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Are solar storms and coronal mass ejections are underrated as a danger to society? It seems to me like yes. Anecdotally, every time I've brought the topic up w

Are solar storms and coronal mass ejections are underrated as a danger to society? It seems to me like yes. Anecdotally, every time I've brought the topic up with people who work in fields like electrical engineering or for power companies, it's not really something that anyone's considering or planning for. Hardly anyone even knows about the Carrington Event. A Carrington Event in 2021 could be so crippling.

wyldfire 5y ago
Less common but still underrated as a risk is asteroid strike or near miss. Jupiter, Saturn, our Moon all keep us safer than other Earth-like planets. But it seems like a risk that should concern us. besides maybe subterranean shelter, IMO the best hedge is interplanetary colonization. Ridiculously expensive but not when measured against the cost of losing all of humanity. Maybe galactic risks like these are part of the Great Filter.
- aflag 5y ago
  I think asteroids are overrated. A globally catastrophic asteroid will not hit earth within our life times with a high degree of certainty. Yet, we currently already have means to deflect it. When it finally happens, it will be deflected. That risk is minuscule. The chances of a random small asteroid destroying a city has a higher chance, but I wouldn’t really worry about that more than the building I’m living right now collapsing.
  - robotomir 5y ago
    We don't have the technology to deflect a planet-killer.
    - aflag 5y ago
      If we detect it with enough time ahead (which is very likely we will), it’s not that hard to deflect. We have already landed on asteroids and we certainly have the technology to give it a light, but constant, push in the course of an year or so. We don’t have the technology in case it’s found only days before hitting the earth. But that is very unlikely.
    - vkou 5y ago
      The odds of a planet-killer hitting our planet in the lifetime of you, your children, your children's children, and the subsequent thousand generations is so low it may as well be zero. Worrying about it is like stressing out over what you are going to name your super-yacht, when you're broke, unemployed, homeless, and are dying of lung cancer. It's the most absurdly pointless form of bikeshedding. There are plenty of immediate and catastrophic disasters that we should be preparing for, first.
      - ffffwe3rq352y3 5y ago
        Even so its still fun to think about!
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
    - willis936 5y ago
      A planet killer won't hit the Earth without 3-5 near misses first. Plenty of opportunity to paint it.
      - elevaet 5y ago
        Paint it? I think I vaguely know what you're getting at, but please explain.
        willis936 5y ago
        You only need a few thousand km of orbital change to move a direct impact to well clear of Earth. You can use the momentum of photons to get this orbital change. The effect of paint is a very small delta-V, but it works out that it's enough if done a few decades before the expected impact. This works out since it is extremely unlikely that a large asteroid would impact Earth without first having a series of near passes. https://spaceguardcentre.com/asteroids-deflected-with-paint/ https://spaceguardcentre.com/asteroids-deflected-with-paint/
        carl_dr 5y ago
        If something is going to hit Earth and wipe us out, we won’t have a few decades notice.
        willis936 5y ago
        Yes we will. Planet killer sized asteroids are the easiest to detect and track and are also the least common. City killers are harder: there is a chance we won't one of those coming and there are many more of them out there. Asteroids that hit Earth are in near-Earth orbits. For a first intercept event the odds of an asteroid just happening to hit an Earth sized target as opposed to, say, a 1000x Earth sized "near miss" target is incredibly unlikely. We get a few near-miss events of a given asteroid before an impact happens.
        carl_dr 5y ago
    - bagels 5y ago
      The tech is not out of reach, it's just not getting funding. See B612 Foundation.
      - bagels 5y ago
        I read as detect, but if you detect it far enough in advance, it gives a lot of time to do something about it. Even a small nudge make a huge change in position decades later.
    - jhgb 5y ago
      I'm quite sure we do, assuming that US military would be willing to share their experiences from the B61 Mod 11 project.
  - sbierwagen 5y ago
    An "asteroid", under the strict astrophysical definition, isn't a big threat. Predictable orbits, and, as you say, all the big inner system objects are mapped, and smaller objects aren't global threats. Comets, though. We keep spotting alarmingly large comets only when they get close enough to the sun to show up in low-sensitivity sky surveys, long after they've crossed the Earth's orbit. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C/2020_F8_(SWAN) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C/2020_F8_(SWAN) A ultra-high eccentricity Oort object, covered with low-albedo goop from spending millions of years in the periphery of the solar system is going to be damn hard to detect. Worse yet, they'll be traveling fast. Kinetic energy is the square of velocity. Won't ever see em coming, and they'll hit hard. Worst of all worlds.
    - wyldfire 5y ago
      Does albedo refer only to visible spectrum? Could we detect these using other frequencies?
      - sbierwagen 5y ago
        Thermal infrared would do it. (Lower the albedo, the more blackbody radiation is emitted) The JWST would be great for comet spotting, but unfortunately it's going to be used for stellar observation instead of sky surveys. Putting another ten of them in orbit would be great, but so far the JWST has taken 25 years and more than ten billion dollars to build. Infrared also won't spot a comet until it's far enough into the solar system to warm up. Radar is tempting, but the tyranny of the inverse square law limits its use. (Worse-- the pulse has to make it out to the object, and then be reflected back. Inverse fourth power!) All those great radar images of asteroids made by Arecibo were done during their closest approach to Earth. This[1] claims its useful range was "~2 lunar distances". This was with a 305 meter dish and 1 MW of transmit power! Also, Arecibo collapsed, and nobody seems to be in a hurry to build a replacement. (The 500 meter dish in China doesn't have a transmitter) Assuming you have infinite power, (With a moon-based dish, maybe, otherwise your gigawatts of power just ionize the air in front of the feed horn) you have other practical problems. Bigger the dish, better the gain, narrower the beam width. Arecibo had a 2 arcminute beam. 60 arcminutes to the degree: 21,600 arcminutes to a full circle. Assuming you're surveying out to Jupiter's orbit, 43 minutes for the pulse to get out there, 43 minutes back: 645 days to survey a strip 2 arcminutes wide and 360 degrees long. Which... wouldn't have caught C/2020 F8 (SWAN), which came in 110 degrees off the ecliptic. Surveying the entire night sky would take 6,074.9 years. Just out to Jupiter! You're not even looking into the cloud of outer objects, just spotting infalling ones. 1: https://www.hou.usra.edu/meetings/orbitaldebris2019/orbital2019paper/pdf/6181.pdf https://www.hou.usra.edu/meetings/orbitaldebris2019/orbital2...
- t8e56vd4ih 5y ago
  > Ridiculously expensive but not when measured against the cost of losing all of humanity. there's no concept of money and cost left if humanity goes extinct ... so it can't be "expensive".
  - bordercases 5y ago
    Opportunity cost? You can also price the risk of ruin by increments towards the risk of ruin, and what you would pay in exchange for mitigating the risk to that extent.
  - sbierwagen 5y ago
    There is an argument to set the value of humanity to some finite, not ultra-enormous value: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pascal%27s_mugging https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pascal%27s_mugging
- toper-centage 5y ago
  There very much is a back up plan, with bunkers, food, water and energy reserves, for such a catastrophic event. But not for you an I.
binbag 5y ago
I don't think they are under-rated. https://www.nationalgrideso.com/news/skys-cobra-series-solar-storm-teacup-or-genuine-possibility https://www.nationalgrideso.com/news/skys-cobra-series-solar...

wyldfire 5y ago

Less common but still underrated as a risk is asteroid strike or near miss. Jupiter, Saturn, our Moon all keep us safer than other Earth-like planets. But it seems like a risk that should concern us. besides maybe subterranean shelter, IMO the best hedge is interplanetary colonization. Ridiculously expensive but not when measured against the cost of losing all of humanity. Maybe galactic risks like these are part of the Great Filter.

aflag 5y ago
I think asteroids are overrated. A globally catastrophic asteroid will not hit earth within our life times with a high degree of certainty. Yet, we currently already have means to deflect it. When it finally happens, it will be deflected. That risk is minuscule. The chances of a random small asteroid destroying a city has a higher chance, but I wouldn’t really worry about that more than the building I’m living right now collapsing.
- robotomir 5y ago
  We don't have the technology to deflect a planet-killer.
  - aflag 5y ago
    If we detect it with enough time ahead (which is very likely we will), it’s not that hard to deflect. We have already landed on asteroids and we certainly have the technology to give it a light, but constant, push in the course of an year or so. We don’t have the technology in case it’s found only days before hitting the earth. But that is very unlikely.
  - vkou 5y ago
    The odds of a planet-killer hitting our planet in the lifetime of you, your children, your children's children, and the subsequent thousand generations is so low it may as well be zero. Worrying about it is like stressing out over what you are going to name your super-yacht, when you're broke, unemployed, homeless, and are dying of lung cancer. It's the most absurdly pointless form of bikeshedding. There are plenty of immediate and catastrophic disasters that we should be preparing for, first.
    - ffffwe3rq352y3 5y ago
      Even so its still fun to think about!
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - willis936 5y ago
    A planet killer won't hit the Earth without 3-5 near misses first. Plenty of opportunity to paint it.
    - elevaet 5y ago
      Paint it? I think I vaguely know what you're getting at, but please explain.
      - willis936 5y ago
        You only need a few thousand km of orbital change to move a direct impact to well clear of Earth. You can use the momentum of photons to get this orbital change. The effect of paint is a very small delta-V, but it works out that it's enough if done a few decades before the expected impact. This works out since it is extremely unlikely that a large asteroid would impact Earth without first having a series of near passes. https://spaceguardcentre.com/asteroids-deflected-with-paint/ https://spaceguardcentre.com/asteroids-deflected-with-paint/
        carl_dr 5y ago
        If something is going to hit Earth and wipe us out, we won’t have a few decades notice.
        willis936 5y ago
        Yes we will. Planet killer sized asteroids are the easiest to detect and track and are also the least common. City killers are harder: there is a chance we won't one of those coming and there are many more of them out there. Asteroids that hit Earth are in near-Earth orbits. For a first intercept event the odds of an asteroid just happening to hit an Earth sized target as opposed to, say, a 1000x Earth sized "near miss" target is incredibly unlikely. We get a few near-miss events of a given asteroid before an impact happens.
        carl_dr 5y ago
  - bagels 5y ago
    The tech is not out of reach, it's just not getting funding. See B612 Foundation.
    - bagels 5y ago
      I read as detect, but if you detect it far enough in advance, it gives a lot of time to do something about it. Even a small nudge make a huge change in position decades later.
  - jhgb 5y ago
    I'm quite sure we do, assuming that US military would be willing to share their experiences from the B61 Mod 11 project.
- sbierwagen 5y ago
  An "asteroid", under the strict astrophysical definition, isn't a big threat. Predictable orbits, and, as you say, all the big inner system objects are mapped, and smaller objects aren't global threats. Comets, though. We keep spotting alarmingly large comets only when they get close enough to the sun to show up in low-sensitivity sky surveys, long after they've crossed the Earth's orbit. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C/2020_F8_(SWAN) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C/2020_F8_(SWAN) A ultra-high eccentricity Oort object, covered with low-albedo goop from spending millions of years in the periphery of the solar system is going to be damn hard to detect. Worse yet, they'll be traveling fast. Kinetic energy is the square of velocity. Won't ever see em coming, and they'll hit hard. Worst of all worlds.
  - wyldfire 5y ago
    Does albedo refer only to visible spectrum? Could we detect these using other frequencies?
    - sbierwagen 5y ago
      Thermal infrared would do it. (Lower the albedo, the more blackbody radiation is emitted) The JWST would be great for comet spotting, but unfortunately it's going to be used for stellar observation instead of sky surveys. Putting another ten of them in orbit would be great, but so far the JWST has taken 25 years and more than ten billion dollars to build. Infrared also won't spot a comet until it's far enough into the solar system to warm up. Radar is tempting, but the tyranny of the inverse square law limits its use. (Worse-- the pulse has to make it out to the object, and then be reflected back. Inverse fourth power!) All those great radar images of asteroids made by Arecibo were done during their closest approach to Earth. This[1] claims its useful range was "~2 lunar distances". This was with a 305 meter dish and 1 MW of transmit power! Also, Arecibo collapsed, and nobody seems to be in a hurry to build a replacement. (The 500 meter dish in China doesn't have a transmitter) Assuming you have infinite power, (With a moon-based dish, maybe, otherwise your gigawatts of power just ionize the air in front of the feed horn) you have other practical problems. Bigger the dish, better the gain, narrower the beam width. Arecibo had a 2 arcminute beam. 60 arcminutes to the degree: 21,600 arcminutes to a full circle. Assuming you're surveying out to Jupiter's orbit, 43 minutes for the pulse to get out there, 43 minutes back: 645 days to survey a strip 2 arcminutes wide and 360 degrees long. Which... wouldn't have caught C/2020 F8 (SWAN), which came in 110 degrees off the ecliptic. Surveying the entire night sky would take 6,074.9 years. Just out to Jupiter! You're not even looking into the cloud of outer objects, just spotting infalling ones. 1: https://www.hou.usra.edu/meetings/orbitaldebris2019/orbital2019paper/pdf/6181.pdf https://www.hou.usra.edu/meetings/orbitaldebris2019/orbital2...
t8e56vd4ih 5y ago
> Ridiculously expensive but not when measured against the cost of losing all of humanity. there's no concept of money and cost left if humanity goes extinct ... so it can't be "expensive".
- bordercases 5y ago
  Opportunity cost? You can also price the risk of ruin by increments towards the risk of ruin, and what you would pay in exchange for mitigating the risk to that extent.
- sbierwagen 5y ago
  There is an argument to set the value of humanity to some finite, not ultra-enormous value: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pascal%27s_mugging https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pascal%27s_mugging
toper-centage 5y ago
There very much is a back up plan, with bunkers, food, water and energy reserves, for such a catastrophic event. But not for you an I.

binbag 5y ago

I don't think they are under-rated. https://www.nationalgrideso.com/news/skys-cobra-series-solar-storm-teacup-or-genuine-possibility https://www.nationalgrideso.com/news/skys-cobra-series-solar...