Robert McNees
The solar storm that followed was one of the most intense on record.
Auroras were reported all over the world and there were mass telegraph outages. Currents induced in the telegraph lines were strong enough to melt contacts, shock operators, and set some kinds of paper on fire.
Solar storms of this magnitude are now referred to as “Carrington-class.” One such storm occurred in 2012. The coronal mass ejection it produced *just* missed the Earth.
Image: NASA/STEREO
Robert McNees
It's estimated that "Carrington event" solar storms happen every 150 years or so.
At some point it will happen again, and it won’t miss Earth. And since the infrastructure we now rely on is much more susceptible than it was in 1889, the result will be a true large-scale disaster.
The National Academy of Sciences reported in 2014 that the economic impact of a modern-day Carrington Event could top $2 trillion.
https://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2014/23jul_superstorm/
The Geoff
@mcnees Are fibre optic comms and more distributed power generation and control systems improving matters do you think? Or do we still have too many long wires and single failure points?
Robert McNees
Telecoms will go down hard, and there’s a good chance your power grid will collapse.
Estimates in 2008 suggested as many as 130 million people in the US might experience power loss. In the most dire scenarios, full recovery was measured in years rather than months.
Image: NAS
Robert McNees
@_thegeoff I really don't know enough to say. But in places like the eastern US I assume we're still too susceptible to single points of failure.
Robert McNees
On the other hand, as global disasters go it will be one of the prettier ones.
Aurora will be visible at every latitude. They will be dazzling and bright enough for you to read a book by; birds will think day is here.
Robert McNees
Here's Phil Plait (@badastro) writing about our 2012 near-miss, a few years after it happened.
https://slate.com/technology/2014/08/solar-storm-a-massive-2012-cme-just-missed-the-earth.html
Robert McNees
"I was suddenly surprised at the appearance of a very brilliant star of light, much brighter than the sun's surface, most dazzling to the protected eye..."
Here is the note by Hodgson recounting his observations.
https://academic.oup.com/mnras/article/20/1/15/983490?login=false
Robert McNees
Sooner or later one of these will get us, and a lot of our infrastructure won't be ready. Maybe we'll get lucky, or maybe it will be a disaster on a different scale than what we are familiar with.
Anyway, have a great weekend!
Michael Busch
@mcnees FEMA has Leviticus Lewis' team working on protecting the grid: https://www.fema.gov/sites/default/files/2020-07/fema_incident-annex_space-weather.pdf
┻┻ ︵ vitriolix ︵ ┻┻
@mcnees "doom awaits, enjoy a peaceful weekend!"
Debbie Goldsmith 🏳️⚧️🏳️🌈
@mcnees If we're lucky, we'll have a small one before we have a big one. That might galvanize people into planning better for when the big one comes.
Chirp! is a social network. It runs on GNU social, version 2.0.1-beta0, available under the GNU Affero General Public License.
All Chirp! content and data are available under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 license.