5 ms·
> 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 i
by 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...
- eli 7y agoOh neat. I was at a lecture about space weather some years ago and several scientists were lamenting the delays in that project. Glad it got sorted!
- daxorid 7y agoLight travels faster than plasma, so we have on the order of 12-18 hours notice of a CME targeted at us.
- dredmorbius 7y agoWarning of a possible CME-induced electrical storm. The visible signature alone isn't proof. The actual EMF effects, based on both the nature and targeting of the CME, aren't clear until it encounters some electrically-aware monitoring device. Of which most are in Earth orbit. If countermeasures include such activities as widespread disabling / disconnecting of major grid elements and equipment, you'll want to minimise the false alarms, both on the basis of cost and because of the boy-who-cried-wolf factor.
- ouid 7y agoEvents that kill some people and events that kill all people have different priority.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- vkou 7y agoThat's because blowing up asteroids is sexy, but hardening the grid is work. You can't make a movie out of the latter, so nobody cares. See, also, why people love sexy non-solutions to problems we don't have (let's colonize Mars), but turn their noses at solving real problems, which affect billions of people (climate change). You can't make a slick film about a superhero convincing people to cutting back on their energy use, and to carpool, or bus to work. It's not sexy.
- dkersten 7y agoAccording to the page you linked we were pretty close to it happening in 2012. Crazy!
- ctdonath 7y agohttps://m.xkcd.com/2233/ https://m.xkcd.com/2233/