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

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

#141

Post by shiroiuma »

saiya-jin wrote: post #73
nisa wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Abolish capitalism and greed. All attempts at that turned out worse through.

Abolishing part of core human nature... anything less ambitious? Its so easy to be the doomsayer, the 'I told ya so' guy etc... It takes much more mental strength to see the forest for the trees - we humans are extremely resilient and adaptable, and even in worst situations there is always tons of natural good in our hearts. And no society didn't collapse during covid, far from it. Some folks simply mistake change wi…

>Abolishing part of core human nature... anything less ambitious?

It's actually not that difficult to eliminate human greed. There was a movie about an attempt at this back in the 90s, called "12 Monkeys".

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

#142

Post by ghotli »

coryrc wrote: post #121
ghotli wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I liked the Niven/Pournell books and I still think back to them often enough. The Mote in God's Eye and Lucifer's Hammer I think I read back to back. It's been a long time but I really enjoyed them when I was younger.

The misogyny in Lucifer's Hammer did not age well at all. Mote is not as in-your-face with it. I do like all the different kinds of moties.

Interesting and not surprised. I don't actually remember any but it's half my life ago at this point

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

#143

Post by deepmauka »

throwaway837367 wrote: post #115
deepmauka wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The earth and everything in and on it is part of an electrical system, as solar emissions wash across the landscape they’ll stimulate the flow of electrons in everything especially metal and circuit based items. Since circuits in many items are delicate things, designed for very specific currents, it will be a near guarantee that electrical components will be damaged.

This is incorrect. A solar flare is not like an EMP. It's low frequency so only wires that are miles long would be energized. It could possibly destroy electronics that aren't protected by a power strip. But no, it's not going to destroy your cellphone or the electronics in your car.

Thank you for explaining the distinction, I had assumed the result was more similar to emp.

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

#144

Post by s1artibartfast »

foobarian wrote: post #119
idiotsecant wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I won't comment on 1 and 2 but 3) is laughably untrue. I guess the word 'many' might be stretched to mean 'a few' but I've worked at more than one very large utility directly as an engineer responsible for design of large generation and transmission interface systems and these transformers are not only not spare, they're almost impossible to get quickly even at current market demand. If you toasted even 10 percent of…

This keeps coming up and I keep wondering how in the world are large transformers that complicated to build. And I don't mean that in a dismissive way but a "boy do I have a gap in my knowledge of the world" way :-)

I think that is a pretty common reaction when it comes to physical/mechanical objects. Another way of thinking about it which might be helpful is. Hundreds or thousands of very talented engineers have been working non-stop for 150+ years in a transformer arms race.

This has resulted in incredibly high performance designs and incredibly high requirements.

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

#145

Post by shiroiuma »

_3u10 wrote: post #132
darken wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's common to conflate the effects of a solar storm with an EMP; when in reality they're opposite extremes of the same mechanism (i.e. voltage varying over distance). An EMP is a short-duration high voltage spike; i.e. short-wavelength/high-frequency. A solar storm acts on a large scale and causes a long-duration high voltage spike; i.e. long wavelength/low-frequency. So an EMP (i.e. a high altitude nuke) will tend…

Hopefully one day we'll have a grid designed to carry high voltages over long distances instead of using inefficient low voltage transmission which exposes the grid to these dangers.

Is this supposed to be sarcastic? The grid does carry high voltages over long distances. The standard voltage in North America is 765kV, and for HVDC lines it can be 2MV. But that's for long-distance transmission lines, not more local distribution lines, which are necessarily lower voltage (36kV I think) for practical and safety reasons.

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

#146

Post by shiroiuma »

chakalakasp wrote: post #70
londons_explore wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> geomagnetically induced currents (GICs) could flow through electrical grids, potentially overheating transformers and causing them to fail. yes, but such currents are typically measured in milliamps or, during the biggest storms, amps. Most utility scale transformers would be needing DC currents of the order of thousands or tens of thousands of amperes before failure. Even then, overheat sensors would detect such a…

I dunno. The American Geophysical Union seemed to think it was a BFD in one of their conferences back in the 2000s. Had a whole presentation about how certain parts of the US grid would lose large transformers that would likely take months to years to replace as there are few spares and they have to be wound with miles and miles of copper by hand. Said that large swaths of the US would be without grid power for very…

It sounds like they need some type of automatic or robotic winding system... Even without some catastrophe, they surely have to make new transformers from time to time, and winding miles of copper by hand sounds ridiculously inefficient for a manufacturing process.

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

#147

Post by shiroiuma »

ortusdux wrote: post #35
londons_explore wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree. A large solar storm is unlikely to damage many transformers. Transformers have low impedance, yet solar storms have the biggest impact on high impedance systems (like copper telephone cables, especially when 'on hook'). The only time a power network is high impedance is when it isn't connected (ie. when part of the power network is switched off). Trivial operational changes could be made to ensure that of…

IIRC, the main argument for spare transformers is that the lead time on them back in 2017 was 2+ years, and we have no domestic sources. I can't imagine the covid era supply chain issues have improved things. If North America is facing the sun during a major event, many countries would be fighting for replacements, and it could easily take a decade to get everything back online.

>we have no domestic sources.

Where are they made? This sounds a bit like a national security failure. A country as large and world-dominating as the US should be able to manufacture its own electrical distribution infrastructure.

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

#148

Post by steve1977 »

surfsvammel wrote: post #72

We really need to start harden our grid and in all ways prepare for something like this. It will happen again and I suspect we will say: “no one could have predicted it” once it does.

Only we won’t be able to discuss it on the Internet then ;)

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

#149

Post by eddtries »

ForHackernews wrote: post #49
eddtries wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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!

It's a very interesting hobby project that involves thinking about technology in a different way. It's not any more useless than Haskell.

I’ve written production Haskell that dealt with billions of USD transactions per day, fwiw

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

#150

Post by breezedream »

idiotsecant wrote: post #114
ryanblakeley wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I interviewed a guy from the NOAA to ask about that. The gist is 1) the military has hardened satellites 2) they have a phone-tree system for alerting grid operators and 3) many high voltage transformers have back-up systems in hardened storage. [1] https://ryanblakeley.net/p/solar-flare

I won't comment on 1 and 2 but 3) is laughably untrue. I guess the word 'many' might be stretched to mean 'a few' but I've worked at more than one very large utility directly as an engineer responsible for design of large generation and transmission interface systems and these transformers are not only not spare, they're almost impossible to get quickly even at current market demand. If you toasted even 10 percent of…

Any thoughts on how the situation compares in Western Europe? Too many disparate systems, or…?
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