highly reliant on centralized agricultural
| production and transportation? Uhoh.
| thatguy0900 wrote:
| Will they be fine when fertilizer shipments stop?
| kjkjadksj wrote:
| Most of the systems of the modern world were built in the
| pen and pencil days. We can go back to the 1940s if we
| had to I'd imagine. Especially if the national guard were
| deployed to maintain order.
| piva00 wrote:
| The amount of data we processed with pen and pencil was
| multiple orders of magnitude smaller than what we do in
| 2023. We might be able to maintain a few systems chugging
| along with pen and paper but just imagine the sheer
| magnitude of all industrial control systems that rely on
| automation, every single one of those won't exist.
| Processing 2023 taxes manually, that's another hell by
| itself.
|
| We will regress much further than the 1940s, we don't
| have living knowledge of how to keep complex systems
| working that way, we will need to relearn all of that
| while in the midst of absolute chaos. The main issue
| won't be technical but social, when civilisation is
| collapsing it's pretty hard to maintain order to
| bootstrap these complex systems with pen and paper...
| shitstorms wrote:
| One of the more likely black swan events that has the potential
| to cause global upheaval. Quite a bit of data now from other
| solar systems in terms of likelihood of these events. So far it
| looks like it is slightly more likely to occur in the ramp up
| stage of a cycle, not at the very peak.
|
| We would most likely see a very large sunspot(s) days before the
| event and have 10-15 hours to take action, decoupling
| transformers etc, but the effects would be massive nonetheless.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/July_2012_solar_storm
|
| https://spaceweatherarchive.com/2023/06/06/how-big-was-carri...
| dskrepps wrote:
| I've wondered for a while. Lots of people seem to think a
| Carrington Event will simply fry all small electronics and make
| everything stop working, but from my understanding all it'll
| actually do is cause power surges in long transmission lines and
| disrupt wireless signals. Apparently telegraph lines sparked and
| shocked people. So what effect will that actually have now? Will
| a massive power surge go through my house and destroy everything
| plugged in, and thus indirectly my desktop computer? Will every
| house on the grid catch fire, destroying all modern cities? Or
| will substations and transformers be destroyed but shield homes
| themselves from catastrophic damage? Will wildfires destroy every
| forest anywhere near modern infrastructure?
| jcalvinowens wrote:
| DC current on long transmission lines saturates mains
| transformer cores, turning the high voltage primary into a
| short circuit at the peaks of the "unlucky" side of the AC
| waveform.
|
| https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9652509
|
| > When CMEs strike the magnetic field of the Earth which
| provides protection against the fast-moving plasma becomes
| compressed and results in a varying magnetic field on the
| ground. This magnetic field variation generates a geoelectric
| field on the Earth's surface and leads to Geomagnetically
| Induced Current flow through man-made technology. This GIC
| exhibits a very low-frequency quasi-Direct Current (DC) (less
| than 1 Hz) with amplitudes of 10-15 A and up to 300 A peak
| current for 1-2 minutes that flows along conductors and
| technological infrastructure. The power transformers which are
| connected by transmission lines are the most affected by GIC
| events. The GIC enters from the neutral ground point of the
| star-connected (wye) transformer windings and divides equally
| among the phases. When the GIC flows through the transformer
| windings, a DC magnetic flux is generated in the core, whose
| magnitude depends on the GIC flow magnitude. This DC flux is
| then superimposed on the AC flux in such a way that the
| asymmetrical saturation takes place in the magnetic cores of
| the transformers (half-cycle saturation) and increases their
| reactive power consumptions critically.
|
| > During saturation phenomenon, transformers draw an extremely
| large asymmetrical exciting distorted current that is rich in
| even and odd harmonics. These harmonics can trigger the relays
| improperly, overheating the generators and transformer's
| windings and cores, leading to unstable operations of the power
| system and could result in long-term damage to the system's
| components. These effects may turn into catastrophic failures
| (i.e., permanent damage or blackouts) if they persist for a few
| minutes. The 1989 geomagnetic storm in North America that lead
| to severe economic losses is an example of such catastrophic
| consequence due to the effects of GIC.
| kjkjadksj wrote:
| I had lightning hit the pole near my house. Anything with a
| circuit board that was not on a surge protector died.
| Turskarama wrote:
| The big risk is a bunch of transformers blow up, essentially
| taking the grid down. Since we would have to bootstrap the grid
| again without the advantage of the grid... this would likely
| set civilization back pretty far, a new dark age is far from
| impossible.
| AtlasBarfed wrote:
| Sooo.... widespread rooftop solar would probably help the
| resilience of at least domestic power?
| Turskarama wrote:
| They would, at best, be used to power small local induction
| forges and if you're lucky, refrigerators. There's no way
| you could use them to restart the grid.
| lxgr wrote:
| Can common rooftop solar setups actually deliver power
| locally with the grid being down? I would imagine them
| taking at least frequency synchronization from the grid,
| and probably also not faring too well without the grid to
| compensate for variable output when a cloud passes over
| them etc.
| bee_rider wrote:
| Typically solar will not feed back into the grid if it is
| down, to avoid energizing the lines and zapping repair
| crews. This is an intentional design, I'm sure anywhere
| with engineers or hackers could work around it.
|
| You probably want a battery, though.
| ianburrell wrote:
| Most rooftop solar can't produce power without the grid.
| They use cheap inverters that synchronize frequency from
| the grid. They also don't produce enough current to
| handle the peak loads from large appliances starting. The
| battery provides the current peaks. It is possible to buy
| more expensive off-grid inverters.
| JoeAltmaier wrote:
| Yup. Stanford University discovered this to their dismay.
| Power grid went out, even with a field full of solar
| panels they had no electricity until the grid came back.
| verve_rat wrote:
| Batteries and inverters would be common in most
| installations, surly?
| bee_rider wrote:
| Batteries can cost more than the solar cells themselves.
| Plus, the older lead-acid batteries required some
| maintenance. The easy path is to just stay grid tied and
| not bother with a battery.
|
| If all the power lines on earth went down, I bet
| communities would connect people with panels to people
| with batteries, though, somehow or another.
| dividedbyzero wrote:
| Aren't transformers protected from this sort of thing
| nowadays?
| forgetfreeman wrote:
| No.
| dghughes wrote:
| I'm not sure if you can. Transformers are basically two
| differing loops of wire separated by a space. It relies on
| the EMF of each loop to transfer energy from one loop to
| the other. If a strong enough pulse comes along it may be
| too powerful to block. Like trying to stop lightning with a
| $100 UPS or any UPS to stop a millions of volts and tens of
| thousands of amps.
| pixl97 wrote:
| If its disconnected from a grid and grounded it shouldn't
| be an issue... and if the pulse is that powerful to deal
| with it being grounded it's very likely we've lost most
| of the atmosphere at that point making the entire subject
| moot.
| hattmall wrote:
| Don't modern transformers have surge decoupling devices? The
| same thing happens with lightning and long transmission lines
| and isn't that why lights will flicker during storms.
| dboreham wrote:
| Yes but not the same order of magnitude transient as we're
| discussing here. E.g. a fuse isn't a fuse if you force a
| gazillion joule transient through it. Current keep on
| flowing. Same with shunt protection: it can't shunt all the
| transient energy before it vaporizes.
| Aardwolf wrote:
| > Since we would have to bootstrap the grid again without the
| advantage of the grid
|
| That sounds exactly like what happens in the game
| Satisfactory when your nuclear power plant got clogged and
| you only find out when it's too late!
| pixl97 wrote:
| Thank goodness v8 has grid priorities. Though it would be a
| massive pain in the ass if you had to go across the map and
| replace each one of those transformers if an event
| happened.
| borbulon wrote:
| having lived in the tech age, I'm not completely against that
| idea.
| replygirl wrote:
| starvation and dysentery at the same time appeal to you?
| rootusrootus wrote:
| Fixing the transformers would be the difficult part.
| Restarting a completely blacked out grid is a scenario we
| have plans for. Off the top of my head, I know for sure that
| Bonneville Dam has black start turbines, and I wouldn't be at
| all surprised if all major hydroelectric dams provide the
| same ability.
| ianburrell wrote:
| I read that it is fairly easy to protect equipment by
| grounding it. But that requires properly grounding lots of
| gear, and the power companies aren't willing to spend the
| money.
|
| Also, the Carrington event has plenty of notice before
| arrives at Earth. It would be possible to shut down the grid,
| and maybe disconnect all the transformers. It would require a
| cold start, but better to shutdown for a day than forever.
| The problem is that this requires the power companies to
| practice for a shutdown and cold start.
| pixl97 wrote:
| A Carrington event has notice, but there are plenty of,
| rather low probability, space weather events with no notice
| that can do the same thing. It's best if you're not facing
| down the barrel of a quasar.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| > a new dark age is far from impossible.
|
| Nah, it's just transformers and the power grid, that can be
| fixed pretty quickly - see the response after natural
| disasters, Ukraine's power grid being directly attacked, etc.
|
| The only limiting factor would be the availability of spare
| parts and personnel.
| dash2 wrote:
| Japan after WWII recovered pretty fast even though the
| entire world had been set back a lot. Human knowledge is
| the key resource and electrical surges don't wipe that.
| Aardwolf wrote:
| Unless it manages to kill enough hard disks in data
| centers to truly lose a lot of knowledge...
| Turskarama wrote:
| That's a very different circumstance though. For one
| thing, the majority (about 3/4) of Japans manufacturing
| was actually still intact, it just wasn't up to the task
| of keeping up with Americas war machine (which it frankly
| wasn't even at its peak).
|
| They also, as a key point, imported a lot during this
| period. That's something you can't do if everyone else
| has also collapsed.
| delfinom wrote:
| No utility in the US has enough transformers on hand to
| replace them in the case that they all fail, hundreds of
| millions of transformers.
|
| Even right now, disaster responses? All US mainland
| utilities are part of a emergency response pact (private,
| not government run) that obligates each other to send
| workers and equipment _at cost_ to each other. That's how
| things get fixed pretty quickly right now, they are
| depending on the supplies and labor of other utilities that
| weren't affected by the disaster.
|
| That is far different than if the entire country is down.
| blacksqr wrote:
| That's like saying the only limiting factor for the Titanic
| reaching New York is the big hole in the side of the boat.
| Aerbil313 wrote:
| A global disaster is very different from a local one. I
| suggest you review your faith in The Almighty We.
| Civilization has never been more fragile in history than it
| is now.
| TechBro8615 wrote:
| Would it be global or would it only be the side of the
| Earth that was facing the Sun at the time of impact?
| Turskarama wrote:
| It hardly matters. Pick a hemisphere, you will probably
| hit 2 of China, the US, and Europe. No matter what a
| large chunk of the worlds manufacturing is going down.
| pixl97 wrote:
| Not the side, it's about the hemisphere. And in general
| the northern hemisphere is weaker to intrusions by
| powerful electromagnetic events (would have to lookup why
| again). It also turns out that most of the worlds
| population is in the northern hemisphere above the tropic
| of cancer.
| falconinthesun wrote:
| But there's nothing in the article to suggest that these
| events actually affected the entire world. Most of the
| analysis seems to have been carried out in the northern
| hemisphere. If one of these events happened, perhaps it'd
| affect only one hemisphere or we'd have portions of the
| world unaffected or partially unaffected and able to
| provide assistance.
| forgetfreeman wrote:
| You're ignoring (among other things) global food
| logistics. You delete the ability to produce, deliver,
| and distribute fuel to a hemisphere for a couple of
| months and the resulting disruption to agriculture
| guarantees a global famine.
| Turskarama wrote:
| Half the world is still very different to one country.
|
| In fact, if the "once country" was _China_ (or Taiwan) it
| could be a civilisation ending event. We've built a house
| of cards, and while it does have some redundancy it's not
| all that resilient.
|
| Keep in mind the modern world as it is now hasn't even
| existed 50 years, it has never really been tested with a
| truly international disaster.
| Apocryphon wrote:
| We're just coming out of an international disaster.
| bequanna wrote:
| The "international disaster" was voluntarily shutting
| down production for a relatively short period.
|
| Let's see how we handle something real like another world
| war or global natural disaster.
| tree_enjoyer wrote:
| It's vastly different when it's a local outage and there's
| functioning equipment outside the effected area. How will
| communicate the needs of grid stations with no electronics,
| satellites, internet? How will this be coordinated? How
| will the trucks moving the equipment be able to refuel when
| the grid is down everywhere, and everyone is rushing to gas
| stations and clogging the freeways? How can even emergency
| services coordinate responses?
|
| If transformers do blow, the big ones at substations and
| stations... We don't tend do keep spares of those on hand.
| They're very often made to order, with a multi-week lead
| time, and that's with a functioning power grid to produce
| and coordinate them, again.
| jakeinspace wrote:
| I wonder whether ships (nuclear and diesel) and diesel-
| electric trains might be an essential resource in slowly
| restarting the grid. If that equipment survives, it would
| be invaluable to have a few mobile GW of power to hook up
| to gas plants.
| [deleted]
| hparadiz wrote:
| From my understanding it mostly effects large pieces of metal
| like copper lines but would be unlikely to create a
| significant charge in small electronics and wouldn't destroy
| solar panels or the vast majority of components. Any
| transformer pieces that are in a disassembled state prior to
| the event would be easy to put together and bootstrap any
| such event. Some locations like inside concrete buildings or
| under ground would remain insulated from the event as well.
| Also it's likely that at the equator no effect will be felt.
| Tangurena2 wrote:
| After a couple incidents where snipers shot at substations
| or hackers turned stuff off, there was a burst of worry
| about the fragility of our electrical grid. Of the large
| transformers that make up substations, almost all of them
| are unique. There is no inventory of spare transformers.
| Each one is custom made and takes months. The small
| transformers you see on poles are made by the thousand, and
| stocked at every utility. The small ones are not the
| problem. The big ones - that are the size of SUVs and
| houses - are the ones that the grid depends on.
| maxerickson wrote:
| There's a difference between made to order and bespoke.
|
| Of course, most of the discourse is hand wavy
| speculation, vs characterization of the existing stock of
| transformers, like what standards they are built to and
| the magnitude of an event that would certainly damage
| them.
| Turskarama wrote:
| The thing is there are very few transformers in a
| disassembled state ready to go. Solar panels would be fine,
| but they're effectively useless without the ability to
| deliver power.
|
| Covid was enough to create an international backlog of
| transformers, and that was with a normal rate of attrition.
| FrustratedMonky wrote:
| Exactly this.
|
| Lets say there were a few transformers that did survive.
|
| The parts to make new transformers are manufactured all
| over the place.
|
| So you would need to transport the 'working' transformers
| where they are needed to get power back to each plant
| that manufactures some singular component that goes into
| a new transformer. AND Transport them, when gas stations
| in-between are all also without power.
|
| The global supply chain is complicated and spread out.
| There are many places with single failure points.
|
| -> Don't have link, but isn't there an article titles
| something like "nobody can make a pencil anymore". Which
| traces out like a dozen connections for even such a
| simple thing.
|
| And, don't forget, a lot of power plants need power to be
| re-started. They don't all have backup gas turbines to
| get going again.
| LeonB wrote:
| The essay is "I, Pencil"
|
| It's a rollicking good read. Here it is in pdf form:
|
| https://fee.org/media/14940/read-i-pencil.pdf
| pixl97 wrote:
| Heh, when you start thinking about how much fuel is
| needed to make fuel it turns into a gnawing concern in
| your mind.
|
| Then add in how little food most people have available
| and you see how modern civilization will end.
| geocrasher wrote:
| And, don't forget, a lot of power plants need power to be
| re-started. They don't all have backup gas turbines to
| get going again.
|
| That made me think of this Everyday Engineering video
| "What Is A Black Start Of The Power Grid?"
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uOSnQM1Zu4w
| dan_mctree wrote:
| There's not nearly enough transformers in reserve to
| properly rebuild the grid and you can't always just drop in
| and replace either. New transformers are also not currently
| able to be produced fast, and having society collapse
| around you probably wouldn't help while trying to increase
| their production rate. If we'd lose most transformers, it
| could be many months or years before large regions could
| see their power back, enough time to cause vast damage
| directly and indirectly.
| toss1 wrote:
| THIS!!
|
| It would be relatively cheap (I've reak ~$500million) to
| build and store a mostly complete replacement set of
| transformers.
|
| The difference it would make in a Carrington+ event (or a
| EMP nuclear attack) is insane. Without them, likely the
| grid collapses for years, along with distribution, food,
| etc. Millions die in the years-decades it takes to
| recover.
|
| With the transformer standby inventory, critical parts of
| the grid could be restored in hours-days, and full
| recovery in a few months. The one country that prepared
| itself with a backup inventory would instantly be the
| world's superpower for years, likely generations.
|
| Yet, because there is no immediate benefit, only
| stochastic, there is no political will to even start to
| get it done. Even a 10% inventory would make a huge
| difference, but...
| pixl97 wrote:
| Honestly this is one of those events where billions could
| possibly die.
|
| Green revolution. The level of food we need requires
| nitrogen. This is broken down by natural gas into
| fertilizer and requires immense amount of energy and
| transportation. When the grid gets knocked out, you're on
| a countdown till you run out of gas/petrol. If you don't
| get enough power back up before this happens you're
| running into a game over situation. Once fuel runs low
| and food runs out, people will start killing each other
| in massive amounts to deal with the resource constrained
| world they live in. Once enough electrical engineers die
| then the system doesn't come back up.
| toss1 wrote:
| Yup, it could really go down that way.
|
| When animal populations overbreed and/or their feed
| under-grows, a 10% overpopulation often results in not a
| 10% shaving of population, but a 90% population crash,
| because almost every animal goes under the survival
| budget.
|
| It would very much the same here.
|
| Excellent point about the EEs (and other high-capability
| engineers, mechanics, technicians required to keep it all
| running) being in the dying population. Absolutely right
| - if the critical mass of available experts fails, the
| system never recovers. Only after society stabilizes,
| regrows, and re-creates the knowledge; by then, it would
| be about rebuilding from scratch.
| dwighttk wrote:
| are uninstalled transformers even safe?
| LeonB wrote:
| Provided they're not connected to lengths of conducting
| material, they ought to be ok.
|
| Hard to be certain though, as transformers are more than
| meets the eye.
| sulam wrote:
| Right, you have to avoid the Decepticons.
| xrd wrote:
| After reading your summary, I'm thinking this might be the only
| way to get my kids to take a break from their iPads for a few
| days. That is terrifying and exciting at the same time.
| Qem wrote:
| The weak link in our electric grid are power transformers,
| because these are large, essential, long operational life
| equipment, whose inventory grew slowly over a century of
| electrification efforts. So if a large number of them blows at
| the same time, it takes the grid down and we don't have enough
| spares or production capacity to replace them timely.
|
| Amapa state in Brazil got a taste of such disaster scenario,
| when the local electricity company was privatizated and
| management decided to eliminate redundancy and cut costs on
| maintenance to increase profit margins. The main transformer
| catched fire and no replacement or backup were available and
| the region endured weeks without power. See
| https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2020/12/18/the-crisis-in-...
| cjohnson318 wrote:
| Wow. That's exactly the sort of busted-bottleneck situation I
| was worried about during Covid. I'm used to hurricanes
| knocking out water and/or power for a few days, but a month
| is insane. There's no way a normal person with a normal
| amount of money and space can "prep" to live off-grid for a
| month. Part of the social contract is that you trade taxes in
| return for not having to worry about this kind of shit.
| stareatgoats wrote:
| Good grief. Here is a thread of currently 58 comments (off the
| back of a erstwhile top comment no doubt) talking about the
| effects of a Carrington event. And granted, this is what is
| mentioned in the title here. But you just need to click on the
| article title to see that the title continues, with "A "Miyake
| Event" Would Be Far Worse", and the article goes on to explain
| how a Miyake event is _orders of magnitude worse_ than a
| Carrington event.
|
| One may conclude that if our modern society get hit with such
| an event it's likely game over, at least as far as modernity is
| concerned.
|
| That be as it may - this is the second time in a few days that
| I experience a severe and disappointing lack of interest in the
| actual linked text. A downside of the karma/gamification aspect
| here? Is it getting worse?
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| It's interesting, considering that this is very likely in
| humanity's future. Probably long after these HN comments, but it
| will happen, and unless our future ancestors are amazing
| planners, it may end up being one of the most disruptive events
| in human civilization.
|
| I wonder if an architecture like micro grids per city block
| running on small fusion or fission reactors 1000 years from now
| would protect them, however.
| dividedbyzero wrote:
| As far as Carrington-like events are concerned I believe
| consensus is that most equipment and electronics would be fine,
| satellites would take damage, radio communication would be out,
| the electrical grid would go down and be hard to restart, but at
| least the most important grid transformers would be protected and
| survive the event, as would cars, computers and machinery. Would
| a Miyazake event change that meaningfully? Can we know for sure?
| Aerbil313 wrote:
| Do you know the amount of hours into grid breakdown before
| widespread lawlessness begin?
|
| My memory is not very clear, but I remember it was around 48
| hrs.
| api wrote:
| If they are many times larger it sounds like they could be more
| like an EMP from a thermonuclear bomb.
|
| Looks like they happen on average every few thousand years. We
| really should be looking at how we recover from such an event,
| and whether we can do things in the design of power grids to
| minimize damage.
|
| If there were humans living on the Moon or Mars these seem like
| they could be even more fatal unless they were living
| underground.
|
| Given how profoundly useful and powerful electronics are,
| perhaps events like this are why electricity and electronics
| are not used at large scale by organic life. Have you ever
| wondered why humans and other life forms are so unaffected by
| EM that we can subject ourselves to things like MRI scans
| without even noticeable effects? Maybe there has been selection
| against anything that is vulnerable to EM because every few
| thousand years anything else is culled.
| jron wrote:
| I think this is the key takeaway for me at least. If we don't
| blow ourselves up first, the sun will basically blast us into
| the stone-age every 6000 years at best or 200 years at worst.
| api wrote:
| You can also add this to the Fermi paradox list. If
| intelligent life is rare, solar systems where intelligent
| life can develop the _type_ of technology capable of space
| flight might be rarer still.
|
| For all we know the Sun is actually quite friendly to this.
| Most stars might behave this way more often. If that's true
| then intelligent life able to harness electricity and all
| it entails would be _very_ rare. If our Sun did this every,
| say, 25 years there would never be an industrial
| /technological civilization here... or at least not a
| sophisticated one able to build things like spacecraft.
|
| In any case this is something we should be studying a lot
| more than we are. It is a far more tangible and realistic
| existential threat than very hypothetical AI apocalypse
| scenarios.
| ianburrell wrote:
| Electronics should be fine from solar flares and EMP. The
| confusion about electronics being damaged comes from nearby
| and high-altitude EMP behaving differently. Nearby EMP
| damages electronics. High-altitude EMP induces current in
| long conductors. Solar flares behave similarly to high-
| altitude EMP, but whole hemisphere.
| nicoburns wrote:
| Electricity is used widely by organic life: it's a key
| mechanism by which nerves and neurons function.
| lxgr wrote:
| Yes, but these mechanisms aren't really electric currents
| in relatively long metal conductors, which are what's
| vulnerable to an EMP.
|
| That's why humans are ok with spending some time in an MRI,
| while microprocessors wouldn't be.
| [deleted]
| HerculePoirot wrote:
| https://www.researchgate.net/publication/3165629_Characteris...
|
| I'm reading this critical analysis of it (2013):
|
| https://www.researchgate.net/publication/292848789_Geometry_...
|
| > The interpretation of individual rock art images and related
| art forms as local perspectives on a single celestial phenomenon
| requires a determination of scale, perspective, and temporal
| evolution. Peratt interpreted dotted circles and concentric
| circles as bottom-up renditions of a diocotron instability
| affecting the hollow outer sheets of the z-pinch (Peratt
| 2003:1209-1210,1212), while he derived 'ladders', 'caterpillars',
| 'birds on sticks', 'squattermen', 'Kokopelli', and many other
| forms from instabilities in the solid inner core of the lower
| segment of the auroral beam, viewed sideways or at an oblique
| angle (Peratt 2003:1193-1205). So far, so good-- the matches
| between these respective instabilities and their petroglyphic
| correlates are indeed compelling. Problems appear when the
| geographic distribution of such designs is taken into account.
| klondike_klive wrote:
| > Peratt interpreted dotted circles and concentric circles as
| bottom-up renditions of a diocotron instability affecting the
| hollow outer sheets of the z-pinch
|
| I love this sentence. I am pretty inarticulate in person,
| sometimes I fantasise myself delivering lines like this in a
| hastily erected mobile command centre.
|
| "In English, please, professor?" growls a FBI agent. My acolyte
| pushes their glasses up "uh... uh... if you consider these
| petroglyphs as a correlate of an instability in the solid inner
| core of the lower segment of the auroral-" the FBI agent
| pinches his temples and rounds on the eager young researcher,
| "You better start making sense, pencil-neck!"
|
| I step gently in between them "In simple terms, we're talking
| about... a Miyake Event."
| ambicapter wrote:
| You're just a screenplay away from playing your dream self in
| a movie.
| xattt wrote:
| I'm trying to understand what kind of phenomenon beams a column
| of light into the sky from the South Pole. I can understand
| auroral curtains, but a cylinder beam sounds far-fetched.
| michaelsbradley wrote:
| Birkeland current
| Archelaos wrote:
| > Consequently, more radiocarbon is packed into a single growth
| ring, and scientists can determine the exact year that ring was
| built. They can then count to the outer ring of the tree to know
| the year that it died.
|
| The article somewhat confused the details. To determine the exact
| year the ring was built (and subsequently year the tree died)
| scientists look at the growth pattern of the surrounding rings
| and compare them with a reference data set of ring width of the
| same tree species in the same (wider) area. This works even if
| the outer ring is not present. The outer ring is only relevant if
| we want to determine the exact year a tree had been cut down,
| which is important for archaeology but not to establish the date
| of the Miyake event in the first place.
|
| > ... providing definitive evidence that the Vikings beat
| Columbus to North America.
|
| > ... The researchers speculated that the settlement was built
| sometime near the end of the first millennium
|
| This was no "speculation", but has already been established as a
| fact for decades with the excavation of the settlement of L'Anse
| aux Meadows itself in the early 1960s. Tree ring dating only
| helped to identify the specific date of the settlement in the
| already established time frame, because the only fitting Miyake
| event was that of 992/993. (The article mentions this, but the
| chain of reasoning is not really accurate.)
|
| The problem with determining the exact date of the settlement
| without the reference to the Miyake event was that we do not have
| a reference record for the tree rings at this site, as this
| requires an uninterrupted record of overlapping trees from the
| present back to the Viking Age for these particular timber
| species in the area.
|
| This could perhaps been established with a lot of effort over the
| years, but with the Miyake events we have indeed a very
| interesting method to compile reference records even without a
| complete reference record to the present. However, it still
| remains uncertain, for example, to which Miyake event a
| particular piece of wood should be attributed without much
| context, whether we already know all the Miyake events of the
| last couple of millennia, and whether another, more local event
| could have led to a carbon-14 value that could be confused with a
| global Miyake event.
| rwmj wrote:
| _> Astronauts would undoubtedly receive lethal doses of
| radiation, and even people on board airplanes could encounter
| dangerous levels._
|
| It sounds like a more immediate problem would be that all
| aircraft and spacecraft electronic systems would fail
| permanently? They wouldn't need to worry about the radiation
| doses.
| arrowsmith wrote:
| Don't modern passenger jets have some kind of failsafe way they
| could still be controlled and landed safely if the electronics
| fail? I would assume they do. But then I know nothing
| whatsoever about aircraft safety and am only speculating.
| lxgr wrote:
| Modern fly-by-wire systems often don't have a mechanic
| backup, and even for mechanically controlled ones (like the
| B737) I wouldn't be too sure if they'd fare that well without
| any electronic controls.
|
| But it's not a given that an event of this type would even
| disrupt electronics not connected to the power grid. Even the
| longest possible line in an airplane is only on the order of
| a couple of meters, compared to thousands of kilometers for
| power and communication lines.
| GolfPopper wrote:
| How much radiation would the passengers be getting during a
| Miyake Event? Air travel normally exposes travelers to a
| tiny percentage of a mSv. A "normal" solar flare can push
| that up to 200 mSv. 2000 mSv in a short time will make you
| sick and boost your chances of cancer. 20000 mSv puts you
| in company with Louis Slotin.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| Modern aircraft have full authority digital engine controls
| (FADEC), even if they use cables and pulleys to operate the
| control surfaces. If your 737 turns into a glider you have
| one chance at landing somewhere, so yeah you might survive
| but not likely especially if you are over water.
| rwmj wrote:
| Even in older jets the engines are controlled by electronic
| management units which take an electrical input from the
| throttle and decide how to turn that into valve actuations.
| There's a question (see sibling answer) about whether such
| electronics and wires are really vulnerable - maybe it only
| affects kilometers long runs - but if it is then I couldn't
| see the jet being flyable.
| martinclayton wrote:
| If these events associate with solar motion through the local
| interstellar cloud perhaps the onset will take a while, and that
| will allow for some mitigations to be made, even if there is no
| way to predict when that might happen.
|
| ... what if one of the Voyager spacecraft is heading in the
| "right" direction to see something ...
| xvilka wrote:
| It's possible to build shielded (up to a certain point of course)
| electronics and power grids, it's just a lot of work and money.
| Ideally, all new devices, grid lines, transformers should be made
| with at least some level of protection from those events. In a
| few decades world will not be a sitting duck anymore if follow
| this strategy.
| djmips wrote:
| I have a surge suppresor in the 15 year old power bar that
| feeds my computer so I'm set.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| The power grid does have protections already - surge
| protectors, breakers, redunancy, etc. There's many possible
| sources for power surges. There's protections in place,
| contingency plans, 24/7 on-call fast response staff, spares,
| etc.
|
| Of course, that's all contingent on budgeting, which is why
| it's important that governments invest and keep investing in
| infrastructure.
| b800h wrote:
| If these Miyake events were so spectacular, why do they not
| appear in the historical record? I appreciate that 774 was in the
| "dark ages" but something as impressive as the Carrington event
| would appear in some chronicles, surely?
|
| EDIT: Sorry, checked Wikipedia:
|
| "Annus Domini (the year of the Lord) 774. This year the
| Northumbrians banished their king, Alred, from York at Easter-
| tide; and chose Ethelred, the son of Mull, for their lord, who
| reigned four winters. This year also appeared in the heavens a
| red crucifix, after sunset; the Mercians and the men of Kent
| fought at Otford; and wonderful serpents were seen in the land of
| the South-Saxons. -- Anglo-Saxon Chronicle[9]"
| tomjakubowski wrote:
| Some random Australian gold prospector wrote about his
| experience (quoting Wikipedia):
|
| _Lights of every imaginable color were issuing from the
| southern heavens, one color fading away only to give place to
| another if possible more beautiful than the last, the streams
| mounting to the zenith, but always becoming a rich purple when
| reaching there, and always curling round, leaving a clear strip
| of sky, which may be described as four fingers held at arm 's
| length._
|
| _The northern side from the zenith was also illuminated with
| beautiful colors, always curling round at the zenith, but were
| considered to be merely a reproduction of the southern display,
| as all colors south and north always corresponded._
|
| _It was a sight never to be forgotten, and was considered at
| the time to be the greatest aurora recorded [...]._
|
| _The rationalist and pantheist saw nature in her most
| exquisite robes, recognising, the divine immanence, immutable
| law, cause, and effect. The superstitious and the fanatical had
| dire forebodings, and thought it a foreshadowing of Armageddon
| and final dissolution._
|
| Maybe it's just survivor bias but: crikey! People could really
| write back then!
| snypher wrote:
| But this was not in reference to the 774AD event surely! Do
| you have a citation for the above quote?
|
| Edit: you probably meant the Carrington event, I am starting
| my next coffee now.
| pixl97 wrote:
| If I spoke the language and or wanted to look into it, I'd
| recommend Chinese or Japanese historical records. They tend
| to have very long historical weather/solar observations.
| Possibly India too, but they may be too far south to see
| the effects.
| rwmj wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/774%E2%80%93775_carbon-14_spik...
| housebear wrote:
| Check out A Canticle for Leibowitz for an entertaining (and often
| depressing) read on life restarting after an extinction event.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Canticle_for_Leibowitz
|
| "Set in a Catholic monastery in the desert of the southwestern
| United States after a devastating nuclear war, the book spans
| thousands of years as civilization rebuilds itself. The monks of
| the Albertian Order of Leibowitz preserve the surviving remnants
| of man's scientific knowledge until the world is again ready for
| it."
| rootusrootus wrote:
| And then of course after mankind recovers and rebuilds to the
| same technological level, they start _another_ nuclear war.
| Figures.
| pixl97 wrote:
| Time does not repeat, but it does rhyme in a phrase that ends
| in global thermonuclear war.
| uoaei wrote:
| What can be done to mitigate such effects in pre-2000 ICE
| vehicles? Would lead-acid batteries succumb to a violent death if
| subject to such a storm? Would the wires fry or would the
| chassis-as-capacitor smooth out the effect?
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2023-09-11 22:01 UTC)