National power grids could overheat and air travel severely disrupted while electronic items, navigation devices and major satellites could stop working after the Sun reaches its maximum power in a few years.
Senior space agency scientists believe the Earth will be hit with unprecedented levels of magnetic energy from solar flares after the Sun wakes “from a deep slumber” sometime around 2013, The Daily Telegraph can disclose.
In a new warning, Nasa said the super storm would hit like “a bolt of lightning” and could cause catastrophic consequences for the world’s health, emergency services and national security unless precautions are taken.
Scientists believe it could damage everything from emergency services’ systems, hospital equipment, banking systems and air traffic control devices, through to “everyday” items such as home computers, iPods and Sat Navs.
Due to humans’ heavy reliance on electronic devices, which are sensitive to magnetic energy, the storm could leave a multi-billion pound damage bill and “potentially devastating” problems for governments.
“We know it is coming but we don’t know how bad it is going to be,” Dr Richard Fisher, the director of Nasa’s Heliophysics division, said in an interview with The Daily Telegraph.
“It will disrupt communication devices such as satellites and car navigations, air travel, the banking system, our computers, everything that is electronic. It will cause major problems for the world.
“Large areas will be without electricity power and to repair that damage will be hard as that takes time.”
NASA’s job done. Got you all talking about it didn’t they.
Now I understand….in order to not be affected we should not have any electric connections at all, back to the dark ages again….but, wait, and what about Al’s invention, the internet?
Strong flares from the Sun?…who cares!….they can’t affect any grid since they are not electric at all, according to the latest post normal science universe conception.
Okay, so now we know that everybody has the same forumla for getting funding. It makes me yawn. Problem is, with all this crying wolf – are we going to ignore these idiots when a real problem comes along.
There are some things in the world that I’m skeptic about, one of which is alarmism involving global warming. But, I’m afraid that many of the flippant remarks noted on this post have been motivated by people’s negative opinions of some of the people and work that NASA does. On the subject of solar flares and their effect on our civilization, I’m not a skeptic. If I were at the beginning of my career in research, I would have switched to heavy electrical engineering to help prepare out electrical grids for that sometime coming event.
I encourage you to Google “Carrington Event” to learn about the solar flare in 1859 that took out many of the telegraph systems at that time. You will then appreciate the enormous effect a similar event would have on our electrical grids, and directly on everything that moves.
don_O
David Corcoran said at 10:13 am: “NASA has engaged in so much climate alarmism and budget grubbing P/R that it’s hard to take any new warning, even on other topics, seriously.”
Credit for the ongoing destruction of NASA’s reputation can be attributed directly to Dr. James E. Hansen and his ilk.
Well just when the world was getting all set to go to electric cars; along comes magnetism; which is a part of electric motors; so as soon as you turn on the ignition key to start your electric car the magnetic fields from the high efficiency motors simply blow all the control electronics to smithereeens.
It’s enough to cause a headache just thinking about it. Just imagine all those Swiss watches going ape; every time they fire off the Large Hadron Collider.
The last time I had a magnetic attack was when my fountain pen got grabbed by the magnet on the back of the loudspeaker in my stereo system.
Izzere no end to this silliness. When the magnetic fields from high Voltage power lines overhead, were all the rage for causing everything from pregnancy to ringing in the ears; somebody calculated the total amount of electromagnetic field energy from power lines that you could get into a typical human body DNA molecule; and it was something like 27 orders of magnitude too low to cause a single broken bond in the molecule.
So what is the dominant frequency of the waves generated by these solar flares.
Speaking of electric cars; has it occurred to anybody else that the “Tesla” all electric car is just a modern day De’Lorean; busiwork for somebody with more time and money than he knows what to do with it; so he’s bored. The De’Lorean as I recall, had a stainless steel body. That would enable it to survive Taxi cab duty out on Christmas Island or maybe in the Bahamas.
Has anybody ever actually experienced a magnetic shut down of their automobile; unless it was being lifted by an electromagnet to drop it in the auto crushing recycle machine. Somehow the good guys always manage to crawl out of the rear window just before the car is reduced to a solid block of plastic and vinyl.
This sounds serious. Having read some of the comments about damage to the infrastructure it would appear that there would be no electricity for airports such as landing lights, radar and landing systems. How could the alarmists jet to their international conferences to demand cuts in energy production? They ought to be careful what they wish for 🙂
It’s all about “Knowing“
Kirk Myers says:
June 17, 2010 at 7:20 am
‘By the way, NASA does mention in the story below that “even a below-average cycle is capable of producing severe space weather. The great geomagnetic storm of 1859, for instance, occurred during a solar cycle of about the same size we’re predicting for 2013.” ‘
But there have been 4 lower peaked cycles since 1859: viz 1884, 1894, 1907 and 1928.
Quick, somebody raise NASA’s budget….
Does this mean they have given up on the AWG scare stories? Searching for the next alternative to protect/generate funding? It must be global and affect everyone…. hmmm meteors, not often enough, ah how about massive solar storms? They happen more often!
I know we’ve have large solar storms in the past that would have wiped out satellites if we had them at the time. It is only a matter of time before one hits which brings me to a serious question about this:
For earth based electrical equipment and a short solar storm (less than 8 hours) does it matter if you are on side of earth facing the storm or on the dark side?
You know the word “unprecedented” is really getting a workout over the last few years… it’s usage is unprecedented.
To quote Inigo Montoya, “I don’ think that word means whatchoo think it means.”
But surely with somewhere between 18 hours and 2 or 3 days notice our power companies could have enough lead time to notify customers for minimal use and disconnect key long-haul intersections to the national grid. It’s the long interstate wires that are the most vulnerable to the induced current if still attached. A thirty to forty mile radius local grid should have no problem with small area exposed to the generated magnetic field, or that has always been my understanding. Isn’t that basically correct?
Now I can see the small telegraph lines, made to carry minimal voltage and current, many hundreds of miles long picking up enough induced current to actually burn them out. Wasn’t that what actually occurred in 1859? (hopefully without delving into calculations of electric/magnetic field densities, Gauss, Coulomb and such)
Also I can’t relate to the danger of the satellites unless someone can clarify in terms of the magnitudes of magnetic field or plasma density, etc. At the global scale is a whole other matter, yes, aurora down to the tropics and other world-scale phenomena.
If I’m way off, please add some facts to clarify.
I don’t get it. I thought the sun was heating up the earth, not CO2, but the sun has been in a “deep slumber”. What gives?
We are all doomed! If isn’t solar storm than its meteor storm ! Get a tin hat !
NASA warns new meteor storm ‘could damage Hubble and International Space Station’
Satellites such as the Hubble Space Telescope and the International Space Station are under new threat from the most powerful meteor storm in more than a decade, Nasa scientists have warned.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/space/7835232/Nasa-warns-new-meteor-storm-could-damage-Hubble-and-International-Space-Station.html
Donald M. Onysko says:
June 17, 2010 at 11:08 am
“There are some things in the world that I’m skeptic about, one of which is alarmism involving global warming. But, I’m afraid that many of the flippant remarks noted on this post have been motivated by people’s negative opinions of some of the people and work that NASA does. On the subject of solar flares and their effect on our civilization, I’m not a skeptic.”
I referred to the Carrington event much earlier in the thread-an extract follows;.
“tonyb says:
June 17, 2010 at 3:36 am
We discussed this some months ago in another context and there is a definite precedent-the Carrington event of 1859
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_storm_of_1859
I had a small amount of discussion with Leif about it who said it was likely to happen again and the consequences would be disastrous.”
Like you, I’m somewhat surprised that some people are taking this so lightly. I think its a matter of NASA continually crying ‘wolf!’ which has turned people off.
To me the possibility of another Carrington type event is much more real, immediate, and threatening than the highly notional problem of CAGW. However here we are throwing billions at the latter and yet are doing nothing about the former.
We are highly dependent on all the technology that would be fundamentally affected by a Carrington type event. I doubt Nasa’s predictions, but one will surely effect us in ten/twenty/fifty years. Of equal concern is the damage that a determined electrical attack by a terrorist organisation could do on our advanced civilisations that are so utterly dependent on computers. This is NOT science fiction and we would be well advised to syphon off a fraction of the CAGW money towards protecting our infrastructure against electrical catastrophe, man made or natural, that will surely otherwise devastate us at some unspecfied point within the medium future.
tonyb
This electromagnetic firestorm will hit the poles. We will see brown Poley bears over toasted like marshmallows.
Carrington type event would be even more forceful now, since the geomagnetic field’s protection is 10-12 % weaker now than it was in 1859. Only Siberia is stronger, but then there isn’t much to be damaged there.
Billy Liar says:
June 17, 2010 at 11:32 am
But there have been 4 lower peaked cycles since 1859: viz 1884, 1894, 1907 and 1928.
And some of those had some of the strongest solar storms on record…
Enneagram says:
Hey buddies, either you fire your WRITERS or you should revise your most dear and beloved theories
vukcevic: The AGW boys are real amateurs in the science of ‘fiddling science’ when compared to ‘doctoring’ going in the solar science.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/06/10/that-solar-sinking-feeling/#comment-411458
Vuk etc. says:
June 17, 2010 at 12:52 pm
“E pur si muove” (Galileo Galilei)
At the time of the Y2K affair, I was the systems manager of a daily newspaper. The reality is that we had no problems because of Y2K. We had no problems because we put many man-hours into making sure we had no problems. If we had not done the work, there would have been difficulties. We tested, tested, tested, found the problems, and fixed them. Some organizations did not do the work and there were horror stories – some bad code, some legacy hardware issues. There were real flaws, especially in older equipment. For those who had later equipment and clean code, they were mostly home free
There have been several sizable solar events in the last 150 years. Most of them were not directed at Earth. Lucky us. Although the 11/04/2003 solar event that missed us may have been the largest flare recorded, the 9/01/1859 Carrington Event is surely the most powerful known to have hit the planet. Fortunately, monster solar flares don’t slam us often. Nevertheless, they do happen and another Carrington-like event will hit us again – someday. For the 1859 Carrington, the highest technology level was the telegraph. In 2010, humanity’s existence clearly depends on useful but vulnerable technology. But a maybe civilization-damaging solar flare could happen anytime. What I would like to know is: how would our modern society weather such a storm? My thought is that a Carrington type event, similar to that of 1859, would be a disaster if we don’t prepare for it.
Most organizations successfully prepared for Y2K and we can prepare for a new Carrington Event threat. We need information. Doing research and building information used to be what the US federal government did tolerably well instead of its current preoccupation with controlling every aspect of existence. Therefore, I give the task to the feds. Find out the threat level for a new Carrington Event. If there’s a problem, find out how we can survive a new Carrington Event. March!
jack morrow says:
June 17, 2010 at 6:42 am
So did James Michener in “Space.” IIRC, a single scientist was concerned about the possibility of major flares occurring during relatively quiet periods (Leif – Help?) but without stronger evidence his concerns weren’t passed upward. Of course, on occurs while astronauts are on the moon and can’t make it back to command module before becoming incapacitated.
At the ICCC I talked with Harrison Schmitt about issues crossing the Van Allen radiation belt, which I once heard as a reason why the moon landings had to be fakes. He confirmed that they crossed it quickly enough to not be a problem, and then mentioned that solar flares were a much bigger concern.
A few inches of water apparently do a decent job of blocking things, so I think water tanks on the ISS are used as a shield for a safe area. We didn’t get into the details.
Enneagram says:
“E pur si muove”
Deo volente
RE: Social Antisocialist: (June 17, 2010 at 12:14 pm) “I don’t get it. I thought the sun was heating up the earth, not CO2, but the sun has been in a “deep slumber”. What gives?”
This is old news. If you haven’t noticed, the sun has been unusually quiet for the past two years, often going many days on end with not a single sunspot to be seen. A minimal resumption of ‘normal’ sunspot activity began this spring. While it’s too soon to say for sure, the warming trend over the past 30 years has shown signs of topping out and the possible development of a reverse trend.