2 ms·
Can someone put into rough terms the probability of encountering a Carrington event within the next 10 years? E.g., you're more likely to be killed by a swarm
by russfink 8y ago
Can someone put into rough terms the probability of encountering a Carrington event within the next 10 years? E.g., you're more likely to be killed by a swarm of killer bees in Maine than be hit by a Carrington event.
- saagarjha 8y agoFrom https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coronal_mass_ejection#Future_risk https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coronal_mass_ejection#Future_r...: > According to a report published in 2012 by physicist Pete Riley of Predictive Science Inc., the chance of Earth being hit by a Carrington-class storm between 2012 and 2022 is 12%.
- bryanrasmussen 8y agoIs it still 12% then?
- madaxe_again 8y agoDepends on whether that figure is based on a point sample of expectancy for an event of that scale, or if it’s based on the expectancy due to the time elapsed since the last event. As it’s an independent probability (i.e. the time elapsed since the last event does not affect the probability of reoccurrence), it’s likely the former, and therefore the same expected value - 1.2% in any given year.
- thanatropism 8y agoYou're looking at something like the geometric distribution. The chance that the event does not happen is 88%. And since years are independent and identically distributed as you say, 88% = q^10 so q~= 98.7%; therefore the chances that it does happen are ~=1.3% (As it turns out, your approximation works because as the time-grid becomes finer and finer, the geometric process becomes a gamma process. It does fail dramatically for 2-7 years.)
- platz 8y agoSeems odd the probabilities are actually did because of longer term solar cycles
- semi-extrinsic 8y agoI know it's being taken sufficiently seriously that understanding/handling geomagnetically induced currents (GIC) in power transformers has become a focus of R&D activity.