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.”
And what’s going to happen to all them new babies with the micro chip in their brain courtesy of our new Global Government.
I believe there would be a thriving market in transformer refurbishing. I know we are “trained” these days to think “throw out the old one and buy a new one” but in this case, I believe we would see them being re-wound.
A repeat of the event in 1859 would be “interesting” today. Think about airplanes in flight and “bullet trains” underway.
>-T h e S i l e n c e O f T h e I n t e r n e t s s s-<
It'll just go: click.
I wonder though, with about 15 years of car having been integrated with computers, and planes and trains even longer, not to mention ships, how many train, planes, and automobiles, have been fried so far due to solar flares?
Perhaps the sats and what not floating around up there, and out there in deeper space, was manufactured 100% analog, or perhaps nobody told the manufacturers how "obscenely fragile" computers really are.
Christ, if you think your computer is that fragile, why on earth did you buy it in the first place?
Great time for me to rant a bit: (NASA has my dander up with this article)
Ok, tonyb, I read you, and I somewhat agree with you, but not immediately with some of your fears. I want the numbers, the physics behind both sides of this discussion. If it’s no worry to somebody I wish they would supply the numbers that make them think that way. If somebody thinks it will destroy the world as we know it, I wish they would supply the numbers as to how this is going to unfold, scientifically.
The earth’s magnetic field is somewhere between 30 and 60 micro Tesla. It’s sixty near northern Canada and Argentina. If a Carrington magnitude hits us, what will the magnetic field max at. What was it in 1859? We have polar orbit satellites above the Aurora Borealis without harm. If the aurora extends down to the tropics is that supposed to destroy their electronics. By itself I think not.
How about the pure strength of the solar wind? Enough to throw the satellites pointing off track temporarily? Ok, what’s the density. In 1859 the particles hit 18 hours later, that’s about six times faster that normal of 400,000 m/s. By the time it hits Earth lets say the density is 10 times (WAG) normal. That’s 6^2*10 or 360 time the normal force. Is that enough to harm? Leif says the solar wind is so incredibly diffuse it has no effect, on the climate at least. Is 360 times that for a period of an hour or two of any real danger? Don’t know.
How about the magnetic field strength and flux? That could generate electricity in all wires but it then depends on how long, how many turns in a transformer (the volume), and the field strength. Very long wires, yes, there is a problem. Wires in your computer (18 inches) or in a satellite (2 meters), I’m not sold.
NASA just had to put in the X-ray camera that was burnt out in one of the last flares. But it was extremely sensitive and aimed directly at it, no wonder it burned out. That has nothing to do with the satellites electronics being burnt out.
Plasma at the satellites altitude can be there but only by the density of the molecules. I think insignificant, can’t imagine enough matter to harm, satellites are isolated. I rub cat-fur on glass and charge my body up to 50,000 volts, you can’t feel it (unless you then touch some conductor, then you can!). That’s my point.
You see, I want to know why, how, and how large in numbers. It’s amazing on a science site as this how devoid of any real answers the comments portray, lot’s of generals on both sides but after spending hours reading you’ve actually learned little. NASA for sure is not going to just blurt this information out. That’s their protected knowledge. Here at WUWT we can only rely on the expertise of the engineers, scientists, enthusiasts to supply these numbers. If anyone can fill in, please do so.
Is there a real problem? Some dangers I see, some I don’t think even exist. It would be nice to know pretty close which is which.
I’ve told most of what I think and know (saving any equations for later if needed), does anyone know something else to clarify this? I hate meaningless worry.
/rant off
In a solar minimum should we expect more electrons or more protons coming from the sun?
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.
Oh, the horror! It’s like the Y2K disaster all over again!
Scaremongering ? Yes this is really what it is all about ! Cap and trade must be pushed through before the next US election and nothing is absurd enough to frighten the public . Any real scientist may confirm that given the magnetic field strengths around the earth the chances are very dim that a solar outburst may have severe consequences for the earth itself . Furthermore the sun is not very active right now and may even stay in a state of slumber during the whole 24th measured sunspotcycle with very small chances of casual flares , which must then be directed straight to the earth , which is a chance of 1 in 10.000 or something comparable .
From my point of view we are dealing here with eco-terrorism funded by a state in disarray . A class of green-crypto communist fidels is trying to make a total power-grab by scaring the hell out of normal reasonable people and it may even be orchestrated at the highest possible level in our society , knowing that the time to install a rigid power-system may be running out in sight of new elections .
This story is completely logical and in line with other stories about the present socalled unprecedented warming and the unparalelled disappearance of sea-ice !
Please take time to check the prophesies of mr hathaway and other nasa burocrats
over the last 10 years and you may find out that none of their prophecies ever came true , but that they were very helpful in obtaining government grants , so is it unreasonable that the government wants something in return noticing an eroding acceptance by the voters of their cap and trade scheme ?
Who was the biggest supporter of cap and trade in the us ? Enron or BP ?
Were they both so interested in the wellbeing of our society ?
Does Mr Obama reflect honesty , straightforwardness , leadership , decency or humbleness in view of the BP – disaster ? So what is the result when this guy is really getting a stress – test ?
A good many natural events have happened in historical times which could wreak havoc with modern civilization, even destroy civilization as we know it. Due to complex interdependencies which have developed over the past century or so, our vulnerability as a “civilization” has substantially increased.
There is little to nothing we could do to “prepare for” a recurrence of the vast majority of these natural events, although there might be considerable peace of mind for many if we pretended that we are “working on it”.
Better to not spend all too much of our resources in this pretense.
For a Carrington type event to happen, a CME will actually have to hit the earth/its magnetosphere. Although the earth is as big as a barn (a large barn at that), it is rather a long way away, and so quite a difficult thing to hit.
Cars’ electronic systems will probably get off quite lightly, as they are their own Faraday cages. Unless you have a Trabant that is. But if you can knock out the electronics in a Trabant, then you’re doing rather well.
Powerlines do have circuit breakers near the transformers for that other common electro-magnetic event called “being hit by lightning”. It is possible that the current/voltage will rise too quickly for those breakers to react, but equally you’d have thought the inductance inherent in transformer design would severely crimp any rapid change in voltage.
There is a huge amount of difference being able to melt what is effectively bell-wire and being able to melt what is effectively thick copper rod – 300KVA takes no prisoners at the best of times.
crosspatch says:
A repeat of the event in 1859 would be “interesting” today. Think about airplanes in flight and “bullet trains” underway.
We’ll get 3-4 day ‘yellow alert’ for standby, and perhaps a day or two ‘RED ALERT’.
I wonder if this announcement has anything to do with the pending legislation in Congress:
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“New legislation, passed June 9 by the U.S. House of Representatives and referred to the Senate’s Energy and Natural Resources committee, hopes to strengthen the grid’s robustness against attacks of many kinds. The immediate aim of the Grid Reliability and Infrastructure Defense Act is to direct the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, the main federal agency responsible for electricity matters, to establish security rules for utilities and other energy companies.
The GRID Act amends the old power law by recognizing several threats to the grid. One of these is an attack that tampers with grid computer control systems. Some utilities report fending off thousands of such cyber-attacks per day. Another is infrequent but potent geomagnetic storms, which can happen when eruptions of material from the sun send cascades of particles into Earth’s atmosphere. These particles can cause beautiful auroral displays (“northern lights”), but can burn out the wiring in orbiting satellites and induce short-lived but large voltage surges in grid equipment on the ground. Past such storms have burned out expensive equipment and left millions in the dark. A carefully detonated nuclear bomb could emit radiation pulses that could do some of the same damage.”
http://www.physorg.com/news195752582.html
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Nah, I’m sure it’s a complete coincidence….
Actually, I do think this is something worth worrying about, and investing resources in.
Is this “EX-CATHEDRA”?
Nasa warns solar flares from ‘huge space storm’ will cause devastation
Enneagram says:
June 17, 2010 at 1:44 pm
In a solar minimum should we expect more electrons or more protons coming from the sun?
More electrons [a little bit] as not all positive charges are protons [some are Helium nuclei or heavier]. But we at all times we obviously expect the same number of negative charges as positive charges. If the were an excess of one charge leaving, the Sun would build up a charge with the opposite sign that would attract the leaving charges and restore neutrality.
“Be more fearful of men than of the stars and much more of those who think they are stars”
I dont get it – in the Sporer and Maunder minima, there were a series of weak solar cycles. Did each one have a huge Carrington flare event at its low amplitude centre? If not, why should this minimum have them?
I just happened to catch Joe Bastardi’s blog about this issue.
http://www.accuweather.com/ukie/bastardi-europe-blog.asp
I was just googling Joe Bastardi to try to get his winter forecast and that was near the top. Of course also near the top was the slander campaign by those who hate accurate forecasts. But that is for another day.
I love Joe’s outspokenness. He is not afraid of speaking his mind. (I think that why pro-AGW website’s slander him: when you cannot attack the message, attack the messenger.) There is a whole of good information in his blog post. Just read it please.
Robustly devastating!
Rhoda R says:
June 17, 2010 at 9:11 am
Tallbloke, I’m not entirely sure that there is no proper contingency — I know that the military has been taking CME type events seriously (mostly due to EMP concerns). A lot of military systems are protected to some degee or another and I suspect certain civilian sytems -like airliners-are also. What I don’t know is whether this type of concern is taken into account when upgrading civilian power systems.
There is no easy way to protect the electricity infrastructure. The main concerns for any civilisation are water supply, food distribution and sanitation. The U.S. military has some pretty impressive resources, but I think even they would be hard pressed keeping supermarkets stocked country wide.
Whether the potential crisis might be solar flares, enemy high level atomic bursts, earthquake, hurricane, ice storm, war, infrastructure damage by terrorists, whatever, these things do happen. It pays to make some simple emergency preparations like stored water, some kind of non-electric cooking apparatus, some simple food stocks, etc. Whatever the crisis, it is too late to do anything after it hits. No emergency, no problem! But any crisis will make you very happy for whatever preparations you make.
Wade :
Piers Corbyn forecasts more deluges:
http://www.weatheraction.com/docs/WANews10No21.pdf
Z says:
June 17, 2010 at 2:24 pm
you’d have thought the inductance inherent in transformer design would severely crimp any rapid change in voltage.
There is a huge amount of difference being able to melt what is effectively bell-wire and being able to melt what is effectively thick copper rod – 300KVA takes no prisoners at the best of times.
http://image3.examiner.com/images/blog/wysiwyg/image/transformer_vert.jpg
GISS is a part of NASA, and Dave Hoffer has found some interesting artifacts that emerge from the GISS massaging of climate data.
Wayne said to me;
“Ok, tonyb, I read you, and I somewhat agree with you, but not immediately with some of your fears. I want the numbers, the physics behind both sides of this discussion.”
I completely agree with most of your comments. We need to find out if there is a problem, the size of it, and what if anything we should (or could) do about it.
There are many things that need fixing in our world and until we know the overall context we can’t know where a Carrington event rates in the great scheme of things. It certainly rates way above CAGW though 🙂
Tonyb
Baloney; A) that would have made the ‘trade press’ and B) we would have had ‘customer returns’ afterwards …
.
.
Overblown.
I reference this post here:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/2333665/posts?page=163#163
Which references this paper:
http://arxiv.org/ftp/physics/papers/0307/0307127.pdf
Which has this abstract: