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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...
They're not much bigger, but the larger resistors require a heatsink, and probably a few 12" fans. Preferably Zalman. With blue LEDs.
Entomologically speaking, the spider is not a bug, it's a feature.
"Since the beginning of time, man has yearned to destroy the sun. I shall do the next best thing: block it out. "
Referred to in Mayan texts as "The Great Mayan Integer Overflow".
You aren't thinking deep enough. Clearly the guy also has interests in companies that sell survival gear.
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
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
I think there is already a religion that worships Transformers.
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)
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.
...I'd hate to know what they call "huge resistors".
Now those damn stripes on Jupiter makes sense, it's color coded!
http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap070329.html
You have the right to remain sentient. If you give up the right to remain sentient, you will be elected to public office
You're really worried about your porn, aren't you?
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
Xenon, where's my money? Borno.
So, basically, you're saying that a trip to Radio Shack for these resistors is likely to be a waste of time?
So it's like most other trips to Radio Shack?
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
I googled your google of "solar flare crystal planet" and now your first, I wonder if me saying it twice "solar flare crystal planet" fuck it thrice "solar flare crystal planet" will put me on the list