9 ms·

The Carrington Event: not something to worry about (2020)

90 points by luu 5y ago

goodcanadian 5y ago
There is something off about the numbers. Ordinary, day to day auroras can locally reverse the magnetic field. So, maybe the average change was less than 10% of the average magnetic field, but I've no doubt that local variation can be much, much higher. And reading further down, the article claims the change in magnetic field is slow. It's not. It's very fast. The article does not get the basic physics correct. The one thing that is correct is that it is unlikely to damage your cell phone. What will happen is that massive currents will be induced in transmission lines blowing up transformers and possibly damaging anything plugged into mains.
- altcognito 5y ago
  The more localized the change in the magnetic field, the less it matters.
  - goodcanadian 5y ago
    Localised is relative. We're still talking about currents circling a significant portion of the planet twisting back and forth.
- pfdietz 5y ago
  > And reading further down, the article claims the change in magnetic field is slow. It's not. It's very fast. The average speed of a CME is 500 km/s. I think they've been seen to go as fast as 3000 km/s. At 3000 km/s, that would take about 4 seconds to traverse the diameter of the Earth, and much longer to traverse the magnetosphere. I would call that slow, especially compared to the timescale of the EMP from a nuclear weapon.
  - goodcanadian 5y ago
    Yes, but it is not a single event, it generates currents in the ionosphere that move and jump around. Magnetic field lines break and reconnect. The event lasts for hours. The magnetic field at a particular place may reverse several times and the reverses can happen suddenly. But no, it is not like an EMP. That is the wrong way to think about it.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
olivermarks 5y ago
' Large high-voltage transformers are not things that normally wear out. Since they have long service lives, their production is quite slow. People speak of lead times of months or years for ordering one. I have not looked into this aspect in detail, but expect that production could be sped up considerably if need be: there's nothing fundamentally difficult about manufacturing a transformer, even a high voltage one. Whether, in such an event, it actually would be sped up is another matter; highly competent people would have to be in charge of the effort, and both our political parties are weak on technology.' There have been historical political efforts to have off line back up transformers in place ready in the event of an EMP. also fuses built in to protect the transformers from overload. These have not got as far as legislation.
- idiotsecant 5y ago
  I know you are quoting and not claiming but large high voltage transformers definitely wear out... They have lifetimes just like anything else!I am working on a project replacing a 500kv GSU right now. I am curious what sort of fuse you think would prevent EMP-like damage though.
  - peddling-brink 5y ago
    Why wouldn't a fuse protect from emp-like damage? My understanding is that an emp introduces electrical currents in the lines. Protecting the transformer from electrical overloads should protect it from emp. No?
    - Xamayon 5y ago
      The damage may happen too quickly, similar to how typical fuses or circuit breakers won't protect you from a power surge or nearby lightning strike. Other tech would probably work though. Unfortunately, there's a lot of conflicting info on how powerful HEMP attacks, CMEs, etc would be/how much protection would be needed to have any effect at all. Having reliable info would greatly help for determining the feasibility of protecting systems all over the world. Regardless of 'criticality' even, as what good would the internet be if HN's servers and such are all down? ;)
wcarss 5y ago
I have seen posts and comments about new Carrington events or similar with such frequency, over such a period of time, and with such uniform distribution along the spectrum from "no problem!" to "everyone will die!" that I don't think I can reasonably think about it any more, or make good judgements on the validity of the arguments. I've seen physicists, power workers, electricians, congressional testimony, and lay loons on all sides over and over, and been convinced in opposing ways multiple times. It feels a little bit like reading about diets! Outside of "become a physicist", anyone have any recommendations for cutting through the noise on topics like this?
- fred_is_fred 5y ago
  A better question to ask might be would you change anything about your behavior if either way was correct? I'm not planning on digging a bunker and learning subsistence farming and how to rebuild civilization so the answer for me is that it really doesn't matter if the "everyone will die!" is correct.
- codezero 5y ago
  I'm published in the field of solar physics, though I dropped out of getting a PhD. I specialized in space weather modeling, and the solar wind specifically, and studied a lot of larger flares that were Earth directed. I also dealt with the effects of strong solar activity on the spacecraft we used for our measurements (noise, downtime, etc...) so I am kind of familiar with the subject :) A significant carrington event, in my opinion, would cause some surprising electronic failures, but not likely widespread ones. The basis for my assumption (and that's all it is) is that previous failures of electronic systems because of solar flares have happened only on large scale electronics systems (power grids) and those systems were older, less shielded, and had bad tolerances. Modern electronics, at least the bulk that are in daily use are much more shielded, higher quality, and resilient enough to not bring down civilization. I'd expect it to be something more similar Y2K - definitely hit a few people, cost some money here and there, but literally everyone on the planet heard about it nonstop for quite some time because it might have been bad. So, I think the tension around this is that, maybe depending on how astronomically large the event is, sure, it could be bad, like, if it stripped away our magnetosphere permanently somehow, yep, that'd suck and probably be a problem for humanity, but I find it to be on the unlikely end of things. So folks aren't crazy for thinking it might cause some trouble, maybe even widespread, maybe even apocalyptic, but I think it's much more likely it will be an annoying and costly blip for most involved. As an aside, I bet you'd be surprised with how often modern hardware has bit flips in memory because of cosmic rays alone, and we're mostly OK with that.
Animats 5y ago
As I've done before, when this came up, I've aimed people at the PJM Interconnect's training materials on this. Here's the simplified version.[1] Here's the more advanced version.[2] This discusses the Carrington event, the Hydro Quebec event of March 13, 1989, and what PJM does when there's a problem. The effect of a geomagnetic disturbance is that DC currents appear between distant points that are earth-grounded. This is caused by the ionized solar wind flowing through the space between power lines and the ground. Current flow through a loop generates voltage, remember. That puts DC currents into AC transformers, which can cause partial magnetic saturation, which makes the coils a resistive load for part of the cycle, which causes heating. Transformer damage is possible if power levels are not reduced. That happened to two transformers in 1989. The DC currents aren't huge; 10 amps is enough to cause trouble. So, PJM now has DC ground current meters at a few key points. These report to the system control centers (they have two, just in case), where operators can take actions to reduce power flows at the vulnerable points. In [2], there's considerable detail about this. ("The procedure is implemented when a DC measurement of 10 amps or greater is detected at either Missouri Ave or Meadowbrook. Reduce Salem 1 & 2 units to 80% power, and Hope Creek to 85% power ...") Journalists and pundits writing on this subject should read that before writing. If you don't understand it, find and take the "PJM 101" online training course. PJM's materials are written for the people who run the system, and there's little nonsense or hype. The reports go out to anyone who gets PJM alerts. Those have been on the web for years. Since the last time I looked at this, they've added apps for IOS and Android. Since energy traders need this info, PJM lets anybody view it. [1] https://insidelines.pjm.com/geomagnetic-disturbance-what-is-it https://insidelines.pjm.com/geomagnetic-disturbance-what-is-... [2] https://pjm.com/-/media/training/nerc-certifications/trans-exam-materials/foto/foto-lesson9-conservative-operations.ashx https://pjm.com/-/media/training/nerc-certifications/trans-e...
alexfromapex 5y ago
I think it’s worth worrying about if it’ll majorly damage the entire world’s ability to function. Even the gas pipeline hack and airline computer systems issues are causing mayhem so something larger would be very detrimental to our digital society and we should plan accordingly.
ncmncm 5y ago
I have seen reports that there were spontaneous fires all over the US midwest, during the event, all reported only locally because nobody collected those stats then. I don't know why such an event would affect only part of one continent, unless (say) the Earth's field touched down only there and in unpopulated areas.
- bombcar 5y ago
  It makes sense on the surface that it may only affect the side of the world "facing the sun" at the time, and if reports were only local it might be hard to find any reports in more sparsely populated areas. Anytime we look back into history to try to find an event that wasn't noticed at the time we're going to be dealing with spotty records. It's hard enough finding evidence of tsunamis, and this is much less noticeable.
bogrollben 5y ago
The fact that Texas crashed so severely over snow this year makes me think all bets are off with another Carrington Event that could potentially impact an entire continent.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
kingsuper20 5y ago
With PG&E, who needs Carrington Events?
barathr 5y ago
Well, the headline may be wrong due to this very caveat: > Well, if you have an electrical loop whose size is measured in miles, or (better) hundreds of miles, you can pick up enough current to matter. The telegraph stations were like that. There's new research coming out in a few months on this question -- how such an event may take out transoceanic Internet connectivity: https://mobile.twitter.com/sangeetha_a_j/status/1389303295055831042 https://mobile.twitter.com/sangeetha_a_j/status/138930329505...
mrfusion 5y ago
It seems like it would be relatively cheap to stockpile a few thousand transformers in warehouses just in case.
dricornelius 5y ago
The article fails to mention other impacts such as damage to oil and gas pipelines, loss of tracking of large numbers of satellites, single event upsets in the same, and exposures of aircrew and travellers to higher levels of ionising radiation. It is certainly something to worry about. This testimony to the US senate by K Tobiska has more on the topic: http://docs.house.gov/meetings/SY/SY18/20180426/108217/HHRG-115-SY18-Wstate-TobiskaW-20180426.pdf http://docs.house.gov/meetings/SY/SY18/20180426/108217/HHRG-...

90 points by luu 5y ago

There is something off about the numbers. Ordinary, day to day auroras can locally reverse the magnetic field. So, maybe the average change was less than 10% of the average magnetic field, but I've no doubt that local variation can be much, much higher. And reading further down, the article claims the change in magnetic field is slow. It's not. It's very fast. The article does not get the basic physics correct. The one thing that is correct is that it is unlikely to damage your cell phone. What will happen is that massive currents will be induced in transmission lines blowing up transformers and possibly damaging anything plugged into mains.

altcognito 5y ago
The more localized the change in the magnetic field, the less it matters.
- goodcanadian 5y ago
  Localised is relative. We're still talking about currents circling a significant portion of the planet twisting back and forth.
pfdietz 5y ago
> And reading further down, the article claims the change in magnetic field is slow. It's not. It's very fast. The average speed of a CME is 500 km/s. I think they've been seen to go as fast as 3000 km/s. At 3000 km/s, that would take about 4 seconds to traverse the diameter of the Earth, and much longer to traverse the magnetosphere. I would call that slow, especially compared to the timescale of the EMP from a nuclear weapon.
- goodcanadian 5y ago
  Yes, but it is not a single event, it generates currents in the ionosphere that move and jump around. Magnetic field lines break and reconnect. The event lasts for hours. The magnetic field at a particular place may reverse several times and the reverses can happen suddenly. But no, it is not like an EMP. That is the wrong way to think about it.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

olivermarks 5y ago

' Large high-voltage transformers are not things that normally wear out. Since they have long service lives, their production is quite slow. People speak of lead times of months or years for ordering one. I have not looked into this aspect in detail, but expect that production could be sped up considerably if need be: there's nothing fundamentally difficult about manufacturing a transformer, even a high voltage one. Whether, in such an event, it actually would be sped up is another matter; highly competent people would have to be in charge of the effort, and both our political parties are weak on technology.' There have been historical political efforts to have off line back up transformers in place ready in the event of an EMP. also fuses built in to protect the transformers from overload. These have not got as far as legislation.

idiotsecant 5y ago
I know you are quoting and not claiming but large high voltage transformers definitely wear out... They have lifetimes just like anything else!I am working on a project replacing a 500kv GSU right now. I am curious what sort of fuse you think would prevent EMP-like damage though.
- peddling-brink 5y ago
  Why wouldn't a fuse protect from emp-like damage? My understanding is that an emp introduces electrical currents in the lines. Protecting the transformer from electrical overloads should protect it from emp. No?
  - Xamayon 5y ago
    The damage may happen too quickly, similar to how typical fuses or circuit breakers won't protect you from a power surge or nearby lightning strike. Other tech would probably work though. Unfortunately, there's a lot of conflicting info on how powerful HEMP attacks, CMEs, etc would be/how much protection would be needed to have any effect at all. Having reliable info would greatly help for determining the feasibility of protecting systems all over the world. Regardless of 'criticality' even, as what good would the internet be if HN's servers and such are all down? ;)

wcarss 5y ago

I have seen posts and comments about new Carrington events or similar with such frequency, over such a period of time, and with such uniform distribution along the spectrum from "no problem!" to "everyone will die!" that I don't think I can reasonably think about it any more, or make good judgements on the validity of the arguments. I've seen physicists, power workers, electricians, congressional testimony, and lay loons on all sides over and over, and been convinced in opposing ways multiple times. It feels a little bit like reading about diets! Outside of "become a physicist", anyone have any recommendations for cutting through the noise on topics like this?

fred_is_fred 5y ago
A better question to ask might be would you change anything about your behavior if either way was correct? I'm not planning on digging a bunker and learning subsistence farming and how to rebuild civilization so the answer for me is that it really doesn't matter if the "everyone will die!" is correct.
codezero 5y ago
I'm published in the field of solar physics, though I dropped out of getting a PhD. I specialized in space weather modeling, and the solar wind specifically, and studied a lot of larger flares that were Earth directed. I also dealt with the effects of strong solar activity on the spacecraft we used for our measurements (noise, downtime, etc...) so I am kind of familiar with the subject :) A significant carrington event, in my opinion, would cause some surprising electronic failures, but not likely widespread ones. The basis for my assumption (and that's all it is) is that previous failures of electronic systems because of solar flares have happened only on large scale electronics systems (power grids) and those systems were older, less shielded, and had bad tolerances. Modern electronics, at least the bulk that are in daily use are much more shielded, higher quality, and resilient enough to not bring down civilization. I'd expect it to be something more similar Y2K - definitely hit a few people, cost some money here and there, but literally everyone on the planet heard about it nonstop for quite some time because it might have been bad. So, I think the tension around this is that, maybe depending on how astronomically large the event is, sure, it could be bad, like, if it stripped away our magnetosphere permanently somehow, yep, that'd suck and probably be a problem for humanity, but I find it to be on the unlikely end of things. So folks aren't crazy for thinking it might cause some trouble, maybe even widespread, maybe even apocalyptic, but I think it's much more likely it will be an annoying and costly blip for most involved. As an aside, I bet you'd be surprised with how often modern hardware has bit flips in memory because of cosmic rays alone, and we're mostly OK with that.

Animats 5y ago

As I've done before, when this came up, I've aimed people at the PJM Interconnect's training materials on this. Here's the simplified version.[1] Here's the more advanced version.[2] This discusses the Carrington event, the Hydro Quebec event of March 13, 1989, and what PJM does when there's a problem. The effect of a geomagnetic disturbance is that DC currents appear between distant points that are earth-grounded. This is caused by the ionized solar wind flowing through the space between power lines and the ground. Current flow through a loop generates voltage, remember. That puts DC currents into AC transformers, which can cause partial magnetic saturation, which makes the coils a resistive load for part of the cycle, which causes heating. Transformer damage is possible if power levels are not reduced. That happened to two transformers in 1989. The DC currents aren't huge; 10 amps is enough to cause trouble. So, PJM now has DC ground current meters at a few key points. These report to the system control centers (they have two, just in case), where operators can take actions to reduce power flows at the vulnerable points. In [2], there's considerable detail about this. ("The procedure is implemented when a DC measurement of 10 amps or greater is detected at either Missouri Ave or Meadowbrook. Reduce Salem 1 & 2 units to 80% power, and Hope Creek to 85% power ...") Journalists and pundits writing on this subject should read that before writing. If you don't understand it, find and take the "PJM 101" online training course. PJM's materials are written for the people who run the system, and there's little nonsense or hype. The reports go out to anyone who gets PJM alerts. Those have been on the web for years. Since the last time I looked at this, they've added apps for IOS and Android. Since energy traders need this info, PJM lets anybody view it. [1] https://insidelines.pjm.com/geomagnetic-disturbance-what-is-it https://insidelines.pjm.com/geomagnetic-disturbance-what-is-... [2] https://pjm.com/-/media/training/nerc-certifications/trans-exam-materials/foto/foto-lesson9-conservative-operations.ashx https://pjm.com/-/media/training/nerc-certifications/trans-e...

alexfromapex 5y ago

I think it’s worth worrying about if it’ll majorly damage the entire world’s ability to function. Even the gas pipeline hack and airline computer systems issues are causing mayhem so something larger would be very detrimental to our digital society and we should plan accordingly.

ncmncm 5y ago

I have seen reports that there were spontaneous fires all over the US midwest, during the event, all reported only locally because nobody collected those stats then. I don't know why such an event would affect only part of one continent, unless (say) the Earth's field touched down only there and in unpopulated areas.

bombcar 5y ago
It makes sense on the surface that it may only affect the side of the world "facing the sun" at the time, and if reports were only local it might be hard to find any reports in more sparsely populated areas. Anytime we look back into history to try to find an event that wasn't noticed at the time we're going to be dealing with spotty records. It's hard enough finding evidence of tsunamis, and this is much less noticeable.

bogrollben 5y ago

The fact that Texas crashed so severely over snow this year makes me think all bets are off with another Carrington Event that could potentially impact an entire continent.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

kingsuper20 5y ago

With PG&E, who needs Carrington Events?

barathr 5y ago

Well, the headline may be wrong due to this very caveat: > Well, if you have an electrical loop whose size is measured in miles, or (better) hundreds of miles, you can pick up enough current to matter. The telegraph stations were like that. There's new research coming out in a few months on this question -- how such an event may take out transoceanic Internet connectivity: https://mobile.twitter.com/sangeetha_a_j/status/1389303295055831042 https://mobile.twitter.com/sangeetha_a_j/status/138930329505...

mrfusion 5y ago

It seems like it would be relatively cheap to stockpile a few thousand transformers in warehouses just in case.

dricornelius 5y ago

The article fails to mention other impacts such as damage to oil and gas pipelines, loss of tracking of large numbers of satellites, single event upsets in the same, and exposures of aircrew and travellers to higher levels of ionising radiation. It is certainly something to worry about. This testimony to the US senate by K Tobiska has more on the topic: http://docs.house.gov/meetings/SY/SY18/20180426/108217/HHRG-115-SY18-Wstate-TobiskaW-20180426.pdf http://docs.house.gov/meetings/SY/SY18/20180426/108217/HHRG-...