5 ms·

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

by 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.
- goodcanadian 5y ago
  I am slightly more pessimistic than you. I would expect it to wreak havoc with power grids. There will be widespread power outages. As you say, the protection devices should limit the amount of serious damage, though there will be some. I expect it will take some time to restore power, though, as there will be many places where things need to be manually reset: hours to days. A few unlucky places may be without power for weeks. Electronics will largely be unaffected unless through bad luck of being connected without adequate protection to something else that suffers a surge (mains power or wired communications).
  - codezero 5y ago
    I may be generally optimistic because I grew up in a place that regularly (once every few years) was without power for more than a week at a time and it wasn’t that bad as long as you were even barely prepared. I guess I believe we can patch up what ever does break within weeks or months and our society (the last year highlights) can survive in very extreme conditions. Temporary loss of technological comforts isn’t so big, and I believe, temporary.
    - perl4ever 5y ago
      Seems like the issue would be if (almost) everywhere has an outage that isn't quickly repairable simultaneously. So many phenomena relating to the pandemic have been disruptive more because of synchronization of normally random things.
      - codezero 5y ago
        Yep. I just don’t think it’s likely to cause a global meltdown, lots of localized annoying failures. Maybe a few really bad spots.
- TMWNN 5y ago
  >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. Does the same shielding required for consumer electronics to meet FCC Class B requirements also protect them from solar events?
spacemark 5y ago
In the case of a question or topic of research that does not yet have a consensus answer among experts, the answer usually lies near the median of reasonable expert positions. Most "news" stories of Carrington Event-type catastrophes are not reasonable but sensationalist. Pure speculation to get ad revenue. Comments on reddit or various internet fora are about as good as Amazon reviews. So your first order of business, save becoming an expert yourself, is to discard all commentary on Carrington events not produced by those with sufficient expertise to illuminate beyond speculation - electrical engineers, space weather physicists, etc. That will eliminate 99% of page hits on Google, probably. From what remains you'll find a much smaller range of answers. Usually much more boring.
- throwaway8581 5y ago
  You are making the middle ground fallacy.
  - spacemark 5y ago
    Yup, it's a heuristic that doesn't work all the time, but it works a lot better than concluding there are no answers.
drivers99 5y ago
> I don't think I can reasonably think about it any more, or make good judgements on the validity of the arguments I was about to say the same thing about diets, before I even got to when you said: > It feels a little bit like reading about diets! It makes me wonder why something like that doesn't have a definitive answer, or something to point out which side (or both) is wrong, but they seem to be immune to inspection. Although, I did read a book called Diet Cults (written by just a journalist though) which contradicted all the extreme ones and suggested a very moderate approach.
- ncallaway 5y ago
  I would expect they don’t have very clear cut answers because both involve interactions with extremely complex systems that no one person is capable of fully understanding. I don’t know the explanations for why we hear such conflicting confident answers, but this is my suspicion: I imagine in both cases the majority of experts in the field would provide somewhat nuanced advice, couched in cautions about how much about these systems they don’t know or fully understand. None of those experts break through. What does break through is all you end up hearing from, which is a smaller minority on each side willing to make bold and confident predictions.
- jmcqk6 5y ago
  Perhaps the problem is that these things do not have definitive answers. Reality is extremely complex, with many interfacing chaotic systems. Why would we expect a single answer to work in every instance? What if there isn't a perfect diet for everyone, but each person can find the one that works best for them? I don't think it's surprising that there isn't a definitive answer to what the effects of a carrington event might be. The analysis required to provide such an answer would have such vast complexity that it's likely not worth the effort. All we have is our best guesses, based on informed and deliberate inquiry. I don't think we can reasonably expect anything more than that.
mikewarot 5y ago
The main effect of this is the generation of DC or very low frequency AC voltages on long pieces of wire. The longer the wire, the higher the generated voltage and current. In 1859 the effect was to generate high enough dc voltages to cause shocks, and ruin equipment, likely due to insulation breakdown. Modern lightning protection would handle that, were long telegraph wires in use today. The thing everyone worries is transformers. If a transformer has no power on it, the currents available would barely cause a measurable change in temperature. (lets say 100 amps across a 1 volt drop, 100 watts of heating) Transformers are designed to maximally use the available flux handling capacity of their core. As the flux rises, eventually a saturation point is reached... at this point, the resistance to further current increase in the coil (the inductance) drops rapidly, leading to a surge in current at the top of the AC cycles, which then leads to rapid heating. As commented above, [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27238108 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27238108] this can then lead to damage if the saturation isn't detected. If a Carrington event were detected in advance (we have about 12 hours warning with the satellites in the Lagrange point between earth and the sun, as the solar wind travels less than the speed of light), the prudent thing to do is turn off the grid, the second best option is to watch everything very carefully for the duration, and proactively turn off the circuits with overheating transformers. Given the well known long term consequences of letting transformers saturate, I think prudent grid operators won't have a problem.
kumarsw 5y ago
My poor answer is that articles about Carrington events targeted to the layperson tend to be of poor quality, and you would be best served by looking for peer-reviewed articles. Some authors that come to mind are Overbye or Latingen. The math actually isn't too bad, so a lot of these papers are accessible to people outside the field.

by wcarss 5y ago

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.

goodcanadian 5y ago
I am slightly more pessimistic than you. I would expect it to wreak havoc with power grids. There will be widespread power outages. As you say, the protection devices should limit the amount of serious damage, though there will be some. I expect it will take some time to restore power, though, as there will be many places where things need to be manually reset: hours to days. A few unlucky places may be without power for weeks. Electronics will largely be unaffected unless through bad luck of being connected without adequate protection to something else that suffers a surge (mains power or wired communications).
- codezero 5y ago
  I may be generally optimistic because I grew up in a place that regularly (once every few years) was without power for more than a week at a time and it wasn’t that bad as long as you were even barely prepared. I guess I believe we can patch up what ever does break within weeks or months and our society (the last year highlights) can survive in very extreme conditions. Temporary loss of technological comforts isn’t so big, and I believe, temporary.
  - perl4ever 5y ago
    Seems like the issue would be if (almost) everywhere has an outage that isn't quickly repairable simultaneously. So many phenomena relating to the pandemic have been disruptive more because of synchronization of normally random things.
    - codezero 5y ago
      Yep. I just don’t think it’s likely to cause a global meltdown, lots of localized annoying failures. Maybe a few really bad spots.
TMWNN 5y ago
>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. Does the same shielding required for consumer electronics to meet FCC Class B requirements also protect them from solar events?

spacemark 5y ago

In the case of a question or topic of research that does not yet have a consensus answer among experts, the answer usually lies near the median of reasonable expert positions. Most "news" stories of Carrington Event-type catastrophes are not reasonable but sensationalist. Pure speculation to get ad revenue. Comments on reddit or various internet fora are about as good as Amazon reviews. So your first order of business, save becoming an expert yourself, is to discard all commentary on Carrington events not produced by those with sufficient expertise to illuminate beyond speculation - electrical engineers, space weather physicists, etc. That will eliminate 99% of page hits on Google, probably. From what remains you'll find a much smaller range of answers. Usually much more boring.

throwaway8581 5y ago
You are making the middle ground fallacy.
- spacemark 5y ago
  Yup, it's a heuristic that doesn't work all the time, but it works a lot better than concluding there are no answers.

drivers99 5y ago

> I don't think I can reasonably think about it any more, or make good judgements on the validity of the arguments I was about to say the same thing about diets, before I even got to when you said: > It feels a little bit like reading about diets! It makes me wonder why something like that doesn't have a definitive answer, or something to point out which side (or both) is wrong, but they seem to be immune to inspection. Although, I did read a book called Diet Cults (written by just a journalist though) which contradicted all the extreme ones and suggested a very moderate approach.

ncallaway 5y ago
I would expect they don’t have very clear cut answers because both involve interactions with extremely complex systems that no one person is capable of fully understanding. I don’t know the explanations for why we hear such conflicting confident answers, but this is my suspicion: I imagine in both cases the majority of experts in the field would provide somewhat nuanced advice, couched in cautions about how much about these systems they don’t know or fully understand. None of those experts break through. What does break through is all you end up hearing from, which is a smaller minority on each side willing to make bold and confident predictions.
jmcqk6 5y ago
Perhaps the problem is that these things do not have definitive answers. Reality is extremely complex, with many interfacing chaotic systems. Why would we expect a single answer to work in every instance? What if there isn't a perfect diet for everyone, but each person can find the one that works best for them? I don't think it's surprising that there isn't a definitive answer to what the effects of a carrington event might be. The analysis required to provide such an answer would have such vast complexity that it's likely not worth the effort. All we have is our best guesses, based on informed and deliberate inquiry. I don't think we can reasonably expect anything more than that.

mikewarot 5y ago

The main effect of this is the generation of DC or very low frequency AC voltages on long pieces of wire. The longer the wire, the higher the generated voltage and current. In 1859 the effect was to generate high enough dc voltages to cause shocks, and ruin equipment, likely due to insulation breakdown. Modern lightning protection would handle that, were long telegraph wires in use today. The thing everyone worries is transformers. If a transformer has no power on it, the currents available would barely cause a measurable change in temperature. (lets say 100 amps across a 1 volt drop, 100 watts of heating) Transformers are designed to maximally use the available flux handling capacity of their core. As the flux rises, eventually a saturation point is reached... at this point, the resistance to further current increase in the coil (the inductance) drops rapidly, leading to a surge in current at the top of the AC cycles, which then leads to rapid heating. As commented above, [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27238108 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27238108] this can then lead to damage if the saturation isn't detected. If a Carrington event were detected in advance (we have about 12 hours warning with the satellites in the Lagrange point between earth and the sun, as the solar wind travels less than the speed of light), the prudent thing to do is turn off the grid, the second best option is to watch everything very carefully for the duration, and proactively turn off the circuits with overheating transformers. Given the well known long term consequences of letting transformers saturate, I think prudent grid operators won't have a problem.

kumarsw 5y ago

My poor answer is that articles about Carrington events targeted to the layperson tend to be of poor quality, and you would be best served by looking for peer-reviewed articles. Some authors that come to mind are Overbye or Latingen. The math actually isn't too bad, so a lot of these papers are accessible to people outside the field.