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What We Can Do About Massive Solar Flares
Reader resistant sends in an update to our discussion a month back on the possibility of violent space weather destroying power grids worldwide during the upcoming solar cycle. Wired is running an interview with Lawrence Joseph, author of "Apocalypse 2012: A Scientific Investigation into Civilization's End," and John Kappenman, CEO of electromagnetic damage consulting company MetaTech. The piece brings two new threads to the discussion: the recently discovered presence of an unusually large hole in Earth's geomagnetic shield, magnifying our vulnerability, and possible steps we can take over the next few years to make the power grid more robust against solar flares and coronal mass ejections. There's also that whole Mayan 2012 thing. Quoting John Kapperman: "What we're proposing is to add some fairly small and inexpensive resistors in the transformers' ground connections. The addition of that little bit of resistance would significantly reduce the amount of the geomagnetically induced currents that flow into the grid. In its simplest form, it's something that might be made out of cast iron or stainless steel, about the size of a washing machine. ...we think it's do-able for $40,000 or less per resistor. That's less than what you pay for insurance for a transformer. [In the US] there are about 5,000 transformers to consider this for. ... We're talking about $150 million or so. It's pretty small in the grand scheme of things."
We must blow up the sun. But we must be quick, since there's only about 12 hours of darkness a day during which we can do it.
So, he has determined a doomsday scenario that his company can prevent for $150 million? Lets think about that for a minute...
Can I put one next to my fallout shelter? You know...just in case?
This sig will self destruct in 5 seconds.
I like much better that idea I read around here - something about boxes of viagra and hookers...
Fuck systemd. Fuck Redhat. Fuck Soylent, too. Wait, scratch the last one.
So their "fairly small resistors" are about the size of a washing machine? I'm sure that's pretty good in the power grid industry, but I'd hate to know what they call "huge resistors".
The crystal planet must be getting close.
(please tell me I wasn't the only one who thought of this as soon as they read the headline)
When I hear our need for resistors to limit the damage of massive solar flares uttered in the same sentence as "the whole 2012 thing", the credibility for anything either one of these guys says is gone as far as I'm concerned.
I don't think they know what "science" is.
If you can read this... 01110101 01110010 00100000 01100001 00100000 01100111 01100101 01100101 01101011
Come on. Anything and everything this article has to say is now more-or-less worthless because of that bit.
Let's see, $150 million that the energy company executives can use to line their pockets, or to pay for something to prevent a disaster that might not really happen anyway but would cause damage that would be much more expensive to fix than prevent, and would cause utter chaos in the nation for an extended period of time.
There's only one outcome here. I don't know about you, but I'm gonna start outfitting my house like Chuck Heston's in The Omega Man.
~Philly
Now the creepy thing is the ad for 2012-comet.com on the RSS.
And this is the *nice* way to do it.
He could have said: "and I won't give you those resistors unless you give me ONE MILLION DOLLARS!"
Entomologically speaking, the spider is not a bug, it's a feature.
Here we go, some thing like this would probably work:
http://www.jovyatlas.info/index_en.html?/produkte/13l_e.php
- can withstand high pulse loads
- short-term overload capability
Scale as required.
$40,000 and the size of a washing machine isn't exactly what you'd call small and inexpensive, certainly not compared to what most people would think of when you mention a resistor.
Blazing Spiders
As far as I know, the electrical grid in most of EU have always been protected against that. When government companies manage the grid according to set technical standards, it mostly is better managed than private contractors, that build as little as possible and as cheap as possible.
"Since the beginning of time, man has yearned to destroy the sun. I shall do the next best thing: block it out. "
I suppose it's good marketing practice if you're trying to sell electromagnetic damage prevention equipment to fans of Coast to Coast AM or the History Channel. They love them some 2012 "science."
I would say it's not such a great tactic if you're trying to sell to engineers, but let's face it: education doesn't protect you from teh stoopid. Surely most people here know at least one educated person that takes such things seriously.
[b.belong('us') for b in bases if b.owner() == 'you']
Unless I missed it, TFA left out the technical details of the problem and was filled with FUD language instead.
From what I saw on wiki, it's a quasi-DC current. Why can't we just install massive inductors that give high impedance to 60hz and pass DC? Wouldn't that cost less than $45k? Don't we already have static drain chokes? How does this affect current lightning protection shunts (or when they say the protection circuits pop, is that to what they're referring)?
Linemen chime in!
"Cringe".
"Speaking the Truth in times of universal deceit is a revolutionary act." -- George Orwell
Cheaper too.
Give me 100 million dollars and I will pray to whichever deity you prefer to protect ALL the transformers in the entire world.
Fuck... I'll even throw in a good word for finding a cure to your favorite disease.
Well... actually your LEAST favorite disease but you know what I mean...
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
"Apocalypse 2012: A Scientific Investigation into Civilization's End"
So many things wrong with this title...first of all, the word Apocalypse derives from Greek 'Apokálypsis' which basically means 'lifting of a veil' or revealing something that was previously hidden to the majority of the population. Currently apocalypse enters into most people's lexicon in the biblical sense referring to the end of days (aka revelation).
2012...well I think we've all seen the movie (trailer). The Mayan calendar puts the end of time at approximately December 21, 2012. But that's not even the Mayan's interpretation of 2012...it just some projected wish that has exploded into popular culture. Many Mayan scholars simply think that the Mayans were simply going to reset the calendar on that day back to zero.
Either way the scientific exploration to the end of our planet or species (which are different things and scenarios) should avoid religious or theological possibilities (because they aren't real).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultimate_fate_of_the_universe
Heat death of the universe and the big crunch are the two most likely scenarios (don't worry you won't be around for either of them). Heat death is basically where the universe becomes void of heat and motion and there is nothing left but immobile objects. The other best theory is the big crunch, basically where gravity pulls all objects together from existence into one singularity.
I always though that that singularity would interact with infinite absolute zero and most likely creates another big bang. If this is true then that would mean it could have happened an infinite number of times before, meaning time is an infinite loop and everything has happened before an infinite number of times and will happen again.
I haven't studied hard science in an academic environment for a while (I went to an amazing science oriented public high school) as I did my undergraduate studies in......sports broadcasting...so here's my disclaimer: some things above might be paraphrased or summarized incorrectly (I did my best).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Risks_to_civilization,_humans_and_planet_Earth
This article covers almost everything. Natural disasters occurring from earth (earthquakes, floods, global warming), to space based (gamma ray bursts, impact events), to human based events (nuclear war), to diseases and pandemics, and even things like an A.I. taking over or a singularity from nanotechnology taking over all life (search wiki for Grey goo), and then of course there is the probability (though unlikely) of aliens obliterating our planet.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extinction_of_human_beings
There was a recent poll on Slashdot asking everyone when the last human would be born...
http://slashdot.org/pollBooth.pl?qid=1749&aid=-1
http://slashdot.org/pollBooth.pl?qid=1751&aid=-1
Oh...here comes my boss time to submit and get back to cutting Mets footage.
So if somebody is trying to sell you insurance, do you also assume that risks don't exist?
Whether or not the risk is real enough is something for scientists/physicists/engineers to determine; it has completely independent of whether or not somebody stands to make money from it. People have been making money selling solutions to actual problems for a very long time; the presence of a financial incentive doesn't automatically mean snake oil, as you seem to presume. In fact, the presence of financial incentive doesn't allow you to derive any conclusions at all - your thinking is highly unscientific.
And anyway, it's for the energy companies themselves to decide if the risk is real enough or not; they don't seem to be forcing this on anyone.
Oh, wait...
I wouldn't exactly call it a doomsday scenario. These flares happen fairly often. The last one to disrupt power was in March 1989 but there was a bigger one in April 2001 that missed us.
:)
Can't wait for discovery channels "doco" on the star in the east being solar flares hitting Jupiter though.
I reserve the write to mangle english.
The size of your mom.
Ok. That was easy.
Just make sure they happen at night.
Don't you have someone you'd die for?
You aren't thinking deep enough. Clearly the guy also has interests in companies that sell survival gear.
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
The solution is to use a Delta-ungrounded-Wye transformer where needed to prevent ground currents. After the 1980's incidents, power engineers in the USA and Canada reviewed the need for these transformers and put them in where needed. The solar flare problem should therefore be solved already. Can you cite a power system engineering qualified source who thinks there is still risk?
We cannot go on with this threat to our infrastructure. Write letters to you congress people and demand that they pass a law BANNING ALL SOLAR FLARES! We should take to the streets in protest. We need sanctions! It's time to get tough! The UN should pass a resolution! Boycott all products that are sun related! Show 'em who's really in charge!
-- QED
After seeing the movie Knowing. I couldn't help but think how screwed Humanity would be if the planet would be in the Wrong Place, at the Wrong Time. It would take about another 5 Billion years for Earth to get back to what it is today, but even that Polyanna concept wasn't good enough. When it comes down to cold reality, only if humanity becomes a space faring culture will things like ELE be unfortunate, but survivable.
I mean, the only thing we could do if there is a major solar outburst is (cue funny music): "duck and cover!"
Duck, and Coooover
re-elect a neo-con American president and tell that president that oil is in the core of the sun.
...and try to destroy it, you have to attack it on it's dark side where it's night time.
is my guess.
Nobody looks at the real problem here:
The earth's core is slowing down and cooling off, causing a drop in the strength of our magnetic field.
Who's got the plan that injects boatloads of energy into the core in such a way that both increases its temperature significantly AND boosts the speed of its spin? That would fix us for hundreds of thousands of years, and yet nooooobody talks about it.
These patchwork fixes allow us to ignore the REAL problem. ;)
Security is mostly a superstition... Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. - Helen Keller
"From this, on to our new segment: 'Shit that's never going to happen!'" :D
So are we Fox News now? Because IMHO TFA drips with sensationalist scaremongering. Or am I missing something here? (Not a rhetorical question.)
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
Before anyone feels the urge to watch Knowing, I'm gonna warn you: don't.
At the risk of having my geek card revoked, I'll admit that I don't know zilch about solar flares and their impact on electronics. What concerns me the most is how my stored data will be affected. Hardware can be replaced, but data is volatile and (I presume) also susceptible to the sun's random bursts.
Will by HDDs keep their data? Is it important whether they're connected to the grid at the time of the flaare? Can solar flares harm optical media?
What good are backups on magnetic media (tape or disks or otherwise) if a single large flare could wipe them all out?
Please tell me I'm worrying about nothing...
CJ
Ah, arrogance and stupidity, all in the same package. How efficient of you. -- Londo Mollari
Duck!
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
Actually, this is fairly sound. Archaeologists recently decyphered a Mayan text that details the need for large, blocky capacitors in 2012. The text also goes on about how those capacitors would be about half as high as a man and require completely new materials, either in cast or hammered form. It was all very professional.
USE HOT GRITS WITH STATUE OF NATALIE PORTMAN (NAKED AND PETRIFIED)
Note: Yes, the "resistor" in there is intentional. The Mayans messed up their calculations and wanted to use resistors instead of capacitors. Their faulty energy physics were one of the factors invonved in the downfall of their civilization. (In contrast, the European settlers made not a single wrong assumption about how to counteract solar flares messing with the electrical infractructure.)
USE HOT GRITS WITH STATUE OF NATALIE PORTMAN (NAKED AND PETRIFIED)
Actually, I think properly done science would not show any bias whatsoever even if they mentioned little green men worshiping the great BoingBoing.
Proper science would only look at the observed facts.
The kind of science you are referring to is more in line with the 'scientists' who called Galileo crazy or the man-made (or not) global warming crowds.
To discredit a genuine scientific (or otherwise) theory because some religious/spiritual bozos are running around screaming about something similar (in this case a date) is not proper science.
Mind the frickin' laser...
Will [m]y HDDs keep their data?
Never. Not with perfect, or even adequate, reliability. Not after a mega solar flare, and not before a mega solar flare either. Your data can disappear irretrievably in a millisecond at any time, by the very nature of hard drives.
Hope you keep three, or better yet more, copies of every piece of data, on separate media. Preferably different kinds of media. And in different geographical locations. Deep underground, but air conditioned.
And I hope you refresh all the copies of all the data to new media at fairly frequent intervals.
The Wired reference is garbage. Mayan predictions? Million kilovolt transformers? That's a billion volts, into fantasy and beyond. And of course, this is a kdawson story.
Contribute to civilization: ari.aynrand.org/donate
Nobody ever read the book Sunstorm by Stephen Baxter? The idea was to build a massive reflector the diameter of the Earth to block out the massive flare headed for us. It worked pretty well in the book, considering the oceans didn't boil away.
OEÉæÁÄZÝÈA OEÉæé_CX
"What we're proposing is to add some fairly small and inexpensive resistors in the transformers' ground connections. The addition of that little bit of resistance would significantly reduce the amount of the geomagnetically induced currents that flow into the grid."
This is a "protective" measure, with its limitations. A "smarter" idea would be to put generators instead of resistors !
How does an electric train stop ? By reversing the current, making the electric motor an electric generator driven by the inertial force of its weight.
Now, imagine that instead of dissipating all the energy of the magnetic field's movements, it could be "harnessed". That would be more expensive than the proposed resistor, but it could pay off in the long term !
It even makes one wish for more flares, particularly for those country where the electric grid is ... "not optimal". And that would be without solar panel or wind turbine :-)
They could just be branding it with 2012 to sell more books. ...and ur a geek, too.
So, he has determined a doomsday scenario that his company can prevent for $150 million?
He didn't "create" the doomsday scenario involved here, others, including scientists, have been considering this problem for awhile now. Note that TFA has links to two scientific reports that are entirely unconnected with the MetaTech CEO, one is from NASA itself, and the other is published by the National Academies and was funded by NASA.
Err,
National Academies == US National Academy of Sciences
Sorry.
In that case, let's buy these damn things, right now!
If you can read this... 01110101 01110010 00100000 01100001 00100000 01100111 01100101 01100101 01101011
I wouldn't exactly call it a doomsday scenario. These flares happen fairly often.
The NASA funded report that is linked to from TFA is talking about a "Coronal Mass Ejection" which is different from a solar flare, though they are sometimes both created by the same underlying event.
Basically a giant ball of high energy plasma (ionized gas) that is shot out of the Sun, sometimes reaching speeds of 1/3 that of light. Note that a fast CME would give us almost no warning time at all, even if we had detectors close enough to the Sun at the time to detect it. Detecting a CME is not as easy as noticing a solar flare, never mind the problem of determing how large/dangerous it is, then calculating whether or not its going to hit the Earth.
The last one to disrupt power was in March 1989 ...
A more relevant example would be the "1859 Solar Superstorm". This was a solar event that generated both a CME (that hit the Earth) and multiple solar flares. If an event like this happened *now*, with our extreme dependence on so many things electrical and electronic, it would be a first class catastrophe. That is not hype, although it would not be a "life-ending" kind of catastrophe, it could very well be a "life-as-we-know-it-now-ending" kind of catastrophe.
Note that a large CME could impact the Earth over several days, as the 1859 event did, so we are also talking about a potential *global* catastrophe, not a regional one.
Finally, TFA also links to another recent NASA report about a huge hole just discovered in Earth's protective magnetic shield, so the important point to take away from TFA is that we are about to enter a period of Solar Maximum with a gaping hole in the only shield which protects us. Getting hit by a large CME now, with that hole in Earth's magnetic shield still present, would lead to a *really* bad day for humanity.
When I hear our need for resistors to limit the damage of massive solar flares uttered in the same sentence as "the whole 2012 thing", the credibility for anything either one of these guys says is gone as far as I'm concerned.
It is unfortunate that we have this coincidence between the Mayan Long Calendar "prediction" for 2012, and the fact that we're entering a Solar Maximum period (which will peak in 2012) with a gaping hole in our planet's magnetic shield and a civilization extremely dependent on an electrical infrastructure that is itself extremely vulnerable to the effects of a large geomagnetic storm.
I leave it up to you as to whether you should ignore the latter just because of the former.
I don't think they know what "science" is.
"They" in this case aren't scientists, and aren't pretending to be. Note however that "they", and TFA, are all referring to scientific reports from NASA and the US National Academy of Sciences to base their ideas on.
I don't know about you, but I *do* think that NASA and the US National Academy of Sciences know what "science" is.
It's well known that Nickel Ass Cage can save us from any plot as long as he has ingested enough vallium so. he. can. say. his lines. All you need is good looking female supporting actor yelling 'save the children' and we will be saved.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
Someone removed the nukethesun tag. This makes me very depressed.
send in the Solar Fashion Police :-)
National Academies == US National Academy of Sciences
Actually, that isn't true. The National Academies include the US National Academy of Engineering, Institute of Medicine and National Research Council in addition to the US National Academy of Sciences. The National Academies
Reading code is like reading the dictionary - you have to read half of it before you can go back and understand it.
You're right, I was in a hurry to fix my "mistake" and didn't realize that the NA was the parent of the NAS, I wrongly thought that they were separate entities, with the former just being the publisher of the report created by the latter.
40,000 is less than insuring a transformer but a transformer is insured against many things.
....
... say ... how much did you premiums go up for a terrorist attack ?
Now if it $6 of the insurance money is for insuring the transformer against massive solar flairs because never in the history of humanity has a transformer blown up by a solar flair, that is the price point they have to compete with.
That is the whole point of insurance. Technology solves a bunch of problems, insurance protects againts the rest of the problems not worth solving.
Otherwise we can spend $10000 per transformer to protect them from ants, $5000 from killer bees and on and on ad infinitum
PS: The golden bit for an insurance sales man is to get money for things that don't happen
That's okay, your comment really doesn't have anything to do with the point I was trying to make :D
Sorry you saw it that way though!
Maybe Col. Matt Decker could help.
Shop as usual. And avoid panic buying.
It must be caused by the Oracle acquisition thingy...
For a light read in which the US is crippled, in no small part due to transformer failure, see G. Gordon Liddy, "Rules of the Game," pp. 44-?, OMNI, (January 1989), reprinted in "Fight Back" by G. Gordon Liddy, et al., and found here: http://web.archive.org/web/20050406214119/http://www.liddyshow.us/mustread11.php
There is nothing wrong with yr Internet. Do not attempt to adjust the picture. We are controlling the transmission - NSA
maybe I can go back in time to see the cubs win it all.
Give me one hundred fifty MEEELION DOLLARZ or I will blow up the SUN!
MUAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH!
And if that don't work, I'll send in the sharks with frikkin laser beams on their heads.
Solar Cycle #24 is about 2 years late and the sun is unusually quiet. We really don't need to worry much about solar flares. The thing is when solar cycles are late this means the next solar cycle typically is very quiet. Solar Cycle #25 has already been predicted to also be very quiet.
So for the next 20 years solar flares may be practically non-existent.
What this means is that we can expect an increase in high energy cosmic radiation.
Expect more bit flips in circuitry.
Expect shorted and cooler summers and longer more intense winters. This is due to the increased cosmic radiation creating nucleation points for water vapor condensation which will increase cloud cover. Increased cloud cover reflects more energy into space so the surface cools.
Anyone who is perceptive might note this is the opposite of global warming.
Probably the Mayan calendar ends 2012 because the massive solar flares interfere with their soothsaying capabilities. They just weren't able to look through that solar flare fog.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
When I hear our need for resistors to limit the damage of massive solar flares uttered in the same sentence as "the whole 2012 thing", the credibility for anything either one of these guys says is gone as far as I'm concerned.
Yeah, wall to wall athletics is pretty bad, but we survived all the previous Olympics.
From the Wikipedia article you've linked:
"Coronal Mass Ejections range in speed from about 20 km/s to 2,700 km/s with an average speed (based on SOHO/LASCO measurements between 1996 and 2003) of 489 km/s."
From the "1859 Solar Superstorm" article you've linked:
"[...] a massive coronal mass ejection (CME) [...] taking eighteen hours. This is remarkable because such a journey normally takes three to four days."
So you can fairly easy detect it and have enough time to calculate when and if it will hit. We managed to detect and predict one in 1859, why would we have trouble now? You don't have time to do much about it, though.
You are really confusing them with solar flares, which move at extreme speeds. We can also detect them without, too, but have 15-30 minutes to react. Much less than with a CME.
Yeah. I'm surprised more people haven't commented on that.
How about we just move the Eiffel Tower to the top of Mt. Everest and run a cable to the nearest electric grid(s)? From space, with every solar storm you could see Europe and/or Asia flash light Christmas with each hit!
(Someone, somewhere, is actually going to think this is a good idea.....)
Vote monkeys into Congress. They are cheaper and more trustworthy.
I do not trust this company: http://www.metatechcorp.com/ And you should check out their archive.org history. I don't think this washing-machine sized resister that I am sure they want to build and sell will work. You are not going to solve solar flare issues from above by sticking "large" pieces of steel into the ground. You may help reduce lightning strikes. . . . but not a solar flare.
Cool, this planet has a core, shields and everything. Starship Earth!
Unfortunately our engines are busted...
Some people see a like between low solar magnetic storm activity and cooler weather. An extended solar minimum in the 17th century was correlated a "Little Ice Age". Solar radiance does not decrease enough to explain this effect, so there may be some other physics going on or merely a coincidence.
Hi,
>So you can fairly easy detect it and have enough time to calculate when and if it will hit
Actually, no. Most detections occur after the fact, not in near-real time. So we're not predicting them, we're backtracking after we notice one.
You can't see a CME head on, only from the sides (it's "optically thin"). So you can't see the ones that hit Earth if you're viewing from Earth (that's why there's the STEREO mission, to look off the earth-sun line).
And, they don't travel at a uniform velocity. Current predictions are only good to +- 12 hours. So for an event that takes 1-4 days to arrive, you have a +- half day window. That's pretty big. Current modeling with STEREO might be able to get that down to +- 4 hours, soon.
And it turns out it matters which magnetic field orientation it has-- a small CME with field aligned opposite the Earth's is far worse then a big CME with the field aligned. Fortunately there's a lot of work to use magnetogram images to predict the orientation.
All that combines to define the 'geoeffectiveness' of a given CME/solar storm.
Hard to detect the earth-incident ones, and hard to predict. Fun to study, though!
me
http://scientificblogging.com/sky_day/
A.
The last time I posted this link I got some guff but I think it's appropriate to post again. Nassim Haramein has been explaining for years that these solar flares would be occurring leading up to the year 2012: http://www.theresonanceproject.org./ You can find his video "Crossing the Event Horizon" on BitTorrent.
They just weren't able to look through that solar flare fog.
:)
Well, since I made that post I've learned that the current quiet period of the Solar Minimum seems to be lasting a lot longer than it was expected to, so the effective peak of solar activity may not only be less energetic than was first thought, it will also likely occur after 2012, in the following year or the next. The hole in the magnetic shield is still a worry though.
Anyway, not only is that good news in and of itself, it might finally help to get these 2 issues, Mayan predictions and the coming Solar Max period, separated from one another so we....
ah heck, what am I thinking?, this is /.
never mind.
Well, of course everyone here on Slashdot knows that the world cannot end in 2012, because the end of the world will be 2037 when the Unix time wraps over. :-)
And don't you dare to mention 64 bit. Everyone knows that time will always be stored in 32 bit variables. ;-)
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
Not that I would prefer a US government to our own, but most of your examples simply come down to the US being a lot bigger with more people so there is higher incidence of the things you are describing.
I also don't really see what is so mystical and hard to understand about examining the basic economic structure. It isn't just political opinion to state that there is a difference in for-profit vs something else. A lot of people nowadays don't understand the basic definition of profit. Profit is not getting paid for the work you do. It is getting paid for MORE than the work you do plus all other expenses including debt repayment. Profit isn't immoral because of some abstract or subjective circumstance, it is immoral because you are making an unfair exchange where you get back more than you put in (labour and all included)
I'm not going to say Marx was a true scientist but at least there was a certain sanity to his definitions that we now lack in our Private-Profit-is-my-Birthright era.
Stupidity is its own reward.
Huge amounts of power... generated _in_ our electrical grid... So, we are going to have free power?
Let's figure out how to harness this as a power source.