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One In Eight Chance of a Financially Catastrophic Solar Storm By 2020
An anonymous reader writes "A privately employed solar scientist named Pete Riley estimates there's a 12 percent chance of a massive solar storm comparable to the Carrington Event in 1859 which resulted in breathtaking aurorae across the United States and other temperate regions of the globe. The electromagnetic surge from the 1859 event caused failures of telegraph systems across Europe and North America. A similar storm today could knock out power grids, GPS and communication satellites, data centers, transportation systems, and building and plumbing infrastructures and wreak $1 trillion or more of economic damage in the first year alone, according to a 2008 report from the National Academy of Sciences."
that it will happen in 2012?
... Can it knock out out my PC and if so how can I protect it?
So, is "privately employed solar scientist" a euphemism for "crackpot scientist"?
"Murderer? Well, that's a harsh word. I prefer to think of myself as a Mortality Technician."
Your car is already an electromechanical device. EMP would disable modern gasoline vehicles just as surely as it would electric vehicles.
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... Can it knock out out my PC and if so how can I protect it?
It's sort of a slippery slope toward insanity ...
My work here is dung.
Your forgetting what starts your car engine (battery)
Actually a 1T$ investment to rebuild all the electrical infrastructure would be just great both for the infrastructure AND for the economy.
We learn from history that we learn nothing from history - Tom Veneziano
Has plumbing really become dependent on electronic control systems? Or does this phenomenon somehow affect gravity too?
http://alternatives.rzero.com/
...a Solar eclipse will happen at this very time.
Slashdot, fix the reply notifications... You won't get away with it...
Using Gamemaker, they can put off the problem with its extreme slowness.
I would retitle this submission "One in twenty chance of naturally-caused
economic stimulus by 2020".
Wouldn't the amount of electronics in today's cars render them vulnerable as well?
Or do we only have to worry about EMP in that regard?
Either way, the production and transport of gasoline will be impacted as well, obviously. I wouldn't be surprised if the government nationalized all the gasoline reserves just to make sure they've got enough to power the Humvees that would surely be dispersed all over the United States in this scenario. I imagine Martial Law would be declared nationally pretty soon after a disaster of this magnitude.
Print out your porn.
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I think a lot of people are very confused.
This won't directly break your car or your computer. It affects long runs of conductive cable.
It will break power distribution and telecom. It might break your computer if it's plugged in, but absolutely will not break your computer if it is not plugged in. Likewise with cars. If you own an electric car, just hope that it's unplugged when this happens.
OK, I throw the BS flag all over this one. I've been in this business (space weather) for over 40 years, and one of the biggest problems in the whole field are these "OMG the F-ing SKY is FALLING" pronouncements from self-proclaimed space weather experts (or NASA scientists, which is just sad). What this guy has done is a typical "lies, damn lies, and statistics" analysis of the worst sort, and he even kinda admits this with the caveat at the end of TFA's abstract in Space Weather. This is not to say that a big Carrington-magnitude storm came along it wouldn't cause havoc, it most certainly will, but there's only been one of these in our recorded history. That seems to fall well outside the realm of useable predictability. It's in a class of problems the weather service folks who try to predict 100-year floods know all too well. If you only see one instance of something in your record, at best you can say that you get one of those beasts every record-length/2 years (if that). This guy is just blowing smoke to advertise his business.
Your car is already an electromechanical device. EMP would disable modern gasoline vehicles just as surely as it would electric vehicles.
Which is a big part of the reason I love my old, beat up, carburated pickup.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
There's a lot to be said for contact breaker ignition. Of course, diesels are even better. I've driven a diesel car with no functioning electrical system of any kind (although I don't recommend it due to the absence of brake lights).
The scariest part was getting it started. Yes, sure, it'll push start but until the engine has been running for 15 seconds (big heavy old Citroen CX 25DTR Turbo) there is no hydraulic pressure for the steering or braking system... Better hope the handbrake will stop it before the back wall of the yard does!
I could be wrong (I wasn't ever a huge fan of studying physics) but from my basic engineering physics class, wouldn't a Faraday cage block this?
I don't have time to make a sig
"This kind of event is going to knock anything out that can conduct electricity. The telegraph lines overloaded and caught fire in 1859. Your data isn't safe, if it's on a hard drive, CD, SSDs, the cloud etc."
Why are CDs on that list? CDs do not use electricity or magnetism.
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
I could be wrong (I wasn't ever a huge fan of studying physics) but from my basic engineering physics class, wouldn't a Faraday cage block this?
Yeah, that's what most hardening entails. For example,your hard drive is encased fully by metal, but that little circuit board underneath it isn't. Another thing that I have no way of speculating on is just how much energy will be raining down, it could just vaporize the Faraday cage if there's enough energy behind it. That would be intense for sure.
Solar flare != EMP
While the power grid would be knocked out by a massive solar flare, your electric car would be just fine. Unless it happened to be plugged in when the power grid was fried...
-- Give me ambiguity or give me something else!
Good thing this storm isn't an EMP effect.
What happens is you get large induced currents/voltages in transmission lines (power, cable etc) which smoke things connected to them. This happens because they resonate with the solar radiation.
Small shit like the wires and traces inside of your car resonates at far too high a frequency for that to happen.
As for GPS etc - those die because they are in orbit, either outside the majority of the earth's EM field's protection - or their path happens to make that same protection their death-sentence as it tends to concentrate the radiation into distinct bands/layers.
The sun would still be the sun, and the GPS satellite would be the ant. The earth's EM field would be the magnifying glass. Poof.
For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
Solar storms do not resemble EMPs.
For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
Solar storms do not resemble EMPs.
But, like you said - all the other infrastructure that would release magic smoke will certainly cause more than enough trouble.
For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
The difference is that this sort of thing has happened before, and not that long ago (1859).
"Telegraph systems all over Europe and North America failed, in some cases even shocking telegraph operators. Telegraph pylons threw sparks and telegraph paper spontaneously caught fire."
The world was much less wired in 1859 than it is today. At a minimum, the power grid would be fried for months. I certainly wouldn't want to live somewhere like the Southwest part of the US, where if the power is gone you can't get water and the gas pumps stop working, so you can't go somewhere else.
-- Give me ambiguity or give me something else!
No, it wouldn't. Read X0563511's post one down for an explanation of why.
-- Give me ambiguity or give me something else!
I'm in the EMP business. A colleague of mine sat in a running (modern) car while it was flashed in a simulator. Nothing happened.
Yes, but such a tiny amount that it shouldn't cause trouble.
You run into issues when they are resonant (or near resonant) because that allows standing waves to form - and the stuff that makes it in through the magnetosphere is the lower frequency (longer wavelength) stuff.
For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
What?
How long can you tread EM waves?
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
A petrol engine needs a little charge in the battery for the ignition to run. Not that it matters, solar effects aren't going to fry any cars. They don't work like that.
Very little, though. I've push-started petrol cars with batteries flatter than pancakes. I suspect the alternator provides a bit of oomph as well once you pop the clutch.
I watched an interesting PBS special on the Amish a couple nights ago. It gave me good insight into their lifestyle choices.
During this show I thought about the "2012 problem". If any one would survive a shutdowns of electricity and electronics, these people will However, these people are pacifists an might not do well with armed bands that would arise in the apocalypse.
Note that the wires in 1859 weren't very well protected against such things. Our current power/telephony system would have survived the 1859 event much better than it did in 1859. There were still coming to terms with the idea of AC current in 1859. We've learned a lot since then.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."