I wish the article spent some time discussing how we can defend against the effects of storms like this. It mentions a 12% chance of getting hit by one in the next 10 years (and I assume that percentage is much higher for a probability space of the next 50 or 100), but makes no mention of potential mitigation strategies.<p>Can you imagine how disastrous this would be? People would likely wake up without power, and think little of it at first. "Oh, it's a power outage. Better light some candles and wait it out." Then hours, days would pass. There would be no internet, television, or even newspapers to report what happened. We would be reduced to hearing the news from Shakespearian harriers!<p>I wonder if this would cause mass revolt. What happens when you completely disable modern technology on all of earth? If this is as likely as they say it is, there needs to be some serious research into mitigation strategies not only of the immediate technological effects, but also of the sociological effects.<p>Edit: maybe not all of earth, as the NASA page compares this to a localized blackout in Quebec. Can anyone comment on the geographical range of damage?
Other than the breathless headline, WaPo adds nothing to the original reporting. Suggest to change the link to <a href="http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2014/23jul_superstorm/" rel="nofollow">http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2014/23...</a> and use that article's title (“Near Miss: The Solar Superstorm of July 2012”).
I previously did research forecasting solar storms.<p>original comment:
Highly unlikely, they compare it to the Carrington storm of 1859, which didn't destroy any life (or even life as we know it), so even if it were more powerful, it probably wouldn't have destroyed all life. It may have interfered with a lot of satellites and communications systems though.<p>edit:
Any damage from a Carrington level event would likely have been localized and temporary. For life as we know it to be destroyed, it would be irrecoverable or permanent, which is why I am arguing against the statement "life as we know it would be destroyed."<p>Many satellites are exposed to the open solar wind all the time, and ones in low Earth orbit, though shielded to some degree by the magnetosphere are designed to deal with large solar flares either by baffling sensitive instruments or shutting down temporarily (some may even change their orbit).
For those interested in an in-depth analysis of the risk, Lloyd's insurance produced a detailed report last year looking at this issue:<p><i>Solar Storm Risk to the North American Electric Grid [PDF]</i><p><a href="http://www.lloyds.com/~/media/lloyds/reports/emerging%20risk%20reports/solar%20storm%20risk%20to%20the%20north%20american%20electric%20grid.pdf" rel="nofollow">http://www.lloyds.com/~/media/lloyds/reports/emerging%20risk...</a><p>Summary here:<p><a href="http://www.lloyds.com/news-and-insight/news-and-features/environment/environment-2013/us-east-coast-at-high-risk-from-solar-storms" rel="nofollow">http://www.lloyds.com/news-and-insight/news-and-features/env...</a><p>Some key points:<p><i>Weighted by population, the highest risk of storm-induced power outages in the US is along the Atlantic corridor between Washington D.C. and New York City.</i><p><i>The total U.S. population at risk of extended power outage from a Carrington-level [estimated to occur every ~150 years] storm is between 20-40 million, with durations of 16 days to 1-2 years.</i><p>The wide variation of expected duration is is dependent on the number of transformers destroyed:<p><i>If spares are readily available, the total transportation and setup time for a large power transformer can range from a few weeks to months depending on distance and logistical issues. If new transformers need to be ordered, the lead-time is estimated to be between 5-12 months for domestic suppliers, and 6-12 months for international suppliers.</i>
In II-1-5 [1] we learn that magnetism is a relativistic effect whose strength is v^2/c^2. This ratio is a very small number for the electron drift velocities associated with typical currents in copper wires, yet we perceive magnetic forces because positive and negative electric charges in the wire are balanced to better than v^2/c^2.<p>Can anyone indicate how + and - charges are distributed in a CME? Are there strong electric fields due to local charge imbalances? For the magnetic field, it's tempting to say that the drift velocity of charges in a CME is high (as much as 0.001c) but then wouldn't charges of both polarities be moving with that (average) speed? Perhaps there is some initial motion when the charges are ejected from the sun?<p>[1] <a href="http://www.feynmanlectures.caltech.edu/II_01.html#Ch1-S5" rel="nofollow">http://www.feynmanlectures.caltech.edu/II_01.html#Ch1-S5</a>
Thank God we live in a 3 dimensional space, where things rarely collide because the space is so "big" compared lower dimensions [0].<p>[0] <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Random_walk#Higher_dimensions" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Random_walk#Higher_dimensions</a>
From the linked NASA article:<p>> <i>"... knock modern civilization back to the 18th century ..."</i><p>and later:<p>> <i>"According to a study by the National Academy of Sciences, the total economic impact could exceed $2 trillion or 20 times greater than the costs of a Hurricane Katrina."</i><p>Is that figure for the US, or the world? Also, while that's a lot of money, it's not "knock modern civilization back to the 18th century"-money. So which one is it? Neither the NASA or WaPo article seems to give a clear answer.
Sounds like there's a bit of "no one ever got fired/pilloried for claiming that things were going to be worse than they turned out to be!" going on. I remember a lot of that going around in 1995-99. Study the issue, advocate for mitigation strategies, by all means. But let's dial back the "WE'RE ALL GOING TO DIE LIKE LEMMINGS" a bit, hmmm?
As the event lasted only 4 hours, does that mean it would have had different levels of effect on different regions of the planet? Countries on the far side would be better shielded.
“This double-CME traveled through a region of space that had been cleared out by yet another CME four days earlier,” NASA says. ” As a result, the storm clouds were not decelerated as much as usual by their transit through the interplanetary medium.”<p>Just curious, what exactly was cleared out? I thought the interplanetary medium is just empty space.
If the power was out for a period of months, if the internet, cable tv, phones, and all electronic communication were down so on day 2, you only knew that the power was out and you couldn't reach anybody, what would you need to do to survive?<p>Wait it out seems somewhat optimistic. No refrigeration means any fresh food would spoil pretty quickly. Better hope that garden can be scaled up.<p>Clean water would become an issue first though. I don't know where the nearest lake or stream is. Though I imagine several days away on foot.<p>Assuming you made it that long protection would become an issue. You'd want to be sure you had good relationships with your with your neighbors.<p>It really doesn't take much to get pretty far down the doomsdayer path I guess.<p>Lesson learned... optimize for happiness everyday.
> These plasma clouds, known as coronal mass ejections (CMEs), compromised a solar storm thought to be the most powerful in at least 150 years.<p>Tsk, Washington Post. I think you mean "comprised."
What happens to everyone's net worth if power goes away for months or years? If I have, say, $1M in the bank (I don't), and the power returns after 2-3 years, do I still have money?
people interested in regular updated on solar flare can look into this youtube channel : <a href="https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCTiL1q9YbrVam5nP2xzFTWQ" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCTiL1q9YbrVam5nP2xzFTWQ</a>
Let's see: Say that one of these storms arrives at a <i>point</i> in time. Then over time, these storms form a <i>stochastic point process</i>.<p>Now it should be fairly clear intuitively that at least roughly increments, that is, arrivals of points, are stationary in time and independent.<p>Presto: It follows that the stochastic point process is a Poisson process about which we know a lot.<p>So, we'd like the <i>arrival rate</i> of this Poisson process, say, in arrivals per year. Okay, we can get a good estimate just by dividing the number of arrivals we have observed over the number of years we have been observing. Then with this estimate of the arrival rate, we can
calculate the probability of an arrival in, say, the
next 10 years.<p>Since, when was it, 18?? or some such, we've actually had
no arrivals at all that hit Earth, the arrival rate is low
and the chances of an arrival in the next 10
years is low.<p>Relax! Good news, right? I mean, the sky is not
really falling this time after all!
I guess "destroyed life as we know it" is awfully literal. It means that "life as we know it" is "electricty costs 22 cents a kilowatt hour and GPS exists".<p>Yes, the power grid could have blown up. We would have then paid more for electricity. (It's unclear to me if the effect is global, or Earth shields the nighttime side from the impact.)<p>Satellites would probably stop working. So air traffic would have to use VOR/NDB/DME instead of GPS. Ships would use LORAN. Weather forecasters would use radar instead of satellite (a problem during hurricane season).<p>This headline makes me angry. It's not like we would have been instantly vaporized. Some stuff would be less convenient until we rebuilt it. That's it.
The state of California spent $500 million on the bike path for the new eastern span of the SF bay bridge. And probably significantly less preparing for threats like this one.