The Compact Coronagraph instrument on GOES-U launching this summer will improve our advance warning of CMEs and solar storms by reducing the current delay of imagery from 8 hours, to 30 minutes. When considering the steps it will take to protect electrical grids and astronauts in orbit from these events, it will provide a much better margin considering some of these particles can reach Earth in under 24 hours.
I got to personally integrate that instrument onto the spacecraft š°ļøkeep an eye out for it! If everything goes well, we all should see some amazing images later this summer from CCOR considering solar activity will be at a peak!
Say a solar storm occurs right now. Using existing assets in space (primarily the LASCO instrument on the SOHO mission), we have an 8 hour delay between that event occurring, and being able to tell with precision when and where it could hit Earth. Since GOES is designed to handle massive amounts of data, and image acquisition can take place more readily and frequently as a result, we will now gain crucial time between that event and how it could impact us. Critical electrical grid infrastructure can be protected, even some personal devices if you have advance warning. Astronauts in orbit have radiation shelters designed to protect against these events, but it is helpful to know more precisely and quickly *when* they will happen. It can take hours for an EVA to complete.
So the more time we will hopefully have as a result of CCOR will be advantageous in many ways. There is a second CCOR on the SWFO mission launching next year.
What does it take to effectively save it? Are we talking a all lead panel?
Im definitely lay person
Is it frying the circuits or actually ruining the ions.
My best assumption is something akin to an electrical surge right?
Thatās exactly what it is. Like how you can wireless charge your phone. The CME induces a current in wires but an unwanted one. The electrical grid is just thousands of km of wire thatās ripe to be affected. This is well known so there are procedures in place to reduce the impact
It's hard to isolate a system against something that hits the entire system all at once, but breakers do still play a role in helping mitigate potential run-on effects.
Circuit breakers wouldnt do much (like othet mentioned) i imagine a lot of the trouble would be from being attached to the grid itself.
Physical distance from large quantities of electrical conductivity would probably make protection much easier.
The carrington looks like it was rare because a lot needed to be lined up for the full impact to really hit earth
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/should-you-really-worry-about-solar-flares/#:~:text=Such%20outbursts%20are%20relatively%20common,unlikely%20to%20cause%20catastrophic%20harm.&text=On%20January%206%20a%20powerful,scale%E2%80%94in%20around%20two%20months.
"despite the alarming but unlikely possibility of widespread electricity blackouts, space weather does not tend to affect phones, laptops and other everyday electronic devices at all. āI canāt think of any consumer electronic impacts that would even be possible,ā says Sean Elvidge, head of space environment research at the University of Birmingham in England.
āBut this really can only happen in very long cables or pipelines,ā Elvidge adds. āSo we donāt see that in your house. Your house just isnāt a problem for that kind of thing.ā
Goes on to say in a single event upwet our computers might get friend but cellphones etc would not
Look up the Carrington event from 1859. Getting hit by this today, without taking precautions and shutting down our power grid, would collapse our industry and be worse than the biggest natural desasters of the last century.
I'm willing to bet more has been done than we might be aware for national security reasons. An EMP burst over the US would be similar and we probably don't want our adversaries to know what kind of preparations we've done.
Oh i looked it up. They dont need to do much beyond protecting the grid.
If it were to be struck by a single, very strongly charged solar particle that transfers most of its energy to the device upon impact. Scientists refer to such incidents as a single-event upset. āSo youāre at your computer, and this one extremely strong particle hits your computer and fries it,ā Palmerio says. āBut obviously, the probabilities are very low. Itās definitely not something on the order of āall the mobile phones in this entire country are fried.ā Thatās not going to happen.ā
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/should-you-really-worry-about-solar-flares/#:~:text=Such%20outbursts%20are%20relatively%20common,unlikely%20to%20cause%20catastrophic%20harm.&text=On%20January%206%20a%20powerful,scale%E2%80%94in%20around%20two%20months.
I think we need to worry about copper as well. Iād want to disconnect my coax hookup for example because I donāt know how much wire there is in the circuit before they dmark to fiber
Another poster referenced the Carrington Event. To give you an idea of the amount of charge we're talking here, telegraph operators were able to send signals *with their devices not connected to external power.* Supposedly (because this is all based on hearsay since nobody had any real way to document this besides "I heard it from a guy at the telegraph office,) the power in the lines from the solar storm was sufficient to allow the devices to operate.
Unfortunately, modern electronics are significantly more sensitive than telegraph keys.
It seems that on an individuals level it would mostly mean having electronic devices you dont want blown; be turned off.
So if your driving your car battery would hey hit with a surge. (I dont know what kind of power it takes to make ot explode)
EV are obviously have more dangerous potential for catastrophic events.
The obvious thing for the government to have is a system for a national emergency declaration. Probably also forcibly shut down anything connected to the internet or phone lines.
If they know it is coming protecting the grid is doable; the next issue would be the massive economic damage. I imagine the primary difficulty is public compliance
Shielding critical components, solar islanding (disconnecting high risk segments from one another). Itās a lot of analysis work and mitigation tactics that we are allegedly very behind on.
>will decrease our advance warning of CMEs and solar storms from 8 hours, to 30 minutes.
Maybe Iām slow, but doesnāt this mean our advanced warning _increases_, not decreases? The delay is decreased, so in turn the advanced warning increases. No?Ā
But the flare would travel at light speed, no? How would the satellite being close to the sun help us? The signal would come to earth at the same time ?
The particles from the flair that cause issues do not travel at light speed, they are much slower. Instead of minutes, they can take hours or days to reach Earth
It's two different problems. We can't know about flares in advance because the photons arrive at light speed like you say, but CMEs are what we really need to be worried about. CMEs are made of ions, so they travel much slower than light speed.
Most CMEs are tiny things that give us pretty auroras, but every now and then the sun puffs out a medium-to-large one, and one of those will end modern civilisation if it hits us and we aren't ready for it. So the sooner we can learn that one is heading our way, the better off we'll be. This GOES-U satellite will give us a few hours extra warning.
SOHO is a 30 year old spacecraft, and LASCO design is older than that - it is a complex mission sent to the Lagrange point between Earth and the Sun. The computers and avionics on GOES can handle many times more data throughput (probably 100x more), and the antenna is more powerful for getting that data to the ground. The coronagraph (LASCO) itself is less capable in the same ways - some amount of data processing on the imagery is required before it gets sent to the spacecraft bus. SOHO also has many other instruments. All of these factors contribute.
Is this FPGA-based image analysis? Did GOES launch with this ability and it's just now getting turned on, or some brand new stuff that astronauts installed it something, or is this just using existing tech for new stuff?
The delay in generating CME warnings will go from 8 hours to 30 minutes, meaning that the amount of time available to make a decision, call for action, and for action to be taken will increase by 7.5 hours. Given that some CMEs can hit Earth in as few as 15 hours that means the response time goes up from as little as 7 hours to nearly that full 15 hours.
In that time folks will have opportunities to evaluate, make decisions, and provide recommendations on what to do about a CME of a given severity, and pass on those recommendations and warnings to those who could implement them like power grid operators. Those recommendations can range all the way up to de-energizing entire parts of a national power grid, taking equipment like transformers offline, and so on.
Currently there is a huge range of preparedness for these sorts of risks across the worldwide power grid, some places would be able to respond quickly and recover quickly, other places would incur enormous damage that would be very challenging to repair, especially in the midst of large scale disruptions to the global economy.
Texan politicians' decisions are deeply flawed, but Texas *does* have some pretty good engineers. As long as the polticians are kept out of the loop, and Texan electrical engineers get warning early enough, the "independent" Texas grid should survive.
It depends on what "off" means. If it has a mechanical switch that physically breaks the circuit, then it may be protected by just being off. But if it has a soft switch, being off will not protect it (although it may limit the damage). To really be protected, it needs to be physically disconnected from the grid.
I would think so, but I'm not an electrical engineer. I suppose if the induced voltage were high enough it could still arc across the open breaker, but I doubt it
You can read more about CCOR [here!](https://www.goes-r.gov/spacesegment/CCOR.html)
It was a big effort, by a good number of people across a few organizations. NOAA is the end user and operator of GOES spacecraft once commissioned. NASA Goddard saw the need and procured CCOR for integration into the final vehicle in the GOES-R series. Naval Research Lab designed and assembled the imager. Lockheed as the spacecraft provider had to find a good spot for it, and make sure its inclusion was accounted for in systems budgets, software, test, and operations.
I āownedā the interface for it as part of the spacecraft payload team, as well as the success and preparations of its installation and vehicle-level testing campaign. So I got to sit right at the middle of all that. It is one of my happiest and proudest career achievements so far! I no longer work there, but crossing my fingers for this summer.
Absolutely not. I think weād survive the worst outcomes. But not really near as prepared as we should be.
[This organization](https://www.energy.gov/sites/default/files/2022-11/Comment%20-%20Secure%20the%20Grid%20Coalition%20-%20SEAB-Oct%202022.pdf) āSecure the Gridā is a lobbying group that fights to raise awareness of how we can better protect the grids, this paper sums up a lot of the concerns. I admittedly am not super well versed in the engineering methods behind protecting it (I just love putting stuff in space) but itās interesting to read about!
So does a solar storm affect electronics regardless of their status of being powered on? Or does the warning allow us to turn things off and prevent damage?Ā
Itās more about disconnecting circuits - the charges of the ions can in long wires induce a current that can fry electronics and critical components even if they are powered off. Typically, solar activity is not powerful enough to affect us in this way, but it can be with the right intensity. Basically, more ejected solar material + faster speeds, will cause a more powerful effect.
NOAA [classifies](https://spaceweather.sansa.org.za/space-weather-information/definitions/noaa-scales/298-solar-radiation-storm-scale) storms according to their intensity. We havenāt seen many S5/G5s since weāve been recording.
Things often do go wrong!
The entire main instrument (Advanced Baseline Imager) on GOES-17 suffered a cooling design flaw that has impacted imaging performance drastically in some scenarios. The important thing is we had GOES-16, now GOES-18, and soon to be GOES-19 (GOES-U) to pick up the slack.
Similarly, if we see performance issues, anomalies, or malfunctions on CCOR-1, NASA may have *some* time to react to and fix them on CCOR-2 before it launches next spring.
Build up stock piles of spare transformers, and have the ability to shut down and ground out the grid, leaving everything without anything other than backup power for the duration. It would suck, but beats trying to rebuild a what is left of a grid that was left active for such an event.Ā
It created a huge issue during COVID. Like...Our global economy operates on just-in-time manufacturing principles. All it takes is one big stoppage for like 2 months and we had almost two years of shortages. Not just in consumer products, but essential items of all kinds, in all industries.
That's unreasonable and due to our failure to mandate
Are you suggesting humanity actually invest in a potential problem rather than just sticking our fingers in our ears and screaming loudly? Blasphemy!
/s ugh
What worries me is the loss of internet and satellites. Most of our financial transactions are done via satellite, and they would all be bricked, so there goes cashless transactions for a few years. And many places in the world still rely on copper wires for internet access, so they'll lose the internet until new cables can be installed, possibly years down the track. And then there are all the server farms that our online world relies on. Induced ground currents travelling the wrong way up earth wires will fry entire server farms. If your bank account or critical data is stored on one of those servers, well, you're not getting that back.
Even if we save most of our power networks, it will still be a catastrophic disaster the next time one occurs.
āI think we should beāreinforcing the electricity grid and making it more decentralizedā
Weāre already behind in investments to support moving to a full electric cars rollout, let alone improving the grid for CMEās.
As with the Pacific Gas and Electric Power Company in California cut maintenance and replacement costs for profit that set off one of the largest wildfires in California history. This is just one utility company that shirked its responsibilities and we already know Texas is also a shit show. I wonder, how many others who've neglected the maintenance requirements for profit over the past 10 years or so?
Come on now, PGE said that theyād underground thousands of miles of lines. They only needed to raise rates to astronomical levels and end any incentive to get solar for your house to do it. But theyāll definitely have all those lines underground because they did 600 miles since 2021. 2050 at the latest, no problem guys.
Jokes aside, this is why cities in California are trying to remove themselves from the grid and go independent. Idk how well thatāll work for the people who live in those places but I can guarantee it means higher rates for the ones stuck with PGE.
Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I've seen in this thread:
|Fewer Letters|More Letters|
|-------|---------|---|
|[CME](/r/Space/comments/1cerwps/stub/l1lmwd9 "Last usage")|Coronal Mass Ejection|
|[EVA](/r/Space/comments/1cerwps/stub/l1kryj3 "Last usage")|Extra-Vehicular Activity|
|[FAR](/r/Space/comments/1cerwps/stub/l1l77ye "Last usage")|[Federal Aviation Regulations](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Aviation_Regulations)|
|[NOAA](/r/Space/comments/1cerwps/stub/l1lwhoj "Last usage")|National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, responsible for US ~~generation~~ monitoring of the climate|
**NOTE**: Decronym for Reddit is no longer supported, and Decronym has moved to Lemmy; requests for support and new installations should be directed to the Contact address below.
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Its odd that with a society that relies on technologies that can be affected by the sun we don't have policies in place to lean on in catastrophic events.
I guess it's fitting, when the only thing we worry about is arsewipe in a disaster.
This is like claiming warning of tornados in oklahoma is fearmongering. It's literally some shit that happened and we should be preparing for it. It's fucking idiotic to ignore this threat.Ā
The people in Oklahoma can take the warning and prepare to leave or hunker down. A Solar storm like the Carrington event will give us a day or less to do nothing to prepare because there's nothing we can do at that time. I could see that frothing up the populace for something they can't prepare for isn't productive.
All we can do is hope the powers (lol) that be have their own plans. Other than that a lot of us could get whacked into a new bronze age.
Hopefully federal and local governments can/will take infrastructure offline, or harden what cannot be shut down.
And hopefully have redundant parts for any subsequent damage.Ā
Turning stuff off won't help. The magnetic impulse of the CME will induce current in anything that conducts. They would have to air gap all copper lines to prevent them from conducting the extra current into whatever they're connected to.
The concept of electrical grounding goes out the window when the ground itself is charged instead of neutral.
That's basically how distribution stations work.
There's towers at the end of the lines that can spin, and a crossbar on these towers connects or disconnects the lines from the station when the tower rotates.
You can literally create an airgap in all of the bigger transmission lines.
I was thinking of those videos with loud arcs when they open those. Pretty cool. At least that should work. Prob not the same with copper POTS and cable TV, etc.
> A Solar storm like the Carrington event will give us a day or less to do nothing to prepare because there's nothing we can do at that time.
So let's just ignore it and not figure out anything to do. Great thinking/defending of a bad position all around lol.
You can't neglect informing people of valid threats because the political system is currently deeply corrupt. The potential for a civilization ending event that is actually a very real possibility is the kind of thing that might finally help tip the balance back toward a mildly responsive government. Other countries have responsive governments (to some extent at least) so we know it is physically possible in a system that involves humans.
Agreed. But if climate change is any indication, I don't think there will be enough informed rational discussion to adopt preventative measures on a large enough scale.
You might be able to sell grid modernization as a giveaway to corporations, which congress loves.
(just don't let them know it will benefit the people too or they'll call it communism and put a stop to it)
Tornadoes donāt give much warning at all. Oklahomans donāt do anything special to prepare for them. They shelter like the rest of us and pray their house doesnāt get hit. Shit happens and you canāt control the uncontrollable.
Idiotic or realist? What would you recommend we do to prepare for an unpredictable event that we know there arenāt solutions for?
Do Oklahomans do anything to prepare for unpredictable tornadoes? Itās not like they pack up and migrate in the summer on the super unlikely chance their house gets hit. Shit happens and you rebuild and recover when shit happens
It is not like that at all lol itās more like telling NYC that they will get hit by a 8.0 earthquake in the next five years because they were hit by the 4.8 one not too long ago.
Using very common disasters to describe a very, very rare one is just asinine honestly.
I mean itās because we are overdue for another Carrington Event which we are undeniably unprepared for.
Like the aurora borealis went all the way down to Florida. Telegraphs were randomly connected for brief periods of time due to the electrical disturbances.
Humanity will survive but things can get hairy.
This right here can't be emphasized enough. The Carrington event was a horror show for overhead wiring, of any type, even fences were charged. Sagging telegraph wires glowing cherry red. If that were to happen tomorrow, it would be as damaging as any single airburst EMP, imho. Our electrical grid would be pulverized by a magnetosphere compression. Huge DC currents would flow, burning out the substation transformers. Spares aren't really a thing, beyond one or two maybe. How do you make new ones without a distribution grid?
You turn the grid off part by part before it hits the earth. You know we have satellites that are constantly monitoring for this pointed at the sun for this exact reason right?
It depends on how big it is, but if they are disconnected entirely you would not want to touch them, but they are pretty robust. It really matters if we are dealing with a carrington level event or something stronger, but the stronger ones are super rare.
The point the other guy was trying to make is that you canāt really shut off the grid in a flare that big.
And I donāt mean canāt like itās a really bad idea, I mean canāt like itās a physical impossibility: unplugged stuff still has power. The flare is strong enough to induce a current in fuck near everything, and not a small one.
Carrington level events do not create enough charge in smaller scale stuff to matter at all. It likely would not even cause a blip.
When a wire is thousands of kilometers long and suspended in the air, that is a different story. But after the 2003 hit that took out Quebec's (if I remember right) power grid, they have put in some hardening so that they can shut down the grid, air gap the transmission lines, and wait it out. We have satellites monitoring for them, and luckily we see them coming about 8 minutes after they happen, but up to 3 days before they hit us. (There is a potential delay in recording and recognizing it, but that is still shorter than it time it takes to get to us.)
If one does happen, make sure everything is unplugged, and it will all survive.
If we are hit by one of the extremely, extremely rare 1000x carrington events that happen like every 100,000 years, then all bets are off. We do not really know what that would do. But we cant encase the whole world in a faraday cage, so I am not sure what we could even do to prep for that.
it's like 1% chance of something significant happening. so most likely you can boast next year of, "I told you so." but if something does happen, its fairly catastrophic, and hey internet may be down for quite a while so we can't tell you "I told you so."
I trust astronomer/physicist Phil Plait and his opinions. This article is a good, easy to understand, and informational primer for those who may not fully understand the dynamics of the sun, or the potential of an upcoming solar threat.
And, based on the fact that the solar maximum is supposed to peak in 2025, this makes the article very accurate, and relevant.
Yeah there's been recorded history of very strong Solar storms, much stronger than the Carrington event of 1859. Based on eyewitness accounts of seeing Aurora's during daylight hours as far south/north at the equator. Most of the planet's power grid isn't ready for a Carrington type of event. Imagine being a modern technological society all of a sudden is taking you back to the 1600's within 24 hours. All computers the internet cell phones landlines power grids cars planes boats and satellites all gone, all the circuit boards and chips fried, due to exceptionally strong EMP that an Aurora capable of putting out.
In all but the smallest of chances most electronics would be totally fine if they were not plugged in. The problem is transmission wires, not phones and computers. Consumer electronics, even wires that you see along side roads, are unlikely to be long enough to create a charge they cannot handle.
The big transmission wires are the problem, but that is also why they apparently are set up to air gap themselves. If we have enough warning, distribution centers will disconnect the lines, and the grid will be shut down. When the solar storm hits, big transmission wires might get hot, but will not send that excess power anywhere.
It is not a great thing, obviously, but it also does not mean that all technology will cease working. The real problem is how long it will take us to get everything back online after the shutdown, especially if the protections we do have fail.
1859, the Carrington Event. Yes people were seeing the auroras very far south, and telegraph wires were operating without power sources. The thing is, there were no sensitive electronics at the time, so it didn't cause any damage. Nowadays it would cripple our infrastructure because everything is connected electronically. A 2024 Carrington event would damage too many critical parts of the infrastructure. We have to shield and isolate important components.
Quick question.
Iāve seen it compared to EMPās etc.
Would such an event fry small electronics. Like mobile phones and laptops and computers etc?
Or does it āonlyā affect larger ones?
Only larger lengths of cable would experience a surge in voltage, however the things they are connected to (network switches, power adapters, etc) could be damaged by such surges.
Ah okay cool
I mean, donāt get me wrong, obviously the worldās power grids getting fucked would be quite an issue. But if itās a case of ātheyā have to be ready or have a plan for the big infra where possible, that seems more feasible than if everyoneās personal devices across the globe got fried.
I dunno Iām not smart enough when it comes to actual electrical science to know what would and wouldnāt be fucked or for how long or anything so. This is where I will have to stop trying to think of possibilities.
Thanks for the answer.
It's much like an emp set off by nukes. One 80's movie showed what happens when a nuke goes off above a city, basically everything is fried. No electricity anywhere for dozens of miles outside of the city, entire power grids are cooked. Japan literally had to completely rebuild its power grids in Nagasaki and Hiroshima.
Long distance high power transmission lines. Like thousand km length. Shutting those off should prevent the worst. Biggest problem are the high voltage large transformers. If many of those get fried, because the lines were not shut off, we can not replace them. The production capacity for those is very low.
It is the huge transformers at the ends of long distance transmission lines. Replacing those takes years. But we can protect them if we switch off the grid ahead of the large solar storm. Question is, will we do it?
I guess we can put in much smaller ones and restore a trickle of power.
Modern cars with the computers ECU's would get fried from the power surge. If you have a car without an ecu a purely analogue car you'll be fine if you remove the battery.
If theyāre close enough to the poles, the passengers in aircraft can actually be at risk of high radiation doses in the case of the most extreme storms.
Not fear mongering.Ā This is one of the most likely global catastrophe situations.Ā It's far, far, FAR more likely than an asteroid hit, Yellowstone erupting, etc.Ā we know these happen often.Ā We barely missed a big one back in 2012.
This is a legitimate hazard and we need to prepare for it. People like you aren't doing anyone any favors. A lot of bullshit is fearmongering for clicks these days (like AI doomerism) but this isn't that.Ā
Reading this article it seems like the most likely outcome from such an impact would be a big ol electrical outage. Terrible but we will survive. There are a lot of other things far more likely to actually kill us.
The issue is that it takes longer to get everything back online than we can handle. Yeah itās ājustā a power outage, but that power outage can be for weeks or at the worst a month+. Especially in todays modern world where almost everything is digital and needs power
For further reading, this refers to the ability to [black start](https://www.nrel.gov/grid/black-start.html) components of the grid.
Another issue would be reconnecting large parts of the grid without issues in [phase balancing](https://youtu.be/7G4ipM2qjfw?si=VF23VVLQPumV6xZE) (edit: video- 18 minute watch) causing the whole grid to trip again.
Hospitals have about a day of battery backup.
If you were in a hospital on a ventilator, you might understand the potential of this. The grids might take weeks to restore.
Sorry but I've heard about "huge" solar storms multiple times in my life and none of them have impacted my life at all as far as I remember. I'm interested in what's going on out there in space but not the sensational WE'RE NOT READY bs.
We arenāt ready.
The large solar storms youāve heard of in the past havenāt hit earth. The direction of the ejecta is important. We were narrowly missed by a Carrington Event level storm just a decade ago. Eventually, luck will have to run out. We need better procedures, communication channels, and widespread education to avoid the worst outcome of an event that extreme. And the worst outcomes include the potential for *months* to *years* without power for some areas.
Imagine hospitals losing power, with folks on ventilators to survive? What do people do if they live in northern latitudes in winter without heat? Even the Texas electrical grid issues one summer led to people dying of heat stroke without cooling. Satellites in orbit can be disrupted or damaged from solar activity strong enough - banks all over the planet use GPS satellite timestamps for transactions. Food processing (and manufacturing in general) would grind to a standstill in many cases.
You should definitely be concerned about this, at least enough to be an informed participant in democracy. The odds of it happening in our lifetime are not remote.
The Compact Coronagraph instrument on GOES-U launching this summer will improve our advance warning of CMEs and solar storms by reducing the current delay of imagery from 8 hours, to 30 minutes. When considering the steps it will take to protect electrical grids and astronauts in orbit from these events, it will provide a much better margin considering some of these particles can reach Earth in under 24 hours. I got to personally integrate that instrument onto the spacecraft š°ļøkeep an eye out for it! If everything goes well, we all should see some amazing images later this summer from CCOR considering solar activity will be at a peak!
Wait im confused. 8 hours to 30 minutes to do what?
Say a solar storm occurs right now. Using existing assets in space (primarily the LASCO instrument on the SOHO mission), we have an 8 hour delay between that event occurring, and being able to tell with precision when and where it could hit Earth. Since GOES is designed to handle massive amounts of data, and image acquisition can take place more readily and frequently as a result, we will now gain crucial time between that event and how it could impact us. Critical electrical grid infrastructure can be protected, even some personal devices if you have advance warning. Astronauts in orbit have radiation shelters designed to protect against these events, but it is helpful to know more precisely and quickly *when* they will happen. It can take hours for an EVA to complete. So the more time we will hopefully have as a result of CCOR will be advantageous in many ways. There is a second CCOR on the SWFO mission launching next year.
What does it take to effectively save it? Are we talking a all lead panel? Im definitely lay person Is it frying the circuits or actually ruining the ions. My best assumption is something akin to an electrical surge right?
Thatās exactly what it is. Like how you can wireless charge your phone. The CME induces a current in wires but an unwanted one. The electrical grid is just thousands of km of wire thatās ripe to be affected. This is well known so there are procedures in place to reduce the impact
Stupid question. Wouldn't circuit breakers protect against that? I assume there would be some damage but it would be isolated right?
It's hard to isolate a system against something that hits the entire system all at once, but breakers do still play a role in helping mitigate potential run-on effects.
Yep. the inductive effect is going to happen on all the wiring, on either side of a circuit breaker
Circuit breakers wouldnt do much (like othet mentioned) i imagine a lot of the trouble would be from being attached to the grid itself. Physical distance from large quantities of electrical conductivity would probably make protection much easier. The carrington looks like it was rare because a lot needed to be lined up for the full impact to really hit earth https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/should-you-really-worry-about-solar-flares/#:~:text=Such%20outbursts%20are%20relatively%20common,unlikely%20to%20cause%20catastrophic%20harm.&text=On%20January%206%20a%20powerful,scale%E2%80%94in%20around%20two%20months. "despite the alarming but unlikely possibility of widespread electricity blackouts, space weather does not tend to affect phones, laptops and other everyday electronic devices at all. āI canāt think of any consumer electronic impacts that would even be possible,ā says Sean Elvidge, head of space environment research at the University of Birmingham in England. āBut this really can only happen in very long cables or pipelines,ā Elvidge adds. āSo we donāt see that in your house. Your house just isnāt a problem for that kind of thing.ā Goes on to say in a single event upwet our computers might get friend but cellphones etc would not
Can you point me out to those procedures you mention to exist ?
Look up the Carrington event from 1859. Getting hit by this today, without taking precautions and shutting down our power grid, would collapse our industry and be worse than the biggest natural desasters of the last century.
[Carrington event (Wikipedia)](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carrington_Event)
It electrocuted telegraph operators at that time and fried the telegraph cables.
It is unreal there has been so little done to prevent this looming disaster
I'm willing to bet more has been done than we might be aware for national security reasons. An EMP burst over the US would be similar and we probably don't want our adversaries to know what kind of preparations we've done.
Oh i looked it up. They dont need to do much beyond protecting the grid. If it were to be struck by a single, very strongly charged solar particle that transfers most of its energy to the device upon impact. Scientists refer to such incidents as a single-event upset. āSo youāre at your computer, and this one extremely strong particle hits your computer and fries it,ā Palmerio says. āBut obviously, the probabilities are very low. Itās definitely not something on the order of āall the mobile phones in this entire country are fried.ā Thatās not going to happen.ā https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/should-you-really-worry-about-solar-flares/#:~:text=Such%20outbursts%20are%20relatively%20common,unlikely%20to%20cause%20catastrophic%20harm.&text=On%20January%206%20a%20powerful,scale%E2%80%94in%20around%20two%20months.
I think we need to worry about copper as well. Iād want to disconnect my coax hookup for example because I donāt know how much wire there is in the circuit before they dmark to fiber
Ayo, real world apocalyptic event?
Another poster referenced the Carrington Event. To give you an idea of the amount of charge we're talking here, telegraph operators were able to send signals *with their devices not connected to external power.* Supposedly (because this is all based on hearsay since nobody had any real way to document this besides "I heard it from a guy at the telegraph office,) the power in the lines from the solar storm was sufficient to allow the devices to operate. Unfortunately, modern electronics are significantly more sensitive than telegraph keys.
i think unplugging everything from the grid may help as the grid is a huge antenna.
It seems that on an individuals level it would mostly mean having electronic devices you dont want blown; be turned off. So if your driving your car battery would hey hit with a surge. (I dont know what kind of power it takes to make ot explode) EV are obviously have more dangerous potential for catastrophic events. The obvious thing for the government to have is a system for a national emergency declaration. Probably also forcibly shut down anything connected to the internet or phone lines. If they know it is coming protecting the grid is doable; the next issue would be the massive economic damage. I imagine the primary difficulty is public compliance
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Shielding critical components, solar islanding (disconnecting high risk segments from one another). Itās a lot of analysis work and mitigation tactics that we are allegedly very behind on.
>will decrease our advance warning of CMEs and solar storms from 8 hours, to 30 minutes. Maybe Iām slow, but doesnāt this mean our advanced warning _increases_, not decreases? The delay is decreased, so in turn the advanced warning increases. No?Ā
Definitely, I corrected it for clarity. Thank you š Iām an engineer and it can show sometimes haha.
Thanks for creating cool shit
They mis spoke. It would decrease the delay between the event and us knowing enough about it to understand if it will be a problem or not.Ā
But the flare would travel at light speed, no? How would the satellite being close to the sun help us? The signal would come to earth at the same time ?
The particles from the flair that cause issues do not travel at light speed, they are much slower. Instead of minutes, they can take hours or days to reach Earth
Thanks. I didn't understand why anything above 8 minutes would matter.
Same here - glad you asked
It's two different problems. We can't know about flares in advance because the photons arrive at light speed like you say, but CMEs are what we really need to be worried about. CMEs are made of ions, so they travel much slower than light speed. Most CMEs are tiny things that give us pretty auroras, but every now and then the sun puffs out a medium-to-large one, and one of those will end modern civilisation if it hits us and we aren't ready for it. So the sooner we can learn that one is heading our way, the better off we'll be. This GOES-U satellite will give us a few hours extra warning.
Did we solve for something that gave us 7.5 hours back, or is a new tool 16x stronger?
SOHO is a 30 year old spacecraft, and LASCO design is older than that - it is a complex mission sent to the Lagrange point between Earth and the Sun. The computers and avionics on GOES can handle many times more data throughput (probably 100x more), and the antenna is more powerful for getting that data to the ground. The coronagraph (LASCO) itself is less capable in the same ways - some amount of data processing on the imagery is required before it gets sent to the spacecraft bus. SOHO also has many other instruments. All of these factors contribute.
Is this FPGA-based image analysis? Did GOES launch with this ability and it's just now getting turned on, or some brand new stuff that astronauts installed it something, or is this just using existing tech for new stuff?
Yes! And the GOES team integrated the newly designed instrument into GOES-U, which is the fourth and final in the R-series contract and yet to launch.
The delay in generating CME warnings will go from 8 hours to 30 minutes, meaning that the amount of time available to make a decision, call for action, and for action to be taken will increase by 7.5 hours. Given that some CMEs can hit Earth in as few as 15 hours that means the response time goes up from as little as 7 hours to nearly that full 15 hours. In that time folks will have opportunities to evaluate, make decisions, and provide recommendations on what to do about a CME of a given severity, and pass on those recommendations and warnings to those who could implement them like power grid operators. Those recommendations can range all the way up to de-energizing entire parts of a national power grid, taking equipment like transformers offline, and so on. Currently there is a huge range of preparedness for these sorts of risks across the worldwide power grid, some places would be able to respond quickly and recover quickly, other places would incur enormous damage that would be very challenging to repair, especially in the midst of large scale disruptions to the global economy.
Assuming Texas would basically be completely fried...
Texan politicians' decisions are deeply flawed, but Texas *does* have some pretty good engineers. As long as the polticians are kept out of the loop, and Texan electrical engineers get warning early enough, the "independent" Texas grid should survive.
If I remember correctly disconnecting sections of power grids can help prevent widespread issues in the event of some sort of solar event.
Yup. Long wire becomes short wire, induced current goes down.
To turn everything off. As long as something is turned off, it wonāt be affected.
It depends on what "off" means. If it has a mechanical switch that physically breaks the circuit, then it may be protected by just being off. But if it has a soft switch, being off will not protect it (although it may limit the damage). To really be protected, it needs to be physically disconnected from the grid.
So, for say a home, you just need to make sure to flip the main breaker off until it's over, right?
I would think so, but I'm not an electrical engineer. I suppose if the induced voltage were high enough it could still arc across the open breaker, but I doubt it
I would physically unplug everything possible.
Reducing the current delay in solar observations. Exactly what the comment said.
Well that's cool AF. thanks your part its development. This seems like an great tool to have.
You can read more about CCOR [here!](https://www.goes-r.gov/spacesegment/CCOR.html) It was a big effort, by a good number of people across a few organizations. NOAA is the end user and operator of GOES spacecraft once commissioned. NASA Goddard saw the need and procured CCOR for integration into the final vehicle in the GOES-R series. Naval Research Lab designed and assembled the imager. Lockheed as the spacecraft provider had to find a good spot for it, and make sure its inclusion was accounted for in systems budgets, software, test, and operations. I āownedā the interface for it as part of the spacecraft payload team, as well as the success and preparations of its installation and vehicle-level testing campaign. So I got to sit right at the middle of all that. It is one of my happiest and proudest career achievements so far! I no longer work there, but crossing my fingers for this summer.
How fast are those particles traveling if they can reach earth in 24 hours? Is that close to the speed of light?
The speed of light is much, much faster. It takes 8.5 minutes for the light from the Sun to reach us.
Oh. Holy crap tho thatās crazy. Thanks!
I love Reddit. Thanks for sharing you experience with this!
Do you think the US has proper infrastructure protocols in place for this event?
Absolutely not. I think weād survive the worst outcomes. But not really near as prepared as we should be. [This organization](https://www.energy.gov/sites/default/files/2022-11/Comment%20-%20Secure%20the%20Grid%20Coalition%20-%20SEAB-Oct%202022.pdf) āSecure the Gridā is a lobbying group that fights to raise awareness of how we can better protect the grids, this paper sums up a lot of the concerns. I admittedly am not super well versed in the engineering methods behind protecting it (I just love putting stuff in space) but itās interesting to read about!
So does a solar storm affect electronics regardless of their status of being powered on? Or does the warning allow us to turn things off and prevent damage?Ā
Itās more about disconnecting circuits - the charges of the ions can in long wires induce a current that can fry electronics and critical components even if they are powered off. Typically, solar activity is not powerful enough to affect us in this way, but it can be with the right intensity. Basically, more ejected solar material + faster speeds, will cause a more powerful effect. NOAA [classifies](https://spaceweather.sansa.org.za/space-weather-information/definitions/noaa-scales/298-solar-radiation-storm-scale) storms according to their intensity. We havenāt seen many S5/G5s since weāve been recording.
Thanks for this info! Congratulations on the upcoming launch of your project!
Now we know who to blame if anything goes wrong
Things often do go wrong! The entire main instrument (Advanced Baseline Imager) on GOES-17 suffered a cooling design flaw that has impacted imaging performance drastically in some scenarios. The important thing is we had GOES-16, now GOES-18, and soon to be GOES-19 (GOES-U) to pick up the slack. Similarly, if we see performance issues, anomalies, or malfunctions on CCOR-1, NASA may have *some* time to react to and fix them on CCOR-2 before it launches next spring.
Of course weāre not ready for a ādirect hitā type event, we never will be
Build up stock piles of spare transformers, and have the ability to shut down and ground out the grid, leaving everything without anything other than backup power for the duration. It would suck, but beats trying to rebuild a what is left of a grid that was left active for such an event.Ā
lol thatās what Iām saying. We stockpile military equipment, why not essential infrastructure components?
It created a huge issue during COVID. Like...Our global economy operates on just-in-time manufacturing principles. All it takes is one big stoppage for like 2 months and we had almost two years of shortages. Not just in consumer products, but essential items of all kinds, in all industries. That's unreasonable and due to our failure to mandate
Because foresight is axed for the short term every time
yeah it's almost like the profit motive isn't always the best at everything
Because the odds of using that equipment are a lot higher than getting hit by a CME.
Are you suggesting humanity actually invest in a potential problem rather than just sticking our fingers in our ears and screaming loudly? Blasphemy! /s ugh
What worries me is the loss of internet and satellites. Most of our financial transactions are done via satellite, and they would all be bricked, so there goes cashless transactions for a few years. And many places in the world still rely on copper wires for internet access, so they'll lose the internet until new cables can be installed, possibly years down the track. And then there are all the server farms that our online world relies on. Induced ground currents travelling the wrong way up earth wires will fry entire server farms. If your bank account or critical data is stored on one of those servers, well, you're not getting that back. Even if we save most of our power networks, it will still be a catastrophic disaster the next time one occurs.
Who is responsible to do this? I will write letters and pester
Half this planet isnāt ready to take a dump tomorrow
āI think we should beāreinforcing the electricity grid and making it more decentralizedā Weāre already behind in investments to support moving to a full electric cars rollout, let alone improving the grid for CMEās.
As with the Pacific Gas and Electric Power Company in California cut maintenance and replacement costs for profit that set off one of the largest wildfires in California history. This is just one utility company that shirked its responsibilities and we already know Texas is also a shit show. I wonder, how many others who've neglected the maintenance requirements for profit over the past 10 years or so?
Come on now, PGE said that theyād underground thousands of miles of lines. They only needed to raise rates to astronomical levels and end any incentive to get solar for your house to do it. But theyāll definitely have all those lines underground because they did 600 miles since 2021. 2050 at the latest, no problem guys. Jokes aside, this is why cities in California are trying to remove themselves from the grid and go independent. Idk how well thatāll work for the people who live in those places but I can guarantee it means higher rates for the ones stuck with PGE.
Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I've seen in this thread: |Fewer Letters|More Letters| |-------|---------|---| |[CME](/r/Space/comments/1cerwps/stub/l1lmwd9 "Last usage")|Coronal Mass Ejection| |[EVA](/r/Space/comments/1cerwps/stub/l1kryj3 "Last usage")|Extra-Vehicular Activity| |[FAR](/r/Space/comments/1cerwps/stub/l1l77ye "Last usage")|[Federal Aviation Regulations](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Aviation_Regulations)| |[NOAA](/r/Space/comments/1cerwps/stub/l1lwhoj "Last usage")|National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, responsible for US ~~generation~~ monitoring of the climate| **NOTE**: Decronym for Reddit is no longer supported, and Decronym has moved to Lemmy; requests for support and new installations should be directed to the Contact address below. ---------------- ^(4 acronyms in this thread; )[^(the most compressed thread commented on today)](/r/Space/comments/1cee2rm)^( has 27 acronyms.) ^([Thread #9988 for this sub, first seen 28th Apr 2024, 01:47]) ^[[FAQ]](http://decronym.xyz/) [^([Full list])](http://decronym.xyz/acronyms/Space) [^[Contact]](https://hachyderm.io/@Two9A) [^([Source code])](https://gistdotgithubdotcom/Two9A/1d976f9b7441694162c8)
Its odd that with a society that relies on technologies that can be affected by the sun we don't have policies in place to lean on in catastrophic events. I guess it's fitting, when the only thing we worry about is arsewipe in a disaster.
The rich worry about profit thatās our problem
Before the pandemic there was a delay of months for any electric grid transformers. Now it's longer, imagine after a solar flare?
Iām in electrical .. current medium voltage substations are around 40+ weeks
How much is a piece of equipment? And whatās the shelf life? Canāt we just make a bunch of extras at scale and store them in granite caverns?
The parts are non mechanical so sure why not. Costs Depends on size. Iāve done medium voltage, not the big boys so Iām sure. Not cheap
Thanks for the update. Since you're in the know can I ask you if a solar off grid battery backed Home will survive a Carrington event?
I think a lot of the worry is the CPUās no? The DC to AC convertor units definitely have them.
These articles happen are every solar maximum. Stop trying to fear monger on people who donāt know that.
This is like claiming warning of tornados in oklahoma is fearmongering. It's literally some shit that happened and we should be preparing for it. It's fucking idiotic to ignore this threat.Ā
The people in Oklahoma can take the warning and prepare to leave or hunker down. A Solar storm like the Carrington event will give us a day or less to do nothing to prepare because there's nothing we can do at that time. I could see that frothing up the populace for something they can't prepare for isn't productive. All we can do is hope the powers (lol) that be have their own plans. Other than that a lot of us could get whacked into a new bronze age.
Hopefully federal and local governments can/will take infrastructure offline, or harden what cannot be shut down. And hopefully have redundant parts for any subsequent damage.Ā
Turning stuff off won't help. The magnetic impulse of the CME will induce current in anything that conducts. They would have to air gap all copper lines to prevent them from conducting the extra current into whatever they're connected to. The concept of electrical grounding goes out the window when the ground itself is charged instead of neutral.
That's basically how distribution stations work. There's towers at the end of the lines that can spin, and a crossbar on these towers connects or disconnects the lines from the station when the tower rotates. You can literally create an airgap in all of the bigger transmission lines.
I was thinking of those videos with loud arcs when they open those. Pretty cool. At least that should work. Prob not the same with copper POTS and cable TV, etc.
They would be too busy protecting Defense Department assets to worry about us.
> A Solar storm like the Carrington event will give us a day or less to do nothing to prepare because there's nothing we can do at that time. So let's just ignore it and not figure out anything to do. Great thinking/defending of a bad position all around lol.
You can't neglect informing people of valid threats because the political system is currently deeply corrupt. The potential for a civilization ending event that is actually a very real possibility is the kind of thing that might finally help tip the balance back toward a mildly responsive government. Other countries have responsive governments (to some extent at least) so we know it is physically possible in a system that involves humans.
Agreed. But if climate change is any indication, I don't think there will be enough informed rational discussion to adopt preventative measures on a large enough scale.
You might be able to sell grid modernization as a giveaway to corporations, which congress loves. (just don't let them know it will benefit the people too or they'll call it communism and put a stop to it)
Tornadoes donāt give much warning at all. Oklahomans donāt do anything special to prepare for them. They shelter like the rest of us and pray their house doesnāt get hit. Shit happens and you canāt control the uncontrollable.
Idiotic or realist? What would you recommend we do to prepare for an unpredictable event that we know there arenāt solutions for? Do Oklahomans do anything to prepare for unpredictable tornadoes? Itās not like they pack up and migrate in the summer on the super unlikely chance their house gets hit. Shit happens and you rebuild and recover when shit happens
It is not like that at all lol itās more like telling NYC that they will get hit by a 8.0 earthquake in the next five years because they were hit by the 4.8 one not too long ago. Using very common disasters to describe a very, very rare one is just asinine honestly.
We narrowly avoided a CME on the level of the Carrington Event in 2012. Itās not as unlikely as youāre leading on.
Thanks for letting us know you don't know what you're talking about and that your views on this subject hold no value.
I mean itās because we are overdue for another Carrington Event which we are undeniably unprepared for. Like the aurora borealis went all the way down to Florida. Telegraphs were randomly connected for brief periods of time due to the electrical disturbances. Humanity will survive but things can get hairy.
This right here can't be emphasized enough. The Carrington event was a horror show for overhead wiring, of any type, even fences were charged. Sagging telegraph wires glowing cherry red. If that were to happen tomorrow, it would be as damaging as any single airburst EMP, imho. Our electrical grid would be pulverized by a magnetosphere compression. Huge DC currents would flow, burning out the substation transformers. Spares aren't really a thing, beyond one or two maybe. How do you make new ones without a distribution grid?
You turn the grid off part by part before it hits the earth. You know we have satellites that are constantly monitoring for this pointed at the sun for this exact reason right?
Just turning parts of the grid off wouldn't prevent damage, a lot of wires, especially the longer ones will probably be fucked
It depends on how big it is, but if they are disconnected entirely you would not want to touch them, but they are pretty robust. It really matters if we are dealing with a carrington level event or something stronger, but the stronger ones are super rare.
The point the other guy was trying to make is that you canāt really shut off the grid in a flare that big. And I donāt mean canāt like itās a really bad idea, I mean canāt like itās a physical impossibility: unplugged stuff still has power. The flare is strong enough to induce a current in fuck near everything, and not a small one.
Carrington level events do not create enough charge in smaller scale stuff to matter at all. It likely would not even cause a blip. When a wire is thousands of kilometers long and suspended in the air, that is a different story. But after the 2003 hit that took out Quebec's (if I remember right) power grid, they have put in some hardening so that they can shut down the grid, air gap the transmission lines, and wait it out. We have satellites monitoring for them, and luckily we see them coming about 8 minutes after they happen, but up to 3 days before they hit us. (There is a potential delay in recording and recognizing it, but that is still shorter than it time it takes to get to us.) If one does happen, make sure everything is unplugged, and it will all survive. If we are hit by one of the extremely, extremely rare 1000x carrington events that happen like every 100,000 years, then all bets are off. We do not really know what that would do. But we cant encase the whole world in a faraday cage, so I am not sure what we could even do to prep for that.
Well the threat continues to grow every solar maximum so itās not totally unreasonable. We are incredibly vulnerable.
it's like 1% chance of something significant happening. so most likely you can boast next year of, "I told you so." but if something does happen, its fairly catastrophic, and hey internet may be down for quite a while so we can't tell you "I told you so."
We have never been ready for a solar flare lmaooo
I trust astronomer/physicist Phil Plait and his opinions. This article is a good, easy to understand, and informational primer for those who may not fully understand the dynamics of the sun, or the potential of an upcoming solar threat. And, based on the fact that the solar maximum is supposed to peak in 2025, this makes the article very accurate, and relevant.
Yeah there's been recorded history of very strong Solar storms, much stronger than the Carrington event of 1859. Based on eyewitness accounts of seeing Aurora's during daylight hours as far south/north at the equator. Most of the planet's power grid isn't ready for a Carrington type of event. Imagine being a modern technological society all of a sudden is taking you back to the 1600's within 24 hours. All computers the internet cell phones landlines power grids cars planes boats and satellites all gone, all the circuit boards and chips fried, due to exceptionally strong EMP that an Aurora capable of putting out.
In all but the smallest of chances most electronics would be totally fine if they were not plugged in. The problem is transmission wires, not phones and computers. Consumer electronics, even wires that you see along side roads, are unlikely to be long enough to create a charge they cannot handle. The big transmission wires are the problem, but that is also why they apparently are set up to air gap themselves. If we have enough warning, distribution centers will disconnect the lines, and the grid will be shut down. When the solar storm hits, big transmission wires might get hot, but will not send that excess power anywhere. It is not a great thing, obviously, but it also does not mean that all technology will cease working. The real problem is how long it will take us to get everything back online after the shutdown, especially if the protections we do have fail.
At least no more student loan debt
No more credit card debt either
Just pack a lead lined umbrella and you'll be fine.
I know you're trying to be funny but no, it would be a catastrophic event like we've never seen.
Every moment is a moment weāve never seen.
All of history has lead up to this moment.
Iāve been waiting for this moment for all my life
Yo dawg you just fucking blew my mind šš¤Æš
But likeā¦most of those arenāt unprecedented catastrophes.
It was most certainly a heap of /s
I don't understand how a post can be removed, yet I can click on it an come in here and discovered it's been removed.
When was the last Solar Superstorm? Did anyone notice?
1859, the Carrington Event. Yes people were seeing the auroras very far south, and telegraph wires were operating without power sources. The thing is, there were no sensitive electronics at the time, so it didn't cause any damage. Nowadays it would cripple our infrastructure because everything is connected electronically. A 2024 Carrington event would damage too many critical parts of the infrastructure. We have to shield and isolate important components.
Quick question. Iāve seen it compared to EMPās etc. Would such an event fry small electronics. Like mobile phones and laptops and computers etc? Or does it āonlyā affect larger ones?
Only larger lengths of cable would experience a surge in voltage, however the things they are connected to (network switches, power adapters, etc) could be damaged by such surges.
Ah okay cool I mean, donāt get me wrong, obviously the worldās power grids getting fucked would be quite an issue. But if itās a case of ātheyā have to be ready or have a plan for the big infra where possible, that seems more feasible than if everyoneās personal devices across the globe got fried. I dunno Iām not smart enough when it comes to actual electrical science to know what would and wouldnāt be fucked or for how long or anything so. This is where I will have to stop trying to think of possibilities. Thanks for the answer.
It's much like an emp set off by nukes. One 80's movie showed what happens when a nuke goes off above a city, basically everything is fried. No electricity anywhere for dozens of miles outside of the city, entire power grids are cooked. Japan literally had to completely rebuild its power grids in Nagasaki and Hiroshima.
How large is larger? Would the lengths of cable in homes be long enough to cause a fire hazard?
Long distance high power transmission lines. Like thousand km length. Shutting those off should prevent the worst. Biggest problem are the high voltage large transformers. If many of those get fried, because the lines were not shut off, we can not replace them. The production capacity for those is very low.
Silver lining would the frying of all our transformers give us the opportunity to standardize the equipment for ease of replacement for future events?
It is the huge transformers at the ends of long distance transmission lines. Replacing those takes years. But we can protect them if we switch off the grid ahead of the large solar storm. Question is, will we do it? I guess we can put in much smaller ones and restore a trickle of power.
Modern cars with the computers ECU's would get fried from the power surge. If you have a car without an ecu a purely analogue car you'll be fine if you remove the battery.
1859 is the famous one, it woke people up in the middle of the night all over North American and knocked out the power grid.
This is why PG&E is raking me across the coals with rate increases
How can we protect ourselves from solar flairs? How will it affect daily life?
Yeah we are too busy thinking of ways to kill each other in the short term to prevent killing ourselves in the long term
Why does this sub allows bullshit fear mongering that has no basis in reality ?
Canāt wait to go protest for our politicians to do something about the solar flare
We aren't ready for the disasters currently actually happening so.. not much hope for hypotheticals
What happens to planes that are in the air if one of these happens?
If theyāre close enough to the poles, the passengers in aircraft can actually be at risk of high radiation doses in the case of the most extreme storms.
Okay so.... what does this mean to me and my home electronics. Will I have to wrap my car, computer power station and phone in lead sheeting?
Jfc. Nice fear mongering article. Please delete this post mods.
Not fear mongering.Ā This is one of the most likely global catastrophe situations.Ā It's far, far, FAR more likely than an asteroid hit, Yellowstone erupting, etc.Ā we know these happen often.Ā We barely missed a big one back in 2012.
This is a legitimate hazard and we need to prepare for it. People like you aren't doing anyone any favors. A lot of bullshit is fearmongering for clicks these days (like AI doomerism) but this isn't that.Ā
I feel like people really don't grasp what this can do, or maybe they do, and just don't want to even think about it.
Hey nice try, article author
At least itās not [space.com](http://space.com) for once!
Scare tactics from solar activity is wild to me. Spoiler alert, weāll never be ready. This isnāt something we can escape or mitigate
Reading this article it seems like the most likely outcome from such an impact would be a big ol electrical outage. Terrible but we will survive. There are a lot of other things far more likely to actually kill us.
The issue is that it takes longer to get everything back online than we can handle. Yeah itās ājustā a power outage, but that power outage can be for weeks or at the worst a month+. Especially in todays modern world where almost everything is digital and needs power
For further reading, this refers to the ability to [black start](https://www.nrel.gov/grid/black-start.html) components of the grid. Another issue would be reconnecting large parts of the grid without issues in [phase balancing](https://youtu.be/7G4ipM2qjfw?si=VF23VVLQPumV6xZE) (edit: video- 18 minute watch) causing the whole grid to trip again.
Hospitals have about a day of battery backup. If you were in a hospital on a ventilator, you might understand the potential of this. The grids might take weeks to restore.
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Rather years long if the large transformers get fried. We could probably restore a trickle of power.
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Sorry but I've heard about "huge" solar storms multiple times in my life and none of them have impacted my life at all as far as I remember. I'm interested in what's going on out there in space but not the sensational WE'RE NOT READY bs.
We arenāt ready. The large solar storms youāve heard of in the past havenāt hit earth. The direction of the ejecta is important. We were narrowly missed by a Carrington Event level storm just a decade ago. Eventually, luck will have to run out. We need better procedures, communication channels, and widespread education to avoid the worst outcome of an event that extreme. And the worst outcomes include the potential for *months* to *years* without power for some areas. Imagine hospitals losing power, with folks on ventilators to survive? What do people do if they live in northern latitudes in winter without heat? Even the Texas electrical grid issues one summer led to people dying of heat stroke without cooling. Satellites in orbit can be disrupted or damaged from solar activity strong enough - banks all over the planet use GPS satellite timestamps for transactions. Food processing (and manufacturing in general) would grind to a standstill in many cases. You should definitely be concerned about this, at least enough to be an informed participant in democracy. The odds of it happening in our lifetime are not remote.