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New York Sky Turns Bright Blue After Transformer Explosion (nytimes.com)
There was a boom; then a hum. The lights flickered. A giant plume of smoke filled the New York City sky, and turned it blue. From a report: "A sort of unnatural, fluorescent shade of blue," said Bill San Antonio, 28, who was watching Thursday night from inside a terminal at La Guardia Airport. "We thought it was a U.F.O.," said Yiota Androtsakis, a longtime Astoria resident. Ms. Androtsakis was not the only one. In the earliest moments, hundreds of Twitter users from across the city posted videos of the eerie lights, causing many on social media to fear an alien invasion.
By late Thursday night officials said the event was caused by nothing more than a transformer explosion. "No injuries, no fire, no evidence of extraterrestrial activity," the New York Police Department tweeted, adding later that the explosion was not suspicious. There was one Con Edison employee nearby when the fire started, and the authorities said he was unharmed. Still, Deputy Inspector Osvaldo Nunez, the commanding officer of the 114th Precinct, conceded that the episode "was spectacular." "You could see it from the precinct, and the precinct is about a half-mile away," he said. "You felt it in your chest, the explosions, and the night sky turned an electric blue."
By late Thursday night officials said the event was caused by nothing more than a transformer explosion. "No injuries, no fire, no evidence of extraterrestrial activity," the New York Police Department tweeted, adding later that the explosion was not suspicious. There was one Con Edison employee nearby when the fire started, and the authorities said he was unharmed. Still, Deputy Inspector Osvaldo Nunez, the commanding officer of the 114th Precinct, conceded that the episode "was spectacular." "You could see it from the precinct, and the precinct is about a half-mile away," he said. "You felt it in your chest, the explosions, and the night sky turned an electric blue."
A friend of mine who lives in Astoria posted a video and it looked like some real Ghostbuster shit.
There's a good roundup of videos of this event over on Deadspin.
https://theconcourse.deadspin....
By the way, if you go and search Twitter for #Qanon, you'll find that there are already NYC blue light truthers who are saying this is a message to patriots that the "hot war" is coming and that the acting attorney general (aka "117") is about to unleash holy hell on unbelievers and other liberals. Or, that it's a false flag. I'm not shitting you.
https://twitter.com/travis_vie...
You are welcome on my lawn.
So great its a transformer...
couple of things stand out :
Environmental damage, what was the reason why it was blue and I'm going to guess that its not intended to be breathed in...
A prison had a power failure for 25 minutes... backup generators was not mentioned...
great reporting... simply follow what people say on twitter...
The sky is blue?! Shit, gotta be aliens! /facepalm
Corruption is convincing someone that the selfless ideal is the same as their selfish ideal.
Electric Blue... Indeed.
And here I thought the M.I.B. had a city-wide neuralizer they can use.... Tsk tsk...
Aliens
Typical gov't response. "Nothing to see, hear... Move along."
By late Thursday night officials said the event was caused by nothing more than a transformer explosion
They're more than meets the eye.
8 of 13 people found this answer helpful. Did you?
You got the spaz part of your name right
RADIOACTIVE ASBESTOS ISOTOPES
Depleted uranium. Gotta do something with those spent fuel rods...
I am sure I do not know every compound that could burn that color of blue,
I know one: Air. When air ionises it turns blue. This happens during a lightning strike, and also happens during HV arcing. Oh and bonus points: It has nothing to do with compounds and everything to do with temperature.
That blue was not simply arcing
You sound like someone who has never seen arcing. ... Or a transformer fault for that matter.
there was clearly a significant amount of deflagration going on
Deflagration is a big word, you should look up what it means before using it.
Enjoy all those heavy metals and PCB's there New Yorkers
Transformers don't contain heavy metals, and even old transformers only have trace amounts of PCBs thanks to them being banned in the 70s and routine maintenance or breakdown maintenance replacing most of those components (especially the oil) in old transformers.
But this is NYC we're talking about. Even if it were PCBs, heavy metals, and your tinfoil hat which were vapourised it's probably an improvement over the air there anyway.
I hope it wasn't Bumblebee, or my son will be devastated.
Air turning into different color when high power high frequency energy passes through it is something HAARP's been studying for decades and explained it quite well.
Also, northern / southern lights. I'd be suprised if it didn't turn into a different color.
Yeah, toxic gases. From electricity. And I'll bet the CIA is behind it too. Conspiracy theories are just fun with a capital Q these days.
Why not. It makes about as much sense as why this is even a story.
Transformers don't contain heavy metals
What? Transformers are made almost entirely out of heavy metals.
and even old transformers only have trace amounts of PCBs thanks to them being banned in the 70s
Completely false, there are still old transformers with PCBs in them in the USA, and some of them are in the New York power system.
But this is NYC we're talking about. Even if it were PCBs, heavy metals, and your tinfoil hat which were vapourised it's probably an improvement over the air there anyway.
PCBs being pretty much the most toxic thing that we have in our cities, I'm guessing not.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Transformers don't contain heavy metals
What? Transformers are made almost entirely out of heavy metals.
Not by any relevant definition of "heavy" eg toxic. There's a lot of iron and copper in these things I assume, but they aren't that horrible.
Or did you have some other definition in mind? There's lots to choose from with that term! %-P
Rgds
Damon
http://m.earth.org.uk/
... probably there were some?
Just saying :P
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
Why would aliens want to invade New York?
I reserve the write to mangle english.
...no fire, no evidence of extraterrestrial activity," the New York Police Department tweeted, adding later that the explosion was not suspicious. There was one Con Edison employee nearby when the fire started...
Was Demi Lovato tweeting for the NYPD?
What kind of morons do we have on this planet?
I happen to have witnessed 2 different unrelated pole transformer explosions. In one case I was less than 150 ft / 50 m away, and in the second case it may have been 4 times that. I happened to be looking right at the second one when it happened, and there was a blinding blue flash. Both booms scared the crap out of me. I have also trained throwing a grenade (detonation maybe 30 ft away, behind a concrete wall). While the nearest transformer explosion was about 5 times further away, I would guess the energy at the point of the explosion was in the same ballpark (though the transformers don't produce shrapnel, thank goodness). The available fault current in the case of an electrical arc fault can be extremely high. I wouldn't want to be standing next to one.
"I have never let my schooling interfere with my education." - Mark Twain
Harry Potter, you're needed
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Probably caused by a geomagnetic storm. Not a coincidence we just entered an area with fast moving solar wind on the 28th.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
Well, this European research https://www.researchgate.net/p... seems to suggest that breakdown is mostly random, though for some reason I hear more about transformator explosions in New York than in Germany.
seems like it's technical difficult to design a high-voltage breaker:
the faulting arc-current didn't exceed the current when in normal working state, else some breaker should have tripped?
Retreat! The goalposts are moving so fast!
ANY room temperature solid metal that is vaporized into a gas is dangerous to inhale what with the hundreds of degree temperature it will be.
Or are you trying to say it is solid and therefore not safe to inhale. Pretty sure all solids and most liquids are dangerous to inhale.
Anywhere left to retreat those goalposts to?
exactly right, saw lightning hit a transformer and it was blue, and awesome. We were in line for The Net, should have watched Power Rangers earlier lol.
After all the crappy movies of Transformers being killed, are there any left to catch fire? Or was this one of those spontaneous fire things from the pile of their carcasses?
Not possible. Obama had an $800 billion "stimulus" to fix infrastructure. It became part of the base budget because of the way he got it passed immediately after taking office. So over his 8 years it was a total of $6.4 Trillion on "infrastructure spending". At the time he took office it was estimated that infrastructure spending needed about $4 Trillion, so its all done. Thanks Obama.
He also fixed all medical issues in the US with Obamacare, so you can safely ignore all stories on medical issues in the US as outright lies.
[hopefully the sarcasm is obvious, but the spending amounts he used on "infrastructure" are accurate. You obviously don't think we got the results we were promised and for some odd reason think spending even more will get them when it won't]
"causing many on social media to fear an alien invasion."
But in this Brave New Lazy World, diligent reporting means "I looked at my phone and saw those words, so it must be reality". Don't even bother to suggest that probably half are just tongue-in-cheek, and only a scant handful of might have experienced anything even approximating a "genuine fear" of alien invasion, and that those people were stupid and deserved their ignorant terror.
When journalism is indistinguishable from a well-below-average-IQ opinion, it is no longer journalism.
Or was this one of those spontaneous fire things from the pile of their carcasses?
No. This is what it looks like when Dr Manhattan from the Watchmen, farts.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
No, no! Filled with HEAVY METAL, dude. Filled with lethal, dangerous, explosive rock hits from the '80s
Great cover story.
Never saw the night shining so bright / Then tried the switch on my flickering light / Blue skies way before dawn / Surge protectors from now on
What? Transformers are made almost entirely out of heavy metals.
Err no, not in the slightest. They have metals in them. Metals are heavy. That does not mean they have any heavy metals. Infact mostly they are copper, iron, wood, paper, oil, and all put in a steel box.
Completely false, there are still old transformers with PCBs in them in the USA, and some of them are in the New York power system [epa.gov].
Pointless reference. You're required to register any transformer which was made with PCBs in them to the EPA regardless if you've replaced the PCBs and regularly change the oil or not. Those would be on the list due to the potential for trace PCBs to leech out of insulation that remains. In fact those transformers on the list if the PCB content exceeds 0.05% an oil change becomes mandated. Also those transformers are registered since the disposal of their oil needs to be handled differently.
Good list though I can even see one of our transformers (which had its PCB containing components retrofitted 15 years ago) on it.
PCBs being pretty much the most toxic thing that we have in our cities, I'm guessing not.
No the most toxic thing you have in your city is FUD based on ignorance.
Out of Trump stoires?
Neuralizers are red. Even the city-wide ones. (I guess you forgot.)
Iron and copper can be pretty horrible when inhaled
If you're close enough for iron and copper (not heavy metals) to be a problem for your lungs, then I suggest you get some SPF75 because the UV from that arc flash will be your biggest concern, right after the fact that you probably coped a significant amount of molten copper to your face. Mind you your concern will be short lived as the natural end a transformer scenario is a boil over. You can rest calmly as your burn alive thinking "at least I did not inhale".
U.F.O. Unidentified Flaming Object
>What? Seriously?
Iron is so toxic you can't live without it.
Oh, wait... I think that might be the opposite of toxic.
Insult to monkeys!
This was the remnants of the Democratic Party's Blue Wave crashing. Pelosi becomes the most despised Speaker in history for a second time because she controls the cash pouring in from SIlicon Valley.
It was just cherenkov radiation.
In the earliest moments, hundreds of Twitter users from across the city posted videos of the eerie lights, causing many on social media to fear an alien invasion.
Whew! Good thing it didn't happen near us ignorant rubes out in flyover country. No telling what we might have thought!
Because spectacular failures of transformers happen all the time?
I live in a smaller town so ours was significantly smaller, but had something similar happen a couple years ago. That one made local news because it was only a 5 year old transformer and people were pissed as it took out our power for about 5 hours while they got it replaced. But most just don't make the news because power outages are rarely news worthy unless they're very wide spread. But this being NYC a) all the news lives there, and b) there were lots of people to view it, so it's international news.
This is one of those reasons why I always face palm when people start talking about how trivial infrastructure needed for wide spread EV adoption will be to deploy. People always seem to underestimate just what the electric grid deals with. Seeing something like this hopefully reminds people that in fact, we're dealing with a shit ton of power, and it's actually really hard to deal with.
not ozone. not oxygen. not arc discharge. look it up - if you're capable.
But this is NYC we're talking about. Even if it were PCBs, heavy metals, and your tinfoil hat which were vapourised it's probably an improvement over the air there anyway.
Bingo. The Arc is being seen a long distance away, so the bright bluish-white Arc flashes are being changed by the Air and crap that's already in the NYC air. Same reason the sky is not clear despite the light from the sun being white..... earth's atmosphere refracts the light and tends to reflect mostly the bluish hues back toward earth, and other wavelengths go into space.
What? Transformers are made almost entirely out of heavy metals.
No.... Transformers are made mostly of Copper and Iron.
Heavy Metals refers specifically to certain metals such as Antimony, Lead, Mercury, Lithium, Manganese, Cobalt, Nickel, Organotin, Cadmium, Arsenic, Chromium, and Thallium -- metallic chemical elements that have relatively high density, are toxic or poisonous at low concentrations, and which may have a tendency to bioaccumulate in some form.
Copper and Iron in the environment are not a major concern, because a high concentration is required for them to be acutely toxic --- you'd have to be WAY too close to that explosion.
The major environmental risk is from the bioaccumulation, since it means that ANY release of heavy metals into the environment can be a problem ---- because the effect of exposure to the poison is cumulative: even a small concentration in the air, soil, or water leads to higher concentrations in plants and animals, that accumulate through the food chain, and when a human eats an affected plant or animal, the metals build up in the fat tissue in the human body (including the brain) over time and never leave or reduce, thus causing the risk of a permanent poisoning.
This does not apply to the predominant metals in a transformer.
I was traveling westbound on the Long Island Expressway about 42 miles away (according to Google Earth), when I saw the sky in the distance light up with eerie blue-green flashes. It was quite the show.
Is that true? Americans really can react like that?
"causing many on social media to fear an alien invasion. "
No wonder...
It actually looked like an electric-blue mushroom cloud for a little while...
https://preview.redd.it/p3kzl6...
I am curious as to why the arcing lasted so long. Clearly this was a catastrophic fault where a couple of (very big) wires got too close and created a short circuit. Massive amounts of energy would about been used to maintain that arc. Should that have not tripped a circuit breaker or some other protection system upstream? or was the it as simple as the energy being consumed by the arc was similar to the normal load going through the transformer?
Anyone who has knowledge of high voltage distribution systems care to comment or provide a reference as to if this (apparent) lack of protection systems is normal or not, and in general what kind of protection systems are typically in place?
Heavy metal man, yea, you know bands like Metallica, Slayer Anthrax and Megadeth...
What? Transformers are made almost entirely out of heavy metals.
No.... Transformers are made mostly of Copper and Iron.
Heavy Metals refers specifically to certain metals such as Antimony, Lead, Mercury, Lithium, Manganese, Cobalt, Nickel, Organotin, Cadmium, Arsenic, Chromium, and Thallium -- metallic chemical elements that have relatively high density, are toxic or poisonous at low concentrations, and which may have a tendency to bioaccumulate in some form.
The term "toxic metals" would be a much more accurate term since "heaviness" really has nothing to do with it. Lithium, which is on your list is the lightest of all metals. Beryllium, is next lightest, and is one of the most toxic. Tungsten and bismuth, both quite heavy, are not especially toxic.
Starships were meant to fly, Hands up and touch the sky - Nicky Minaj
In the future, denizens of New York City will refer to this as "The Incident", and some will deny that it ever happened.
Ive seen a dozen news articles describing this event, and not a single one of them is anywhere close to having an accurate technical description of the event. No, it wasnt an explosion at a power plant that lasted for an hour.
Hillary sold them to Iran.
LUL.
Not like this: "no evidence of extraterrestrial activity". Now they think it's a cover-up, i.e. there WAS extraterrestrial activity but it is being denied. This is exactly how the mind works, at least in conspiracy theories. And the next group would say "but WHY would they deny it, wouldn't that be TOO obvious????"
Clearly this one an alien firefight. Theyâ(TM)re here. Theyâ(TM)ve been here for a very long time.
Isnâ(TM)t this how those coverup movies start?
Chewbacon
The Bible is like Wikipedia: written by a bunch of people and verifiable by questionable sources.
Unless you're a bacterium. :-)
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
It was only Transformer Prime that got electrocuted, cant have any pesky robot-aliens roaming the streets ...
The blue colour is not due to a chemical reaction. It is emitted from arcing that is so hot (over 10000K) the black-body emission is strong at the UV end of the spectrum. This explains not just the blue colour but also electrical arcing emmits UV that can damage your eyes, hence the need for special helmets and goggles when welding.
because it was no big deal. not even a little. happens all the time and you don't even know about it.
this time it gave a really great video. but really the power didn't even go out for the people who saw it...
sometimes even the authorities stop & admit 'yeah that was actually kinda cool'
If you're close enough for iron and copper (not heavy metals) to be a problem for your lungs, then I suggest you get some SPF75 because the UV from that arc flash will be your biggest concern, right after the fact that you probably coped a significant amount of molten copper to your face.
Ah, Slashdot, the site where complete ignorance can get upmods. Copper fumes are toxic, and metals can remain in the air for surprising periods of time when burned. If you're on the other side of a solid wall (or hell, just a good piece of heavy black paper) the arc flash is a non-issue, but the copper in the air is still a problem.
Mind you your concern will be short lived as the natural end a transformer scenario is a boil over. You can rest calmly as your burn alive thinking "at least I did not inhale".
Here on planet earth, we have air. And that air has currents in it, which we often call winds. And those winds can carry toxic elements and compounds to other locations which are not where they were emitted. What color is the sky on your planet?
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Ah, Slashdot, the site where complete ignorance can get upmods. Copper fumes are toxic [medlineplus.gov], and metals can remain in the air for surprising periods of time when burned. If you're on the other side of a solid wall (or hell, just a good piece of heavy black paper) the arc flash is a non-issue, but the copper in the air is still a problem.
Yeah and if you're close enough to breath them in during a transformer fire in the open air, then you're already dead. That's not ignorance, that's you just completely missing the point. Copper fumes are a problem in an enclosed building, think switchboards arcing out. Copper in the air from a transformer fire is not a problem for anyone who isn't already electrocuted, burnt, currently already on fire, or about be.
Here on planet earth, we have air. And that air has currents in it, which we often call winds.
Amazing thing about currents, they have this great ability to dissipate pollutants down to pointless levels. Speaking of currents have you ever seen an arc flash vapourise copper. It has this amazing ability to generate a current of its own, straight up into the air thanks to the high temperatures involved. If you're not sitting in an enclosed room you can take a nice deep breath, you won't be breathing any copper that is even remotely relevant to your health.
But you are right about one thing, there's a lot of ignorance on Slashdot. Maybe look up the number of people who died during electrical incidents due to chemical poisoning sometime. Hint, a double amputee can count it on his fingers.
I am sure I do not know every compound that could burn that color of blue,
I know one: Air. When air ionises it turns blue. This happens during a lightning strike, and also happens during HV arcing. Oh and bonus points: It has nothing to do with compounds and everything to do with temperature.
The nitrogen in the air arcs blue-white. Green comes from ionized copper.
Amazing thing about currents, they have this great ability to dissipate pollutants down to pointless levels.
No, they don't. They tend to carry things along together.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
It's to provide the Festivus Miracle! Of course!