11 ms·

The Carrington Event of 1859 disrupted telegraph lines

168 points by Thevet 3y ago

HerculePoirot 3y ago
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/3165629_Characteristics_for_the_Occurrence_of_a_High-Current_Z-Pinch_Aurora_as_Recorded_in_Antiquity https://www.researchgate.net/publication/3165629_Characteris... I'm reading this critical analysis of it (2013): https://www.researchgate.net/publication/292848789_Geometry_of_an_Intense_Auroral_Column_As_Recorded_in_Rock_Art https://www.researchgate.net/publication/292848789_Geometry_... > The interpretation of individual rock art images and related art forms as local perspectives on a single celestial phenomenon requires a determination of scale, perspective, and temporal evolution. Peratt interpreted dotted circles and concentric circles as bottom-up renditions of a diocotron instability affecting the hollow outer sheets of the z-pinch (Peratt 2003:1209–1210,1212), while he derived ‘ladders’, ‘caterpillars’, ‘birds on sticks’, ‘squattermen’, ‘Kokopelli’, and many other forms from instabilities in the solid inner core of the lower segment of the auroral beam, viewed sideways or at an oblique angle (Peratt 2003:1193–1205). So far, so good— the matches between these respective instabilities and their petroglyphic correlates are indeed compelling. Problems appear when the geographic distribution of such designs is taken into account.
- xattt 3y ago
  I’m trying to understand what kind of phenomenon beams a column of light into the sky from the South Pole. I can understand auroral curtains, but a cylinder beam sounds far-fetched.
  - michaelsbradley 3y ago
    Birkeland current
- klondike_klive 3y ago
  > Peratt interpreted dotted circles and concentric circles as bottom-up renditions of a diocotron instability affecting the hollow outer sheets of the z-pinch I love this sentence. I am pretty inarticulate in person, sometimes I fantasise myself delivering lines like this in a hastily erected mobile command centre. "In English, please, professor?" growls a FBI agent. My acolyte pushes their glasses up "uh... uh... if you consider these petroglyphs as a correlate of an instability in the solid inner core of the lower segment of the auroral-" the FBI agent pinches his temples and rounds on the eager young researcher, "You better start making sense, pencil-neck!" I step gently in between them "In simple terms, we're talking about... a Miyake Event."
  - ambicapter 3y ago
    You're just a screenplay away from playing your dream self in a movie.
  - HerculePoirot 3y ago
    Got some more for you: https://meetings.aps.org/Meeting/DPP21/Session/JP11.15 https://meetings.aps.org/Meeting/DPP21/Session/JP11.15 > Since cosmic rays are unaffected by the galaxy’s gravity, they increase the buoyancy of the ISM. However, the cosmic ray fluid has a finite compressibility, increasing the energy required to form valleys. Linear theory suggests this compressibility dominates buoyancy, suppressing the instability. > To address this counterintuitive result, we run local simulations of injections of cosmic ray pressure in the galactic disk. This assumes a supernova as the source. If this physically motivated perturbation creates buoyant magnetic flux tubes, then it is likely the Parker instability can develop in the ISM even if instability criteria from linear theory are not met. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nova#Recurrent_nova https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nova#Recurrent_nova https://www.syfy.com/syfy-wire/bad-astronomy-a-micronova-is-a-new-kind-of-stellar-explosion https://www.syfy.com/syfy-wire/bad-astronomy-a-micronova-is-...
ankitg12 3y ago
This does sound quite scary and impact of such a even would cross the impact what COVID-19 had on all of us.
- hunter2_ 3y ago
  In some respects it would have an opposite effect: no more Zoom calls; if you want contact with someone, go out and find them. Seems like it could require additional police presence, and they'll find it difficult to be effective without radios. We will need to look at centuries-old playbooks for virtually all aspects of life, temporarily. Hoaxes will spread without rapid fact checking.
  - graemep 3y ago
    It would also lead to the collapse of vital systems: transport, utilities, payments.... > Hoaxes will spread without rapid fact checking. They already do. I think you have found the silver lining: hoaxes will spread a lot slower.
    - piva00 3y ago
      It would lead to the collapse of modern society until/if we manage to rebuild it. Nothing in the modern world works without electronics and computers.
      - Cthulhu_ 3y ago
        I think you'd be surprised to see how quickly people adapt - I mean, big parts of the world do just fine without electronics and computers. The biggest risk would be the water supply, followed by infrastructure - think grocery store deliveries. And these have / are already happening, so contingency plans are already there, or should be made. Water supplies have been failing in a lot of places due to droughts, heatwaves, and dwindling supplies. Infrastructure took a big hit when COVID started, in part because some people started hoarding (toilet paper, for some reason), but the bigger one was "just" because people changed their habits a little - buying a little extra (toilet paper), working from home (lunch options), baking their own bread (flour), etc. And the office real estate issue took a hit as well, but I don't think anyone will really miss that. Besides that, the biggest risk will be other people. We've seen in recent history that it takes only a small disturbance - a natural disaster, a protest gone violent, a football match - for people to stop following the social contract. It's often depicted in zombie survival themed media, people losing their morals quickly for their and their family's survival. And with Covid, it wasn't even survival, it was toilet paper.
martinclayton 3y ago
If these events associate with solar motion through the local interstellar cloud perhaps the onset will take a while, and that will allow for some mitigations to be made, even if there is no way to predict when that might happen. ... what if one of the Voyager spacecraft is heading in the "right" direction to see something ...
denton-scratch 3y ago
> and in the event we would lose the data almost as soon as we had found it. Why? I suppose because the equipment to capture the data is electrical (or electronic). But given that a Miyake Event is something that's never been observed, even using non-electrical detectors, I don't see why ordinary optical detectors (e.g. eyes) couldn't capture at least a lot of useful data. And if we can make detectors that work in the environment of the LHC, surely we can make detectors that are screened against a solar storm.
- forgetfreeman 3y ago
  What is technically possible and what actually gets done bear very little relation.
dskrepps 3y ago
I've wondered for a while. Lots of people seem to think a Carrington Event will simply fry all small electronics and make everything stop working, but from my understanding all it'll actually do is cause power surges in long transmission lines and disrupt wireless signals. Apparently telegraph lines sparked and shocked people. So what effect will that actually have now? Will a massive power surge go through my house and destroy everything plugged in, and thus indirectly my desktop computer? Will every house on the grid catch fire, destroying all modern cities? Or will substations and transformers be destroyed but shield homes themselves from catastrophic damage? Will wildfires destroy every forest anywhere near modern infrastructure?
- Turskarama 3y ago
  The big risk is a bunch of transformers blow up, essentially taking the grid down. Since we would have to bootstrap the grid again without the advantage of the grid... this would likely set civilization back pretty far, a new dark age is far from impossible.
  - hparadiz 3y ago
    From my understanding it mostly effects large pieces of metal like copper lines but would be unlikely to create a significant charge in small electronics and wouldn't destroy solar panels or the vast majority of components. Any transformer pieces that are in a disassembled state prior to the event would be easy to put together and bootstrap any such event. Some locations like inside concrete buildings or under ground would remain insulated from the event as well. Also it's likely that at the equator no effect will be felt.
    - Turskarama 3y ago
      The thing is there are very few transformers in a disassembled state ready to go. Solar panels would be fine, but they're effectively useless without the ability to deliver power. Covid was enough to create an international backlog of transformers, and that was with a normal rate of attrition.
Archelaos 3y ago
> Consequently, more radiocarbon is packed into a single growth ring, and scientists can determine the exact year that ring was built. They can then count to the outer ring of the tree to know the year that it died. The article somewhat confused the details. To determine the exact year the ring was built (and subsequently year the tree died) scientists look at the growth pattern of the surrounding rings and compare them with a reference data set of ring width of the same tree species in the same (wider) area. This works even if the outer ring is not present. The outer ring is only relevant if we want to determine the exact year a tree had been cut down, which is important for archaeology but not to establish the date of the Miyake event in the first place. > ... providing definitive evidence that the Vikings beat Columbus to North America. > ... The researchers speculated that the settlement was built sometime near the end of the first millennium This was no "speculation", but has already been established as a fact for decades with the excavation of the settlement of L’Anse aux Meadows itself in the early 1960s. Tree ring dating only helped to identify the specific date of the settlement in the already established time frame, because the only fitting Miyake event was that of 992/993. (The article mentions this, but the chain of reasoning is not really accurate.) The problem with determining the exact date of the settlement without the reference to the Miyake event was that we do not have a reference record for the tree rings at this site, as this requires an uninterrupted record of overlapping trees from the present back to the Viking Age for these particular timber species in the area. This could perhaps been established with a lot of effort over the years, but with the Miyake events we have indeed a very interesting method to compile reference records even without a complete reference record to the present. However, it still remains uncertain, for example, to which Miyake event a particular piece of wood should be attributed without much context, whether we already know all the Miyake events of the last couple of millennia, and whether another, more local event could have led to a carbon-14 value that could be confused with a global Miyake event.
rwmj 3y ago
> Astronauts would undoubtedly receive lethal doses of radiation, and even people on board airplanes could encounter dangerous levels. It sounds like a more immediate problem would be that all aircraft and spacecraft electronic systems would fail permanently? They wouldn't need to worry about the radiation doses.
- arrowsmith 3y ago
  Don't modern passenger jets have some kind of failsafe way they could still be controlled and landed safely if the electronics fail? I would assume they do. But then I know nothing whatsoever about aircraft safety and am only speculating.
  - lxgr 3y ago
    Modern fly-by-wire systems often don’t have a mechanic backup, and even for mechanically controlled ones (like the B737) I wouldn’t be too sure if they’d fare that well without any electronic controls. But it’s not a given that an event of this type would even disrupt electronics not connected to the power grid. Even the longest possible line in an airplane is only on the order of a couple of meters, compared to thousands of kilometers for power and communication lines.
    - GolfPopper 3y ago
      How much radiation would the passengers be getting during a Miyake Event? Air travel normally exposes travelers to a tiny percentage of a mSv. A "normal" solar flare can push that up to 200 mSv. 2000 mSv in a short time will make you sick and boost your chances of cancer. 20000 mSv puts you in company with Louis Slotin.
    - SoftTalker 3y ago
      Modern aircraft have full authority digital engine controls (FADEC), even if they use cables and pulleys to operate the control surfaces. If your 737 turns into a glider you have one chance at landing somewhere, so yeah you might survive but not likely especially if you are over water.
xvilka 3y ago
It's possible to build shielded (up to a certain point of course) electronics and power grids, it's just a lot of work and money. Ideally, all new devices, grid lines, transformers should be made with at least some level of protection from those events. In a few decades world will not be a sitting duck anymore if follow this strategy.
- Cthulhu_ 3y ago
  The power grid does have protections already - surge protectors, breakers, redunancy, etc. There's many possible sources for power surges. There's protections in place, contingency plans, 24/7 on-call fast response staff, spares, etc. Of course, that's all contingent on budgeting, which is why it's important that governments invest and keep investing in infrastructure.
- djmips 3y ago
  I have a surge suppresor in the 15 year old power bar that feeds my computer so I'm set.
Afteriasi 3y ago
[flagged]
- piva00 3y ago
  > but, sure, keep worrying about co2 levels I believe you are very aware that humanity is able to worry about many different existential threats at the same time, right? CO2 levels, nuclear proliferation, Solar storm EMPs, asteroid impacts, each one has a different risk profile. But sure...
- rsynnott 3y ago
  > but, sure, keep worrying about co2 levels Yes, very sensible attitude. Similarly, when I'm crossing the road, I don't bother to look to see whether there's oncoming traffic, on the basis that I could be hit by a meteorite at any time... Seriously, presumably you are aware that more than one thing can be a concern at the same time? CO2 levels are probably more of an immediate and addressable concern, in this particular case, but both should be a worry.
- Maken 3y ago
  ¿Who cares about anything else if the Sun could kill us all tomorrow? Proceeds to walk directly into oncoming traffic.
b800h 3y ago
If these Miyake events were so spectacular, why do they not appear in the historical record? I appreciate that 774 was in the "dark ages" but something as impressive as the Carrington event would appear in some chronicles, surely? EDIT: Sorry, checked Wikipedia: "Annus Domini (the year of the Lord) 774. This year the Northumbrians banished their king, Alred, from York at Easter-tide; and chose Ethelred, the son of Mull, for their lord, who reigned four winters. This year also appeared in the heavens a red crucifix, after sunset; the Mercians and the men of Kent fought at Otford; and wonderful serpents were seen in the land of the South-Saxons. — Anglo-Saxon Chronicle[9]"
- rwmj 3y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/774%E2%80%93775_carbon-14_spike https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/774%E2%80%93775_carbon-14_spik...
- tomjakubowski 3y ago
  Some random Australian gold prospector wrote about his experience (quoting Wikipedia): Lights of every imaginable color were issuing from the southern heavens, one color fading away only to give place to another if possible more beautiful than the last, the streams mounting to the zenith, but always becoming a rich purple when reaching there, and always curling round, leaving a clear strip of sky, which may be described as four fingers held at arm's length. The northern side from the zenith was also illuminated with beautiful colors, always curling round at the zenith, but were considered to be merely a reproduction of the southern display, as all colors south and north always corresponded. It was a sight never to be forgotten, and was considered at the time to be the greatest aurora recorded [...]. The rationalist and pantheist saw nature in her most exquisite robes, recognising, the divine immanence, immutable law, cause, and effect. The superstitious and the fanatical had dire forebodings, and thought it a foreshadowing of Armageddon and final dissolution. Maybe it's just survivor bias but: crikey! People could really write back then!
  - snypher 3y ago
    But this was not in reference to the 774AD event surely! Do you have a citation for the above quote? Edit: you probably meant the Carrington event, I am starting my next coffee now.
mensetmanusman 3y ago
It’s interesting, considering that this is very likely in humanity’s future. Probably long after these HN comments, but it will happen, and unless our future ancestors are amazing planners, it may end up being one of the most disruptive events in human civilization. I wonder if an architecture like micro grids per city block running on small fusion or fission reactors 1000 years from now would protect them, however.
dividedbyzero 3y ago
As far as Carrington-like events are concerned I believe consensus is that most equipment and electronics would be fine, satellites would take damage, radio communication would be out, the electrical grid would go down and be hard to restart, but at least the most important grid transformers would be protected and survive the event, as would cars, computers and machinery. Would a Miyazake event change that meaningfully? Can we know for sure?
- api 3y ago
  If they are many times larger it sounds like they could be more like an EMP from a thermonuclear bomb. Looks like they happen on average every few thousand years. We really should be looking at how we recover from such an event, and whether we can do things in the design of power grids to minimize damage. If there were humans living on the Moon or Mars these seem like they could be even more fatal unless they were living underground. Given how profoundly useful and powerful electronics are, perhaps events like this are why electricity and electronics are not used at large scale by organic life. Have you ever wondered why humans and other life forms are so unaffected by EM that we can subject ourselves to things like MRI scans without even noticeable effects? Maybe there has been selection against anything that is vulnerable to EM because every few thousand years anything else is culled.
  - nicoburns 3y ago
    Electricity is used widely by organic life: it’s a key mechanism by which nerves and neurons function.
    - lxgr 3y ago
      Yes, but these mechanisms aren’t really electric currents in relatively long metal conductors, which are what’s vulnerable to an EMP. That’s why humans are ok with spending some time in an MRI, while microprocessors wouldn’t be.
      - deleted 3y ago
        [deleted]
shitstorms 3y ago
One of the more likely black swan events that has the potential to cause global upheaval. Quite a bit of data now from other solar systems in terms of likelihood of these events. So far it looks like it is slightly more likely to occur in the ramp up stage of a cycle, not at the very peak. We would most likely see a very large sunspot(s) days before the event and have 10-15 hours to take action, decoupling transformers etc, but the effects would be massive nonetheless. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/July_2012_solar_storm https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/July_2012_solar_storm https://spaceweatherarchive.com/2023/06/06/how-big-was-carringtons-sunspot/ https://spaceweatherarchive.com/2023/06/06/how-big-was-carri...
- Georgelemental 3y ago
  It's not a black swan if there are historical examples, is it?
  - shitstorms 3y ago
    That's true. More of a grey swan if it has to be a bird.
bigyax 3y ago
A 1 percent chance of happening in the next decade. It's the inevitability of it that's most terrifying, society will fundamentally collapse, there's no way we could prepare for how rapidly our lives would be changed, and absolutely nothing we can do to to stop it. Only hope is that for when it happens it's far enough down the road for technology to have adapted to bring enough resiliency and/or redundancy into the grid such that we are not so completely vulnerable
- JohnClark1337 3y ago
  [dead]
- namlem 3y ago
  We could decouple transformers to stop them from being destroyed. Wiring is easy to repair, it's the transformers that are vulnerable.
  - bigyax 3y ago
    That would certainly be the most immediate mitigation strategy. I wonder though would there be enough time? Would it be possible to isolate the transformers so completely such that they would not be affected by an event of this magnitude
  - pixl97 3y ago
    We 'could' at least in theory. The actual response I expect is something closer to "don't look up"
    - dgroshev 3y ago
      We (humanity) have multiple satellites looking at the sun 24/7 and warning of flares in advance [1]. There's even a running forecast of geomagnetic events [2]. We very much do "look up" and have been for decades. [1] https://solarsystem.nasa.gov/solar-system/sun/exploration/ https://solarsystem.nasa.gov/solar-system/sun/exploration/ [2] https://www.swpc.noaa.gov/phenomena/solar-flares-radio-blackouts https://www.swpc.noaa.gov/phenomena/solar-flares-radio-black...
uoaei 3y ago
What can be done to mitigate such effects in pre-2000 ICE vehicles? Would lead-acid batteries succumb to a violent death if subject to such a storm? Would the wires fry or would the chassis-as-capacitor smooth out the effect?
housebear 3y ago
Check out A Canticle for Leibowitz for an entertaining (and often depressing) read on life restarting after an extinction event. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Canticle_for_Leibowitz https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Canticle_for_Leibowitz "Set in a Catholic monastery in the desert of the southwestern United States after a devastating nuclear war, the book spans thousands of years as civilization rebuilds itself. The monks of the Albertian Order of Leibowitz preserve the surviving remnants of man's scientific knowledge until the world is again ready for it."
- rootusrootus 3y ago
  And then of course after mankind recovers and rebuilds to the same technological level, they start another nuclear war. Figures.
  - pixl97 3y ago
    Time does not repeat, but it does rhyme in a phrase that ends in global thermonuclear war.
swader999 3y ago
One thing is certain, my mortgage and visa bill will still be due.
JJMcJ 3y ago
> disrupted telegraph lines As in, started fires. In 1859, telegraph lines were the only wiring anywhere in the world. If it hit today, it would be a colossal disaster. Maybe shutting off electrical power world wide for a few days, if it was anticipated.

168 points by Thevet 3y ago

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/3165629_Characteristics_for_the_Occurrence_of_a_High-Current_Z-Pinch_Aurora_as_Recorded_in_Antiquity https://www.researchgate.net/publication/3165629_Characteris... I'm reading this critical analysis of it (2013): https://www.researchgate.net/publication/292848789_Geometry_of_an_Intense_Auroral_Column_As_Recorded_in_Rock_Art https://www.researchgate.net/publication/292848789_Geometry_... > The interpretation of individual rock art images and related art forms as local perspectives on a single celestial phenomenon requires a determination of scale, perspective, and temporal evolution. Peratt interpreted dotted circles and concentric circles as bottom-up renditions of a diocotron instability affecting the hollow outer sheets of the z-pinch (Peratt 2003:1209–1210,1212), while he derived ‘ladders’, ‘caterpillars’, ‘birds on sticks’, ‘squattermen’, ‘Kokopelli’, and many other forms from instabilities in the solid inner core of the lower segment of the auroral beam, viewed sideways or at an oblique angle (Peratt 2003:1193–1205). So far, so good— the matches between these respective instabilities and their petroglyphic correlates are indeed compelling. Problems appear when the geographic distribution of such designs is taken into account.

xattt 3y ago
I’m trying to understand what kind of phenomenon beams a column of light into the sky from the South Pole. I can understand auroral curtains, but a cylinder beam sounds far-fetched.
- michaelsbradley 3y ago
  Birkeland current
klondike_klive 3y ago
> Peratt interpreted dotted circles and concentric circles as bottom-up renditions of a diocotron instability affecting the hollow outer sheets of the z-pinch I love this sentence. I am pretty inarticulate in person, sometimes I fantasise myself delivering lines like this in a hastily erected mobile command centre. "In English, please, professor?" growls a FBI agent. My acolyte pushes their glasses up "uh... uh... if you consider these petroglyphs as a correlate of an instability in the solid inner core of the lower segment of the auroral-" the FBI agent pinches his temples and rounds on the eager young researcher, "You better start making sense, pencil-neck!" I step gently in between them "In simple terms, we're talking about... a Miyake Event."
- ambicapter 3y ago
  You're just a screenplay away from playing your dream self in a movie.
- HerculePoirot 3y ago
  Got some more for you: https://meetings.aps.org/Meeting/DPP21/Session/JP11.15 https://meetings.aps.org/Meeting/DPP21/Session/JP11.15 > Since cosmic rays are unaffected by the galaxy’s gravity, they increase the buoyancy of the ISM. However, the cosmic ray fluid has a finite compressibility, increasing the energy required to form valleys. Linear theory suggests this compressibility dominates buoyancy, suppressing the instability. > To address this counterintuitive result, we run local simulations of injections of cosmic ray pressure in the galactic disk. This assumes a supernova as the source. If this physically motivated perturbation creates buoyant magnetic flux tubes, then it is likely the Parker instability can develop in the ISM even if instability criteria from linear theory are not met. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nova#Recurrent_nova https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nova#Recurrent_nova https://www.syfy.com/syfy-wire/bad-astronomy-a-micronova-is-a-new-kind-of-stellar-explosion https://www.syfy.com/syfy-wire/bad-astronomy-a-micronova-is-...

ankitg12 3y ago

This does sound quite scary and impact of such a even would cross the impact what COVID-19 had on all of us.

hunter2_ 3y ago
In some respects it would have an opposite effect: no more Zoom calls; if you want contact with someone, go out and find them. Seems like it could require additional police presence, and they'll find it difficult to be effective without radios. We will need to look at centuries-old playbooks for virtually all aspects of life, temporarily. Hoaxes will spread without rapid fact checking.
- graemep 3y ago
  It would also lead to the collapse of vital systems: transport, utilities, payments.... > Hoaxes will spread without rapid fact checking. They already do. I think you have found the silver lining: hoaxes will spread a lot slower.
  - piva00 3y ago
    It would lead to the collapse of modern society until/if we manage to rebuild it. Nothing in the modern world works without electronics and computers.
    - Cthulhu_ 3y ago
      I think you'd be surprised to see how quickly people adapt - I mean, big parts of the world do just fine without electronics and computers. The biggest risk would be the water supply, followed by infrastructure - think grocery store deliveries. And these have / are already happening, so contingency plans are already there, or should be made. Water supplies have been failing in a lot of places due to droughts, heatwaves, and dwindling supplies. Infrastructure took a big hit when COVID started, in part because some people started hoarding (toilet paper, for some reason), but the bigger one was "just" because people changed their habits a little - buying a little extra (toilet paper), working from home (lunch options), baking their own bread (flour), etc. And the office real estate issue took a hit as well, but I don't think anyone will really miss that. Besides that, the biggest risk will be other people. We've seen in recent history that it takes only a small disturbance - a natural disaster, a protest gone violent, a football match - for people to stop following the social contract. It's often depicted in zombie survival themed media, people losing their morals quickly for their and their family's survival. And with Covid, it wasn't even survival, it was toilet paper.

martinclayton 3y ago

If these events associate with solar motion through the local interstellar cloud perhaps the onset will take a while, and that will allow for some mitigations to be made, even if there is no way to predict when that might happen. ... what if one of the Voyager spacecraft is heading in the "right" direction to see something ...

denton-scratch 3y ago

> and in the event we would lose the data almost as soon as we had found it. Why? I suppose because the equipment to capture the data is electrical (or electronic). But given that a Miyake Event is something that's never been observed, even using non-electrical detectors, I don't see why ordinary optical detectors (e.g. eyes) couldn't capture at least a lot of useful data. And if we can make detectors that work in the environment of the LHC, surely we can make detectors that are screened against a solar storm.

forgetfreeman 3y ago
What is technically possible and what actually gets done bear very little relation.

dskrepps 3y ago

I've wondered for a while. Lots of people seem to think a Carrington Event will simply fry all small electronics and make everything stop working, but from my understanding all it'll actually do is cause power surges in long transmission lines and disrupt wireless signals. Apparently telegraph lines sparked and shocked people. So what effect will that actually have now? Will a massive power surge go through my house and destroy everything plugged in, and thus indirectly my desktop computer? Will every house on the grid catch fire, destroying all modern cities? Or will substations and transformers be destroyed but shield homes themselves from catastrophic damage? Will wildfires destroy every forest anywhere near modern infrastructure?

Turskarama 3y ago
The big risk is a bunch of transformers blow up, essentially taking the grid down. Since we would have to bootstrap the grid again without the advantage of the grid... this would likely set civilization back pretty far, a new dark age is far from impossible.
- hparadiz 3y ago
  From my understanding it mostly effects large pieces of metal like copper lines but would be unlikely to create a significant charge in small electronics and wouldn't destroy solar panels or the vast majority of components. Any transformer pieces that are in a disassembled state prior to the event would be easy to put together and bootstrap any such event. Some locations like inside concrete buildings or under ground would remain insulated from the event as well. Also it's likely that at the equator no effect will be felt.
  - Turskarama 3y ago
    The thing is there are very few transformers in a disassembled state ready to go. Solar panels would be fine, but they're effectively useless without the ability to deliver power. Covid was enough to create an international backlog of transformers, and that was with a normal rate of attrition.

Archelaos 3y ago

> Consequently, more radiocarbon is packed into a single growth ring, and scientists can determine the exact year that ring was built. They can then count to the outer ring of the tree to know the year that it died. The article somewhat confused the details. To determine the exact year the ring was built (and subsequently year the tree died) scientists look at the growth pattern of the surrounding rings and compare them with a reference data set of ring width of the same tree species in the same (wider) area. This works even if the outer ring is not present. The outer ring is only relevant if we want to determine the exact year a tree had been cut down, which is important for archaeology but not to establish the date of the Miyake event in the first place. > ... providing definitive evidence that the Vikings beat Columbus to North America. > ... The researchers speculated that the settlement was built sometime near the end of the first millennium This was no "speculation", but has already been established as a fact for decades with the excavation of the settlement of L’Anse aux Meadows itself in the early 1960s. Tree ring dating only helped to identify the specific date of the settlement in the already established time frame, because the only fitting Miyake event was that of 992/993. (The article mentions this, but the chain of reasoning is not really accurate.) The problem with determining the exact date of the settlement without the reference to the Miyake event was that we do not have a reference record for the tree rings at this site, as this requires an uninterrupted record of overlapping trees from the present back to the Viking Age for these particular timber species in the area. This could perhaps been established with a lot of effort over the years, but with the Miyake events we have indeed a very interesting method to compile reference records even without a complete reference record to the present. However, it still remains uncertain, for example, to which Miyake event a particular piece of wood should be attributed without much context, whether we already know all the Miyake events of the last couple of millennia, and whether another, more local event could have led to a carbon-14 value that could be confused with a global Miyake event.

rwmj 3y ago

> Astronauts would undoubtedly receive lethal doses of radiation, and even people on board airplanes could encounter dangerous levels. It sounds like a more immediate problem would be that all aircraft and spacecraft electronic systems would fail permanently? They wouldn't need to worry about the radiation doses.

arrowsmith 3y ago
Don't modern passenger jets have some kind of failsafe way they could still be controlled and landed safely if the electronics fail? I would assume they do. But then I know nothing whatsoever about aircraft safety and am only speculating.
- lxgr 3y ago
  Modern fly-by-wire systems often don’t have a mechanic backup, and even for mechanically controlled ones (like the B737) I wouldn’t be too sure if they’d fare that well without any electronic controls. But it’s not a given that an event of this type would even disrupt electronics not connected to the power grid. Even the longest possible line in an airplane is only on the order of a couple of meters, compared to thousands of kilometers for power and communication lines.
  - GolfPopper 3y ago
    How much radiation would the passengers be getting during a Miyake Event? Air travel normally exposes travelers to a tiny percentage of a mSv. A "normal" solar flare can push that up to 200 mSv. 2000 mSv in a short time will make you sick and boost your chances of cancer. 20000 mSv puts you in company with Louis Slotin.
  - SoftTalker 3y ago
    Modern aircraft have full authority digital engine controls (FADEC), even if they use cables and pulleys to operate the control surfaces. If your 737 turns into a glider you have one chance at landing somewhere, so yeah you might survive but not likely especially if you are over water.

xvilka 3y ago

It's possible to build shielded (up to a certain point of course) electronics and power grids, it's just a lot of work and money. Ideally, all new devices, grid lines, transformers should be made with at least some level of protection from those events. In a few decades world will not be a sitting duck anymore if follow this strategy.

Cthulhu_ 3y ago
The power grid does have protections already - surge protectors, breakers, redunancy, etc. There's many possible sources for power surges. There's protections in place, contingency plans, 24/7 on-call fast response staff, spares, etc. Of course, that's all contingent on budgeting, which is why it's important that governments invest and keep investing in infrastructure.
djmips 3y ago
I have a surge suppresor in the 15 year old power bar that feeds my computer so I'm set.

Afteriasi 3y ago

[flagged]

piva00 3y ago
> but, sure, keep worrying about co2 levels I believe you are very aware that humanity is able to worry about many different existential threats at the same time, right? CO2 levels, nuclear proliferation, Solar storm EMPs, asteroid impacts, each one has a different risk profile. But sure...
rsynnott 3y ago
> but, sure, keep worrying about co2 levels Yes, very sensible attitude. Similarly, when I'm crossing the road, I don't bother to look to see whether there's oncoming traffic, on the basis that I could be hit by a meteorite at any time... Seriously, presumably you are aware that more than one thing can be a concern at the same time? CO2 levels are probably more of an immediate and addressable concern, in this particular case, but both should be a worry.
Maken 3y ago
¿Who cares about anything else if the Sun could kill us all tomorrow? Proceeds to walk directly into oncoming traffic.

b800h 3y ago

If these Miyake events were so spectacular, why do they not appear in the historical record? I appreciate that 774 was in the "dark ages" but something as impressive as the Carrington event would appear in some chronicles, surely? EDIT: Sorry, checked Wikipedia: "Annus Domini (the year of the Lord) 774. This year the Northumbrians banished their king, Alred, from York at Easter-tide; and chose Ethelred, the son of Mull, for their lord, who reigned four winters. This year also appeared in the heavens a red crucifix, after sunset; the Mercians and the men of Kent fought at Otford; and wonderful serpents were seen in the land of the South-Saxons. — Anglo-Saxon Chronicle[9]"

rwmj 3y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/774%E2%80%93775_carbon-14_spike https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/774%E2%80%93775_carbon-14_spik...
tomjakubowski 3y ago
Some random Australian gold prospector wrote about his experience (quoting Wikipedia): Lights of every imaginable color were issuing from the southern heavens, one color fading away only to give place to another if possible more beautiful than the last, the streams mounting to the zenith, but always becoming a rich purple when reaching there, and always curling round, leaving a clear strip of sky, which may be described as four fingers held at arm's length. The northern side from the zenith was also illuminated with beautiful colors, always curling round at the zenith, but were considered to be merely a reproduction of the southern display, as all colors south and north always corresponded. It was a sight never to be forgotten, and was considered at the time to be the greatest aurora recorded [...]. The rationalist and pantheist saw nature in her most exquisite robes, recognising, the divine immanence, immutable law, cause, and effect. The superstitious and the fanatical had dire forebodings, and thought it a foreshadowing of Armageddon and final dissolution. Maybe it's just survivor bias but: crikey! People could really write back then!
- snypher 3y ago
  But this was not in reference to the 774AD event surely! Do you have a citation for the above quote? Edit: you probably meant the Carrington event, I am starting my next coffee now.

mensetmanusman 3y ago

It’s interesting, considering that this is very likely in humanity’s future. Probably long after these HN comments, but it will happen, and unless our future ancestors are amazing planners, it may end up being one of the most disruptive events in human civilization. I wonder if an architecture like micro grids per city block running on small fusion or fission reactors 1000 years from now would protect them, however.

dividedbyzero 3y ago

As far as Carrington-like events are concerned I believe consensus is that most equipment and electronics would be fine, satellites would take damage, radio communication would be out, the electrical grid would go down and be hard to restart, but at least the most important grid transformers would be protected and survive the event, as would cars, computers and machinery. Would a Miyazake event change that meaningfully? Can we know for sure?

api 3y ago
If they are many times larger it sounds like they could be more like an EMP from a thermonuclear bomb. Looks like they happen on average every few thousand years. We really should be looking at how we recover from such an event, and whether we can do things in the design of power grids to minimize damage. If there were humans living on the Moon or Mars these seem like they could be even more fatal unless they were living underground. Given how profoundly useful and powerful electronics are, perhaps events like this are why electricity and electronics are not used at large scale by organic life. Have you ever wondered why humans and other life forms are so unaffected by EM that we can subject ourselves to things like MRI scans without even noticeable effects? Maybe there has been selection against anything that is vulnerable to EM because every few thousand years anything else is culled.
- nicoburns 3y ago
  Electricity is used widely by organic life: it’s a key mechanism by which nerves and neurons function.
  - lxgr 3y ago
    Yes, but these mechanisms aren’t really electric currents in relatively long metal conductors, which are what’s vulnerable to an EMP. That’s why humans are ok with spending some time in an MRI, while microprocessors wouldn’t be.
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]

shitstorms 3y ago

One of the more likely black swan events that has the potential to cause global upheaval. Quite a bit of data now from other solar systems in terms of likelihood of these events. So far it looks like it is slightly more likely to occur in the ramp up stage of a cycle, not at the very peak. We would most likely see a very large sunspot(s) days before the event and have 10-15 hours to take action, decoupling transformers etc, but the effects would be massive nonetheless. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/July_2012_solar_storm https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/July_2012_solar_storm https://spaceweatherarchive.com/2023/06/06/how-big-was-carringtons-sunspot/ https://spaceweatherarchive.com/2023/06/06/how-big-was-carri...

Georgelemental 3y ago
It's not a black swan if there are historical examples, is it?
- shitstorms 3y ago
  That's true. More of a grey swan if it has to be a bird.

bigyax 3y ago

A 1 percent chance of happening in the next decade. It's the inevitability of it that's most terrifying, society will fundamentally collapse, there's no way we could prepare for how rapidly our lives would be changed, and absolutely nothing we can do to to stop it. Only hope is that for when it happens it's far enough down the road for technology to have adapted to bring enough resiliency and/or redundancy into the grid such that we are not so completely vulnerable

JohnClark1337 3y ago
[dead]
namlem 3y ago
We could decouple transformers to stop them from being destroyed. Wiring is easy to repair, it's the transformers that are vulnerable.
- bigyax 3y ago
  That would certainly be the most immediate mitigation strategy. I wonder though would there be enough time? Would it be possible to isolate the transformers so completely such that they would not be affected by an event of this magnitude
- pixl97 3y ago
  We 'could' at least in theory. The actual response I expect is something closer to "don't look up"
  - dgroshev 3y ago
    We (humanity) have multiple satellites looking at the sun 24/7 and warning of flares in advance [1]. There's even a running forecast of geomagnetic events [2]. We very much do "look up" and have been for decades. [1] https://solarsystem.nasa.gov/solar-system/sun/exploration/ https://solarsystem.nasa.gov/solar-system/sun/exploration/ [2] https://www.swpc.noaa.gov/phenomena/solar-flares-radio-blackouts https://www.swpc.noaa.gov/phenomena/solar-flares-radio-black...

uoaei 3y ago

What can be done to mitigate such effects in pre-2000 ICE vehicles? Would lead-acid batteries succumb to a violent death if subject to such a storm? Would the wires fry or would the chassis-as-capacitor smooth out the effect?

housebear 3y ago

Check out A Canticle for Leibowitz for an entertaining (and often depressing) read on life restarting after an extinction event. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Canticle_for_Leibowitz https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Canticle_for_Leibowitz "Set in a Catholic monastery in the desert of the southwestern United States after a devastating nuclear war, the book spans thousands of years as civilization rebuilds itself. The monks of the Albertian Order of Leibowitz preserve the surviving remnants of man's scientific knowledge until the world is again ready for it."

rootusrootus 3y ago
And then of course after mankind recovers and rebuilds to the same technological level, they start another nuclear war. Figures.
- pixl97 3y ago
  Time does not repeat, but it does rhyme in a phrase that ends in global thermonuclear war.

swader999 3y ago

One thing is certain, my mortgage and visa bill will still be due.

JJMcJ 3y ago

> disrupted telegraph lines As in, started fires. In 1859, telegraph lines were the only wiring anywhere in the world. If it hit today, it would be a colossal disaster. Maybe shutting off electrical power world wide for a few days, if it was anticipated.