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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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...a Solar eclipse will happen at this very time.
Slashdot, fix the reply notifications... You won't get away with it...
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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.
Has plumbing really become dependent on electronic control systems? Or does this phenomenon somehow affect gravity too?
Plumbing consists of pipes running for long distances in straight lines (i.e. antennas). Magnetic storms can cause currents to run through these pipes resulting in electrical damage. In addition, for buried pipes, the magnetic storm can cause their relative voltage to shift, resulting in massive corrosion. This is of particular concern with respect to oil and gas pipelines.
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
I would think that electronically controlled sewage treatment plants are at risk. Most people don't think about where their poo goes, but once it starts going nowhere, it will pile up very quick for communities.
That's alright, I live on top of a hill.
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!
That's the broken window fallacy. It would immediately suck $1Trillion out of the economy that would have been spent other ways, it would prevent a lot of useful work from being done while the infrastructure was down, and it would most likely be rebuilt in a crappy, haphazard way, not in some nice, well-designed way that would make everything better.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
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...
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...