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Geomagnetic Storm To Begin Tonight
Kiel Oleson writes: "According to the Kansas City Star and the Space Environment Center, there is an 80% chance that a series of five geomagnetic storms will disrupt communications and power systems. These storms will hit the earth beginning at 5 PM CST today and ending at 5 PM CST tommorow. There is a 40% chance of there being severe or major disruptions in satellite orbits, electrical grids, and radio. The good side? Some of us may be able to see the Aurora! Get those UPS's charged!" Everyone's cell phone working OK?
The issue is not with mineral deposits in the ground. It's with mulitple-hundred mile long power lines. When you combine a long conductor with a moving magnetic field you can generate some incredible voltages. When the power grid went down last time it was because the generated voltages were large enough to fry the circuit breakers in the power stations. After the first station went down, the others started trying to kick in extra power to compensate. With the extra voltage fluctuations from the magnetic storm, other stations went down. After a few stations were down, the others were unable to provide enough power for the grid, so the whole thing went down.
As to whether they've fixed things so it won't happen again, I guess we'll see tonight.
"Bite me, it's fun!" - Crowe T. Robot
Funny how this has a greater probability of affecting harm to us tonight than y2k did on Dec 31 after all of our preparations, but this probably won't get much press coverage. If it doesn't have a sexy acronym, the major press doesn't seem to latch on to it. (Nothing against the Kansas City paper, of course.)
What's your damage, Heather?
Does this mean that the major world powers will be powerless for 12 hours? I can see it now, the world will be taken over by some third world country with a whole bunch of rocks.
Everyone's cell phone working OK?
Oh, Timothy, dear Timothy -- it probably won't be...that's kind of the point.
As an interesting side benefit, I might actually find a use for all that ramen and cans of baked beans I bought for y2k...
"Sweet creeping zombie Jesus!"
"Sweet creeping zombie Jesus!"
-The Professor, Futurama
The office of the US Press Secretary, late at night...
/etc/home/press.
/etc/home/press/bulletins.
Bob the Assistant: Mr Secretary, the, um, special official space bulletins have been uploaded into your account for you to check before release.
Secretary: Thanks Bob.
WHUX - White House Unix (c) (tm), version 6.0 ("Kissinger" release)
(Unix is a registered trademark of AT&T.)
Username: press
Password: ***
$ go to home
Current directory is
$ go to bulletins
Current directory is
$ run "s/extraterrestrial interference/misuse of the metric system/i; s/impending alien invasion/geomagnetic storm/" on all files
Changes effected.
$ send all files to newswire
Email sent.
$ shut down
To the editors: your English is as bad as your Perl. Please go back to grade school.
I saved this from the last solar storm story on slashdot. (hey, alliteration!)
http://www.sec.noaa.gov/pmap/pmapN.html& lt;/a>
Shows the level of auroral activity in the northern hemisphere. Click around for a southern hemisphere view, ya' lazy bastards.
Any sufficiently advanced civilization is indistinguishable from Gods.
Dunno if it's common knowledge or not, but sunspots are linked with solar magnetic activity; the more sunspots, the more magnetic energy (generally). Sunspot activity seems to be cyclic, with a period of somewhere around 11 years.
;D). I'm curious to see what effect (or how large an effect) this is going to have on these systems. It'd be a shame if all the sudden it turns out that these storms were just too disruptive for our technology as it stands. I mean, how would we know this until such a situation arises? I'd be willing to bet that a large-scale study of solar EM-radiation and its effects on electrical/digital systems isn't feasible without the sun's cooperation;). I shudder to think that there might be severe web-blackouts or any such thing... I'd have to *gasp* watch TV. (yeah, yeah... not to mention the possible failures of navigational systems, GPS, missile defense systems, etc, etc... )
Apparently, we're around the maximum of this cycle now, which nicely correlates with these storms... (and here's the random musing)
Obviously this could (and probably will) have some effects on electrical systems here on earth(my home's power pulsed twice this morning, dunno if it's a result of the magnetic storm). What's interesting, to me at least, is that during the last solar maximum, computers/electrical dependant systems weren't quite as ubiquitous as they are now. Astronomers as far back as Galileo have recorded information on sunspots and the possibility of a cycle. But it's not like this had any noticable effect on their lives (like Poor Richard's Almanac getting delayed because the intranet went down). As the man from Britain pointed out above, our increasing reliance on technology has some risks associated with it. I'm not too overly concerned just yet, though. It's not like my electrochemical nerve impulses are gonna get scrambled; as long as those are working, I figure I'm alright;).
I just think it's kind of interesting that the 'Net and the Information Age (sorry to sound like Katz here) happened to begin in a lull in solar activity. Now that systems that are sensitive to solar phenomena are commonplace, I'm thinking we'll notice more or larger effects of these storms on our lives. (ie- 'Napster's down?! Aaaagh!' or even worse; 'I can't get sync!!'
In the sci-fi vein; I'm wondering if we accidentally timed the Information Revolution just right... right now, we're aren't so reliant on technology that a disruption would cause widespread catastrophy. At least we'll get a vague idea of whether or not solar activity should be considered when designing technological component and systems, etc., and who knows, it might save us from ceeertain dooooom later on;D.
Ah, well. End Random Musing.
Life: a sexually trasmitted disease that has a 0% survival rate.
"We've got five different opportunities to get hammered," said forecaster Bill Murtagh of the Space Environment Center in Boulder, Colo.
I'd say they're already pretty hammered.--
All men are great
before declaring war
A government is a body of people notably ungoverned - AC
There was a geomagnetic storm over western Chicago about 7-8 months ago. That night I was sitting at my computer, when all the sudden I saw a bright flash outside a window to my left. I figured it was raining, and it was a lightning strike.
A few minutes later, a brownout occurred and my computer rebooted. This happened continuously for about an hour, and after the third instance I just turned it off. At this point I went into my living room, when the power went totally out. I was sitting on my couch in total darkness when suddenly there was a BRIGHT GREEN flash from the window. This was too weird. I had to go outside.
I found that it had become extremely cold. The green flashes continued, and I also started hearing noises not unlike circuits being grounded. That stereotypical zap-zap noise. I must have stayed outside for an hour wondering how often something like that actually happens. I still had no idea what the hell it was, until I remembered that there was a Coronal Mass Ejection the previous night. It was a plasma storm!