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Electrical Ground Current Event Detected in Norway
- gpvos 7y agoWhy are there people measuring ground current? Even though random scientific interest is enough reason, I suppose it's more than that.
- GhettoMaestro 7y agoTheir website appears to be focused on studying space weather. Electrical ground currents are influenced by space (interactions).
- dest 7y agoIt may break our electrical grid maybe
- elfexec 7y agoConsidering that the ground is "ground", I highly doubt that. The article states that "While currents flowed through the ground, auroras filled the sky.". There may be a correlation between the currents and weather/natural events.
- hwillis 7y agoThe electrical grid is literally connected to ground at points that can be separated by hundreds of miles. Ground currents cause those points to be at different voltages. Since the wire is very low resistance, this can cause very bad damage if the protection fails. > There may be a correlation between the currents and weather/natural events. Ground currents are caused by the same thing as Auroras, in addition to normal weather. They occur constantly to a small degree. They are a problem everywhere in the world; if you lay out a 100 mile metal wire without taking proper precautions to make it safe electrically it will quickly start creating very dangerous discharges. Think about it this way. It's very dangerous to fly a kite in a thunderstorm; the line will conduct electricity and makes it much more likely that the massive difference in charge between the air and ground will pick you to flow through. Ground currents are the same situation, except between two bits of ground. Civilized areas of the planet are totally cobwebbed by kite lines connecting these areas. It would be bad. > The James Bay network went offline in less than 90 seconds, giving Quebec its second massive power outage in 11 months.[10] The power failure lasted nine hours and forced the company to implement various mitigation strategies, including raising the trip level, installing series compensation on ultra high voltage lines and upgrading various monitoring and operational procedures. Other utilities in North America and Northern Europe and elsewhere implemented programs to reduce the risks associated with geomagnetically induced currents (GICs).[9] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/March_1989_geomagnetic_storm https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/March_1989_geomagnetic_storm
- m4rtink 7y agoWell, a lot of sruff is grounded. Now when yoi have current running in the ground, that can cause all manners of havoc.
- mike_d 7y agoIt can absolutely break the grid. Soil has a specific impedance and large influxes of energy can overwhelm it. Power grids closely monitor the EPR around every substation. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth_potential_rise https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth_potential_rise
- stefanpie 7y agoLook like the data comes from a NASA satalite that tracks measurements for space weather and related scientific missions. Monitoring/forecasting space weather, especially solar effects and impacts, is important for detecting solar flares and ejections that can disrupt electronics in space and on the ground.
- crtlaltdel 7y agoground current behaviors are important to study and understand! there can be practical impacts on systems and safety.
- labster 7y agoFor example... ? I’m totally okay with pure science for science’s sake, but you left me hanging.
- hwillis 7y agoFor example everything breaking and electrical arcs from outlets. In the early days of the telegraph we did not understand ground currents or the difference in ground potential over geographic distances, and it would occasionally cause large, lethal discharges from the wires. This would occur with zero warning. Ground current means that there is a potential difference between two points. Over large distances a small current will lead to extremely large voltage differences. Wires over the same distance will have very low voltage differences (since they are low resistance), so the wire will be the same voltage as the place it was last referenced to ground. That may be very different from the ground or people at a different location. This can be particularly important in improperly wired homes, which can have small voltages on a floating ground. Ground currents will cause that voltage to become much larger. > The James Bay network went offline in less than 90 seconds, giving Quebec its second massive power outage in 11 months.[10] The power failure lasted nine hours and forced the company to implement various mitigation strategies, including raising the trip level, installing series compensation on ultra high voltage lines and upgrading various monitoring and operational procedures. Other utilities in North America and Northern Europe and elsewhere implemented programs to reduce the risks associated with geomagnetically induced currents (GICs).[9] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/March_1989_geomagnetic_storm https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/March_1989_geomagnetic_storm
- Rebelgecko 7y agoSpace weather events can have measurable effects on electrical things that are supposedly grounded. The 1989 coronal mass ejection caused lots of problems with radios, which is probably one of the better known side effects of a solar storm. But it also took out power grids because utilities got a phantom current that just showed up out of nowhere on their long cables. This current can also cause problems for other long metal things buried in the ground like oil pipelines. IIRC a similar event in the 19th century electrocuted a bunch of telegraph operators. They unplugged the power as a safety measure, but the Earth's magnetic field generated so much current in the telegraph cables that they still worked.
- thinkcontext 7y ago> event in the 19th century electrocuted a bunch of telegraph operators. True but you are underselling it a bit. Aurora was seen as far south as Colombia and in Colorado it reportedly was bright enough to wake people up because they thought it was day. It is assumed that had that occurred today it would have fried the power grid on at least a continental scale. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_storm_of_1859 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_storm_of_1859
- riversflow 7y agoI honestly think it’s crazy that we don’t give this more attention as a society. Like, there is serious talk that we need to look out for Asteroids. But nothing about hardening ourselves against the next high output solar event, which seems more likely to be a problem.
- eli 7y agoMy understanding is that the only early warning system we have relies on old and failing satellites and provides only minutes of warning.
- chrisco255 7y ago"In August 2018, NASA's Parker Solar Probe launched to space, soon becoming the closest-ever spacecraft to the Sun. With cutting-edge scientific instruments to measure the environment around the spacecraft, Parker Solar Probe has completed three of 24 planned passes through never-before-explored parts of the Sun's atmosphere, the corona." https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2019/nasas-parker-solar-probe-sheds-new-light-on-the-sun/ https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2019/nasas-parker-solar...
- brandmeyer 7y agoWhat are the units on the current and magnetic field graphs, I wonder?
- hwillis 7y agoThe magnetometer stuff is declination, not intensity. Direction of the field. The electrical measurement is in 10s of microvolts per meter and was ~10 mV/m. It's hard to translate that to current since the ground impedance can vary, but it's in the milli- or microamps per meter. This is high for this kind of activity, but much lower than the limit the grid can handle. In the bad old days a storm like this would have been enough to kill. Telegraph operators would have been exposed to kilovolts across their ears on a line 100s of km long. The ground current may a couple milliamps, but that could still cause hundreds of amps to flow. Original observer's notes: https://spaceweathergallery.com/indiv_upload.php?upload_id=147572 https://spaceweathergallery.com/indiv_upload.php?upload_id=1...
- tilt_error 7y agoMoskstraumen?
- zandor 7y agoStraumnes.
- pwrsysengineer 7y agoThis kind of event can cause transmission power outages. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geomagnetically_induced_current https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geomagnetically_induced_curr...
- hwillis 7y agoIt can even kill tons of animals/people at once[1]. Four legged animals are more vulnerable than humans, since the voltage across your heart depends on how far apart your feet are. Also, we wear shoes. Imagine how spooky it would be to be struck by ground current without understanding... Whether or not you survive could depend entirely on what direction you're standing. One direction will mean your feet are at different voltages and current jumps into your nice conductive veins and arteries, all passing right through your heart. The other direction means the front and back of each foot is at different voltages, and you may not even feel it. Hundreds of people just drop dead of heart attacks around you. [1]: https://www.theverge.com/2016/8/29/12690402/lightning-strike-kills-norway-reindeer-death-why-science https://www.theverge.com/2016/8/29/12690402/lightning-strike...
- jcims 7y agoJust an aside, a term for this is 'potential gradient' (potential as in voltage, not probability :)
- duelingjello 7y agoFUD. It’s not lightning.
- martin_a 7y agoThe effect is the same, does not really matter what causes the current gradient in the ground.
- Dylan16807 7y agoYou need a huge voltage density. Ten volts between your feet is going to do nothing at all.
- Stratoscope 7y agoSpaceweather.com always has the most interesting news. The site is run by Dr. Tony Phillips, a science writer for NASA and high school teacher in Bishop, California. His students launch balloons to the edge of space to conduct research and to carry up trinkets that they sell to fund their missions. If you scroll down on the linked page, you'll see one of the silk roses they sent up on a recent mission. More details in a discussion from last year: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20372021 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20372021
- drmpeg 7y agoStill renders correctly in Netscape Communicator 4.76. http://www.w6rz.net/netscape.png http://www.w6rz.net/netscape.png
- themagician 7y agoSo freaking wild. Never seen this website before. I just learned like 10 new things.
- ycombonator 7y agonear realtime photos of aurora https://spaceweathergallery.com/aurora_gallery.html https://spaceweathergallery.com/aurora_gallery.html
- duncancarroll 7y agoAm I understanding the article correctly? They're guessing that because there was no solar wind which would normally trigger aurora, the Earth must have passed through a sort of rogue wave in the heliosphere, which also was strong enough to induce a current in the ground?
- wahern 7y agoNot rogue. And I'm unsure if wave is the correct term. I think what they're implying is that when passing through a "fold" in the heliospheric current sheet (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heliospheric_current_sheet https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heliospheric_current_sheet) the polarity flips. I presume that the tighter the fold, the less distance between the polarity change, the greater the induced current; tight enough and the polarity is different between two close points on earth, inducing a greater than normal current. But I didn't pay enough attention in high school physics, so....
- matt_the_bass 7y agoI’d love to know HOW such a measurement is made. What’s the reference “ground”?
- zamadatix 7y agoMeasure between 2 points of ground in a planned fashion, the difference should be 0 https://openei.org/wiki/Telluric_Survey https://openei.org/wiki/Telluric_Survey
- matt_the_bass 7y agocool thanks! Does this imply that the points a pretty far away from each other to measure an effect from such a large imf? If so, I’m curious as to the equipment that would enable such a measurement. This is A wholly different ball game than measuring ground currents across a pcb.
- hwillis 7y agoIn this case the probes were 40 meters apart. At that distance the voltage is normally ~40 mV, which is trivially measurable. Fluke makes a line of fancy multimeters for this kind of thing
- matt_the_bass 7y agoOh! Only 40 meters. I had assumed the distance must have been mush greater for these scale effects.
- cmroanirgo 7y agoWow. > About 15 minutes before the disturbance in Norway, the interplanetary magnetic field (IMF) near Earth abruptly swung around 180 degrees, and the solar wind density jumped more than 5-fold. Earth may have crossed through a fold in the heliospheric current sheet--a giant, wavy membrane of electrical current rippling through the solar system. Such crossings can cause these kind of effects.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- stingraycharles 7y agoCare to ELI5 why this is so special? It sounds impressive but I have no idea what an IMF, heliospheric current or a membrane of electrical current are.
- dnadler 7y agoIt's been a while, but I did take an astrophysics class that got into the solar system's electromagnetic dynamics. As I recall, the sun is constantly shedding ionized material known as solar wind. This plasma carries the magnetic field from the sun with it. From "above", the magnetic field looks like a giant spiral with the sun at the center. It sounds like the earth may have moved through a particularly dense spot of the solar wind which interacted strongly with the Earths magnetic field. This would probably also cause unusually strong auroras. That's about the extent of my knowledge (plus I'm on my phone and it's a bit difficult to get into a lot of detail). I'm sure someone else around here can correct me and/or give more insight.
- brylie 7y agoWould this type of event potentially affect human behavior, such as sleep patterns? I am genuinely curious because, anecdotally, my son and I had a difficult night sleeping and a friend said she and her son also had difficulty sleeping that night.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- 77544cec 7y agoThe earth is about to flip ! - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E31FHHH9is4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E31FHHH9is4 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1UJKZTjGCss https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1UJKZTjGCss
- abcleb 7y agoUSA might have used harp to cause an earthquake in Iran near a nuclear location. That might be the cause of what we have seen. (I did not check the time nor that if that is possible)
- martin_a 7y agoI think you might be onto something here. Will start looking for my tinfoil hat, while you keep us posted.
- 77544cec 7y agoTriggering earthquakes is a thing. This dude has devoted his whole career to it. http://www.ihed.ras.ru/mg/novikov.htm http://www.ihed.ras.ru/mg/novikov.htm
- LargoLasskhyfv 7y agoYou got it all wrong. Around noon yesterday a floating crane tore down a high voltage line in the harbor of Hamburg. [1] https://www.ndr.de/fernsehen/sendungen/hamburg_journal_1800/Schwimmkran-kracht-in-Stromleitung,hamj90222.html https://www.ndr.de/fernsehen/sendungen/hamburg_journal_1800/... That is the cause!1!! :-)
- ncmncm 7y agoThe HAARP system was shut down a long time ago, and was recently handed over to some university.
- VLM 7y agoTwo topics have not been covered yet: 1) Because its more spectacular there's been discussion of exploding substations and arcing power lines. Which is true. However a more practical HN topic would be "we all know" that inter building LAN networking should be optical for power isolation reasons, but "we all know" that often you can get away for years with copper network cables over a short enough distance if they're on a similar enough electrical feed. If you live in Florida, world capitol of thunderstorms, the wiring and switch ports won't survive a week, but maybe northern yankees can do copper inter building networking for years between lightning related failures. Anyway, yesterday, if you lost some ethernet switch ports or entire switches connected to 100 meter copper lines over long distances maybe to an outbuilding or up a tower or to the roof for cameras or something, well, you kinda know why now. Of course you probably lose 0.1% per year of hardware anyway under normal conditions so maybe losses were mere coincidence... or was it? There's probably a dollar value to blown ethernet ports related to that storm; can't say if its $10K or $10M worldwide but I'm sure at least SOME money was lost in hardware and lost productivity. 2) Aside from bulk power transport, and wired signalling, a third application of ground current is archaeological / geological resistance surveys. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electrical_resistance_survey https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electrical_resistance_survey The idea is underground "stuff", perhaps geology layers, perhaps ancient ruins, has varying DC resistance compared to typical background dirt and rock, and we have the technology to measure and map those electrical anomalies and therefore determine things about underground stuff. Cool. When the background electrical and magnetic fields are quiet/constant -ish, anyway. I've always wanted to participate in one of those, never got the chance. Anyway weird earth currents mean its probably pretty hopeless to try gathering research data during a geomagnetic storm. Yeah I know the 4-wire technique is supposed to help and differential measurements and all that, but the gear is designed for normal conditions not crazy storms so there seems no way you're gonna get good data during a severe storm. I mean, even the most obvious non-ground measurement problem is even differential GPS is going to get annoyed at massive ionospheric disturbances so you're going to have time/location noise in the data, if nothing else. I wonder how bad the geomagnetic weather has to be to keep construction civil engineering surveyors home for the day, probably pretty bad indeed, but I bet a lot less and a lot more likely to happen than it takes to "short out substations" and vaporize high voltage lines or whatever doomsayer stuff. Aside from DC resistance measurements, I know the same people do magnetic surveys and likewise having a huge geomagnetic storm as a noise source would seem likely to degrade the gathered data.