The Carrington Event of 1859 disrupted telegraph lines • Hacker News Board

Re: The Carrington Event of 1859 disrupted telegraph lines

#141

Post by dgroshev » Tue, Sep 12, 2023, 6:31 AM UTC

Nekhrimah wrote: post #138

dgroshev wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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/ [2] https://www.swpc.noaa.gov/phenomena/solar-flares-radio-black...

> We very much do "look up" and have been for decades. In case you didn't pick it up, Don't Look Up is a callout to a recent movie [1]. I imagine that in this context it's more of a comment on the appetite of the population at large to undergo the temporary inconvenience of proactively taking the power-grid, and thus the vulnerable transformers, offline prior to the arrival of the event. We know the scientists will b…

I am very much aware of the reference. I'm also aware that it's just a movie with a barely concealed and really trivialising climate change allegory. In reality we're just out of a pandemic that showed governments around the globe stopping people's daily life for months by decree without much problem. Switching electricity off for a few days is nothing.

Re: The Carrington Event of 1859 disrupted telegraph lines

#142

Post by kwhitefoot » Tue, Sep 12, 2023, 8:49 AM UTC

Turskarama wrote: post #21

hparadiz wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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.

> Solar panels would be fine, but they're effectively useless without the ability to deliver power.

Perhaps this is an argument for making rooftop solar with storage compulsory then at least we would be able to keep the lights on. Assuming that the building could be automatically isolated quickly enough of course.

Re: The Carrington Event of 1859 disrupted telegraph lines

#143

Post by kwhitefoot » Tue, Sep 12, 2023, 8:57 AM UTC

Turskarama wrote: post #136

xenadu02 wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In such a scenario we would just start cobbling together makeshift transformers using available materials. You just need some spools of wire, a hunk of iron, then wrap the wires around. It won't be pretty, last for 50 years, etc. But it would be enough to get electricity back on in all major and medium cities to at least some degree. If it's really bad people will tear apart motors from clothes dryers to steal wire i…

Lmao ok mate, whatever you reckon. Keep in mind you'll need to do this without the internet to help and people not being super cooperative as they do whatever they can to get food.

There has been an oversupply of transformer manufacturing plants in the world for decades. No one needs the Internet to start building more. The designs already exist and most of the small manufacturers are still using manual or at most semi-automatic winding machines. For large transformers this is true even in the big manufacturers like ABB and Hitachi. Stacking the cores can easily be done by hand.

The bottleneck would most likely be the supply of core steel. Increasing demands for efficiency have pushed core steel manufacturing into a few high tech manufacturers.

Re: The Carrington Event of 1859 disrupted telegraph lines

#144

Post by kwhitefoot » Tue, Sep 12, 2023, 9:08 AM UTC

LeonB wrote: post #49

dwighttk wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

are uninstalled transformers even safe?

Provided they’re not connected to lengths of conducting material, they ought to be ok. Hard to be certain though, as transformers are more than meets the eye.

> transformers are more than meets the eye.

Really?

Transformers are very simple electrical machines. The design process is complex but the object itself is made of mild steel for the tank and supporting frameworks, special steel for the core, copper or aluminium for the windings, paper and resin for insulation, and oil for insulation and cooling.

There are a few ancillary components to do with detecting faults and switching taps and sometimes pumps to circulate the oil through radiators.

Apart from the pumps, circulating oil, and tap changer, there are no moving parts.

There are no compulsory electronic components in even the biggest transformers. Apart from improvements in material quality and the design process a power or distribution transformer built now is really not very different from those built a hundred years ago. In fact there are many transformers that were built fifty years ago that are still in service. Occasionally such transformers are repaired rather than replaced when they fail, quite often the original drawings are still available.

Re: The Carrington Event of 1859 disrupted telegraph lines

#145

Post by kwhitefoot » Tue, Sep 12, 2023, 9:15 AM UTC

maxerickson wrote: post #74

Tangurena2 wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

After a couple incidents where snipers shot at substations or hackers turned stuff off, there was a burst of worry about the fragility of our electrical grid. Of the large transformers that make up substations, almost all of them are unique. There is no inventory of spare transformers. Each one is custom made and takes months. The small transformers you see on poles are made by the thousand, and stocked at every util…

There's a difference between made to order and bespoke. Of course, most of the discourse is hand wavy speculation, vs characterization of the existing stock of transformers, like what standards they are built to and the magnitude of an event that would certainly damage them.

Most large transformers are actually unique but this has little to do with the characteristics of the transformer. It is mostly to do with optimizing the design to minimize the total lifetime cost. This requires a new design for each transformer because the relative prices of core steel and copper or aluminium varies over time. When copper is cheap the total cost will be lower if you use more copper and less core steel for instance while the opposite will be true if the copper price is high.

If cost is not as important as prompt delivery the manufacturer can often just take an existing design and repeat it.

Re: The Carrington Event of 1859 disrupted telegraph lines

#146

Post by HerculePoirot » Tue, Sep 12, 2023, 9:19 AM UTC

klondike_klive wrote: post #16

HerculePoirot wrote: post #2

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/3165629_Characteris... I'm reading this critical analysis of it (2013): 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 conce…

> 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…

Got some more for you:

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://www.syfy.com/syfy-wire/bad-astronomy-a-micronova-is-...

Re: The Carrington Event of 1859 disrupted telegraph lines

#147

Post by kwhitefoot » Tue, Sep 12, 2023, 9:44 AM UTC

darklycan51 wrote: post #127

stareatgoats wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good grief. Here is a thread of currently 58 comments (off the back of a erstwhile top comment no doubt) talking about the effects of a Carrington event. And granted, this is what is mentioned in the title here. But you just need to click on the article title to see that the title continues, with "A “Miyake Event” Would Be Far Worse", and the article goes on to explain how a Miyake event is orders of magnitude worse…

It would be the equivalent of doing an EMP strike by detonating a nuke above a city, but worldwide... it would be bad, lots of casualties from lack of energy. I do believe we are in urgent need to have some way of printing all code, including legacy of basically any consumer and industrial program, because were it to hit, even with everyone today surviving and writing in plain text what they know, we'd be lacking dec…

Perhaps we should write it all to optical disk and keep a few readers in faraday cages.

Re: The Carrington Event of 1859 disrupted telegraph lines

#148

Post by dghughes » Tue, Sep 12, 2023, 10:59 AM UTC

pixl97 wrote: post #107

dghughes wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure if you can. Transformers are basically two differing loops of wire separated by a space. It relies on the EMF of each loop to transfer energy from one loop to the other. If a strong enough pulse comes along it may be too powerful to block. Like trying to stop lightning with a $100 UPS or any UPS to stop a millions of volts and tens of thousands of amps.

If its disconnected from a grid and grounded it shouldn't be an issue... and if the pulse is that powerful to deal with it being grounded it's very likely we've lost most of the atmosphere at that point making the entire subject moot.

If it's disconnected from the grid why would we be concerned about it? The question as I understand is about protecting active in-use equipment.

Re: The Carrington Event of 1859 disrupted telegraph lines

#149

Post by dash2 » Tue, Sep 12, 2023, 11:45 AM UTC

Aardwolf wrote: post #62

dash2 wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Japan after WWII recovered pretty fast even though the entire world had been set back a lot. Human knowledge is the key resource and electrical surges don't wipe that.

Unless it manages to kill enough hard disks in data centers to truly lose a lot of knowledge...

All our important knowledge for the long-run still resides in physical books and journals. At most we'd lose some e-only scientific journals.

Re: The Carrington Event of 1859 disrupted telegraph lines

#150

Post by Turskarama » Tue, Sep 12, 2023, 11:55 AM UTC

kwhitefoot wrote: post #143

Turskarama wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lmao ok mate, whatever you reckon. Keep in mind you'll need to do this without the internet to help and people not being super cooperative as they do whatever they can to get food.

There has been an oversupply of transformer manufacturing plants in the world for decades. No one needs the Internet to start building more. The designs already exist and most of the small manufacturers are still using manual or at most semi-automatic winding machines. For large transformers this is true even in the big manufacturers like ABB and Hitachi. Stacking the cores can easily be done by hand. The bottleneck…

Other things you haven't considered:

Fuel pumps run on electricity, so you need to get them working before you can get any materials, everywhere, or you won't be able to fuel all the ships and trucks necessary to move anything.

Phone lines (and the internet) runs on electricity so you need to get them back up to coordinate everything.

While you are trying to rebuild your transformers most of the food we have in storage will rot. Think you can fix the grid fast enough to prevent all your factory workers leaving to forage?

It's incredibly naive to imagine that this is an easy problem to solve. The amount of stuff that you have subconsciously assumed to make this scenario work is staggering.