solar storm - a real threat ?

[slimfb]

hi all

for a little while now i have picked up pieces of information regarding a future solar storm - powerful enough to knock out our national grid power or worse

nasa recently issued a statement to it's employees & families re 'be prepared' although did not state exactly why

1859 i think was the last powerful storm, though no technology to disrupt, only to fizz out the telegraph wires

my question - has anyone any thoughts, ideas, info regarding a near future event.......is it a real possibilty

thanks in advance

[Mike Hackenbacker]

yes they are a real threat.nowadays we rely on electronics to almost govern our lives,from the sat nav in our cars and also the cpu's in our cars,as well as satalites ,communications,games consoles.anything that has a microchip is at risk from electromagnetic storms,basically we would be blasted back to the stone age if a major storm came our way,we have become to reliant on electronics,if a major diaster did happen the only people that would be ok are the tribes people as their way of life does not include electronics.we would have to learn from them just how to live..

[Capricorn]

1859 was probably the most proerful but did I suspect little damage, there was another in 1960 that caused electrical problems and the 1989 one took out Quebec and a fair bit of N.E. America also.

Just imagine the fun that the next goody will cause to GPS and SATNAV, as well as the normal electrical supplies that are potential victims.

[slimfb]

thanks for the reply

yes, i understand the consequences - for us 'modern types'

it's the likelyhood of it happenning in the very near future that i would like to find more info on

as with 99.9% of 'important info' it is not disclosed to us

one of our mp's, chris huhne released an article via 'the mail' newspaper on this subject basically saying why do we not know more about this, the US seems to

i'll keep digging

[slimfb]

no electric means no :

power

water

fuel

communications

food

medical

law & order

....................the list goes on

[hunterknox]

It's not a case of lack of disclosure, it's a case of not being able to accurately predict the probabability of something recurring over a given time period given a sample size of one.

[JB80]

A solar storm has the potential to cause much damage here but these days it is down to lack of preperation on our part that would see any major upsets. Let's face we have SOHO, SDO, STEREO's and others all up there monitoring the sun and if any major activity takes place we will have a heads up of around 2 to 3 days.

So that then puts the ball in our court and the answer is a relatively simple one, just turn the grid off. But of course a simple answer like that turns out to be not as easy as you would think, it's up to the individual governments, public and private power companies to have a plan in place should such an event happen and it's not exactly something that seems high up on the to do list.

Satellites are an issue too, most operators have procedures in place for such an occurance and some can move the satellite to a lower orbit and change positioning and even power off. If they can switch off they should be fine. For the older ones that don't then a severe storm may cause issues. Good thing(or bad depending on where you are) is GPS is an American sat nav system and in Europe it's GNSS and when Galileo is fully operational they don't seem to be worried at all about solar storms as they have made the necessary precautions.

And anyway if it happens it's hardly the end of the world, just an inconveniance.

[slimfb]

thanks for reply pibbles, 2-3 days warning is reassuring, just hope all the plugs get pulled in time should a big one occur

in any case, there's no harm in being 'prepared'

[iwatkins]

Lot of work being done on space weather right now in the UK. I'm involved in it and is being treated very seriously.

Cheers

Ian

[Simms]

Wow @ Ian.

Would love to hear more on the subject - any chance of more details?

[spaceboy]

I must put the date in my diary as if the talk of it knocking out the power is true ....as long as the skies are playing ball I can get some decent observing in from my back garden at long last. No power needed with a dob hard luck all you guys with you fancy EQ6 goto's

[RobH]

hard luck all you guys with you fancy EQ6 goto's

2 words.......battery backup

[spaceboy]

2 words.......battery backup

Will the electronics of the mount not be effected by the EMP ?

[iwatkins]

Simms, yep, easy, I'll just point you here: Space Weather - Met Office

So forecasting impacts of CMEs and other space weather effects on infrastructure, e.g. Power, utilities and also on satellites, aviation and defence systems. Really interesting work.

I'm not directly involved in the forecasting side but more on the realtime monitoring and warnings side.

Cheers

Ian

[Polar Bear]

I remember one in 1986 or 1987. At the time I was working as a Signalling Engineer for British Rail. Here in the North West it caused havoc with our electro-mechanical control equipment. The rails have a DC voltage running through them (approx 1.5v - 2.0v) and the circuit energises a relay. This known as a 'Track Circuit' When a train passes over the rails it shorts the circuit , the relay drops and you know where the train is.

On the evening in question we had to stop the running of all the trains in the area as the track circuits developed a mind of their own. I was monitoring the voltages and they were varying from 0v to 6v constantly.

We also had 'bells' ringing in the mechanical signal boxes and the 'Block System' needles had a mind of their own.We never managed to find out the actual cause but all the affected equipment had coils somewhere in their circuits as either inductors or resistors.

Only the branch lines were affected and not the West Coast Main Line as all the signalling equipment on that is AC immune from induced voltage.

This was just with a 'very minor' solar storm as was reported a few days later. I am sure a major event will bring chaos in our electronics dependant world.

A good read on this subject and also related to Super Nova explosions is The Chilling Stars by Henrik Svensmark and Nigel Calder. It would appear muons have a massive influence over our weather (global warming ?)