Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Researchers identify largest ever solar storm in 14k-year-old tree rings

phys.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 163 posts

Re: Researchers identify largest ever solar storm in 14k-year-old tree rings

#21

Post by sgu999 »

KMag wrote: post #14
dakial1 wrote: post #2

>A similar solar storm today would be catastrophic for modern technological society—potentially wiping out telecommunications and satellite systems, causing massive electricity grid blackouts, and costing us billions of pounds. I wonder if any country has a disaster recovery plan for this kind on event.

Being properly prepared for a once-in-15k-years storm would likely require such a cost over such a long time for the expected benefit that it's not worth it. Hardening infrastructure against extremely rare disasters likely means less infrastructure, and probably fewer social programs. Sometimes the objective rational choice is to do nothing for the mega-disasters and instead just prepare/harden for once-a-century or…

> Hardening infrastructure against extremely rare disasters likely means less infrastructure, and probably fewer social programs.

Or less dividends. This solar storm is a very extreme example, but we've all witnessed how greed got us very unprepared for a pandemic, climate changed induced weather events, new wars, etc.

Re: Researchers identify largest ever solar storm in 14k-year-old tree rings

#22

Post by eddtries »

divan wrote: post #17
callalex wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We could always fall back to running the internet with RFC1149 https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc1149

Some hope on Colapse OS [1] perhaps? [1] http://collapseos.org

Must be somewhat depressing to be living in a state of fear such that you build an OS specifically for when you assume all supply chains fail globally, probably this decade. Seems both stressful AND unlikely your project will truly be useful in such a position. Not knocking the tech or author, just a thought about such depressing predictions!

Re: Researchers identify largest ever solar storm in 14k-year-old tree rings

#23

Post by thejackgoode »

dieselgate wrote: post #20
ilyt wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Make sure ones that are metal boxes are grounded. Put all other inside metal box and ground it

Tangent but the concept of "grounding" is so strange, especially for residential electrical systems. It's literally just a metal stake in the ground

Well, not if you worked on a MacBook using an ungrounded socket in Europe, for example. Forearms are not that strongly insulated

Re: Researchers identify largest ever solar storm in 14k-year-old tree rings

#24

Post by KMag »

sgu999 wrote: post #21
KMag wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Being properly prepared for a once-in-15k-years storm would likely require such a cost over such a long time for the expected benefit that it's not worth it. Hardening infrastructure against extremely rare disasters likely means less infrastructure, and probably fewer social programs. Sometimes the objective rational choice is to do nothing for the mega-disasters and instead just prepare/harden for once-a-century or…

> Hardening infrastructure against extremely rare disasters likely means less infrastructure, and probably fewer social programs. Or less dividends. This solar storm is a very extreme example, but we've all witnessed how greed got us very unprepared for a pandemic, climate changed induced weather events, new wars, etc.

But lower dividend yields mean lower yielding retirement funds, with quality of life effects downstream from that.

Now, there's plenty to be said about the funding side of the equation to improve wealth inequality and/or increase budgets, but that's orthogonal to the spending-side necessary tradeoffs to harden against extremely rare disasters.

In other words, supposing you had the political pull to get more money entirely from the richest 0.01%, 1%, or 5% (and putting aside that not everyone agrees that would be good), that extra money would probably still be better spent on more infrastructure and social programs, not on hardening against extremely rare events.

Re: Researchers identify largest ever solar storm in 14k-year-old tree rings

#25

Post by skullone »

thejackgoode wrote: post #23
dieselgate wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tangent but the concept of "grounding" is so strange, especially for residential electrical systems. It's literally just a metal stake in the ground

Well, not if you worked on a MacBook using an ungrounded socket in Europe, for example. Forearms are not that strongly insulated

I have an old house that had ungrounded outlets. My MBP made me take on costly electrical repairs cuz I got so sick of the shocks and tingling sensation whenever id touch it while charging. I should've put a multimeter on it to see what voltage and current it carried, didn't "hurt" but it was certainly a noticeable tingling.

Re: Researchers identify largest ever solar storm in 14k-year-old tree rings

#26

Post by xahrepap »

thejackgoode wrote: post #23
dieselgate wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tangent but the concept of "grounding" is so strange, especially for residential electrical systems. It's literally just a metal stake in the ground

Well, not if you worked on a MacBook using an ungrounded socket in Europe, for example. Forearms are not that strongly insulated

I went to Europe years ago for work. And the adapter for my macbook work gave me wasn't grounded. Whenever I plugged my computer in I could feel a buzz when i touched the aluminum body. Others thought I was crazy. But it freaked me out and only charged when I wasn't touching it.

You make me feel like I wasn't making it all up. haha!

Re: Researchers identify largest ever solar storm in 14k-year-old tree rings

#27

Post by mytailorisrich »

KMag wrote: post #14
dakial1 wrote: post #2

>A similar solar storm today would be catastrophic for modern technological society—potentially wiping out telecommunications and satellite systems, causing massive electricity grid blackouts, and costing us billions of pounds. I wonder if any country has a disaster recovery plan for this kind on event.

Being properly prepared for a once-in-15k-years storm would likely require such a cost over such a long time for the expected benefit that it's not worth it. Hardening infrastructure against extremely rare disasters likely means less infrastructure, and probably fewer social programs. Sometimes the objective rational choice is to do nothing for the mega-disasters and instead just prepare/harden for once-a-century or…

I believe that solar storms able to cause widespread havoc on our modern infrastructure are a much more frequent occurance.

The Carrington event in 1859 caused serious damage to telegraphs, for instance.

It's a risk that is more once a century than once a millenium... so we may very possibly see one this century.

Considering how reliant we are on electricity, if everything goes down for more than a couple of days at most there is bound to be extremely serious civil unrest on a global scale: just imagine no access to money and thus not being able to buy food, fuel, etc. and then supply chains shutting down anyway.

Re: Researchers identify largest ever solar storm in 14k-year-old tree rings

#28

Post by lostlogin »

xahrepap wrote: post #26
thejackgoode wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, not if you worked on a MacBook using an ungrounded socket in Europe, for example. Forearms are not that strongly insulated

I went to Europe years ago for work. And the adapter for my macbook work gave me wasn't grounded. Whenever I plugged my computer in I could feel a buzz when i touched the aluminum body. Others thought I was crazy. But it freaked me out and only charged when I wasn't touching it. You make me feel like I wasn't making it all up. haha!

Same here in New Zealand. The tingle in the fingers when charging is unpleasant.

Re: Researchers identify largest ever solar storm in 14k-year-old tree rings

#29

Post by 3-cheese-sundae »

eddtries wrote: post #22
divan wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some hope on Colapse OS [1] perhaps? [1] http://collapseos.org

Must be somewhat depressing to be living in a state of fear such that you build an OS specifically for when you assume all supply chains fail globally, probably this decade. Seems both stressful AND unlikely your project will truly be useful in such a position. Not knocking the tech or author, just a thought about such depressing predictions!

Well, someone's got to think of contingencies. It might as well be someone who's already prone to such consuming thoughts. I hope it's never needed, but if it is, there's also some chance we may be thankful for its existence.

Re: Researchers identify largest ever solar storm in 14k-year-old tree rings

#30

Post by KMag »

mytailorisrich wrote: post #27
KMag wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Being properly prepared for a once-in-15k-years storm would likely require such a cost over such a long time for the expected benefit that it's not worth it. Hardening infrastructure against extremely rare disasters likely means less infrastructure, and probably fewer social programs. Sometimes the objective rational choice is to do nothing for the mega-disasters and instead just prepare/harden for once-a-century or…

I believe that solar storms able to cause widespread havoc on our modern infrastructure are a much more frequent occurance. The Carrington event in 1859 caused serious damage to telegraphs, for instance. It's a risk that is more once a century than once a millenium... so we may very possibly see one this century. Considering how reliant we are on electricity, if everything goes down for more than a couple of days at…

I'm aware of the Carrington event, which is why I mentioned being prepared for 100-year or 1,000-year events. The GP was specifically asking if any governments had plans for "a similar storm today", where the referenced storm is this one found in tree rings, not the Carrington event.
Post reply on HN