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

New York Sky Turns Bright Blue After Transformer Explosion

nytimes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

161–170 of 173 posts

Re: New York Sky Turns Bright Blue After Transformer Explosion

#161

Post by eigenvector »

lb1lf wrote: post #102
refurb wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had this happen while working from home in SF. My office window faces the backyard and a transformer in front of my neighbors house went up. No light show that I could see as it was early afternoon, but holy crap did the noise ever scare me. The window was open and it made this incredibly loud Bzzzzzz for about 10 seconds, then a small explosion. Took my brain about 20 seconds to connect the dots. See the smoking t…

I work on medium-sized power electric systems (mostly in the few hundred kW-range), and have a strong aversion to being anywhere near our systems during first power-up. Hence, I always carry a couple of pushbuttons and some 15m of cable in my toolkit - wiring them in parallel with the buttons normally starting the show, retreating, saying a brief prayer to the patron saint of electricians and starting up. Did a syste…

It's a good idea to stand outside the boundary of any arc-flash or arc-blast hazard during first energization of any high-power equipment.

Also make sure that your employer provides you appropriate arc-flash protective equipment if you're doing that kind of work.

Low voltage, high power systems often have very high arc flash hazard.

Re: New York Sky Turns Bright Blue After Transformer Explosion

#162

Post by BerislavLopac »

SideburnsOfDoom wrote: post #155
ip26 wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Knowing what's going on kind of dictates your response. If it's a forest fire, for example, swift action is much preferable to hiding under the bed. Hence looking out the window.

How swift? It can't be more than 15 seconds between flash of light and shockwave. Staying down for that long in case there's a shockwave seems reasonable. Also, forest fires are not typically sudden flashes of light or found in urban areas. Context matters.

According to the experience in Halifax explosion, a blast wave travels at 1000 m/s; so you get 15 seconds if the blast happens 10 miles away from you.

Re: New York Sky Turns Bright Blue After Transformer Explosion

#163

Post by vkou »

dragontamer wrote: post #145
vkou wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A 500 kt warhead will kill most people within 3 miles of it, and will continue killing people up to ~6 miles. These days, a single missile carries 5-10 warheads. They split and spread out over the strike area a few seconds before detonation. One missile can, thanks to this, kill most of the people in a multi-million-person metro area. Between the two of them, the United States, and Russia are currently pointing 4,000…

Superpowers aren't going to use nukes on each other, due to the threat of MAD. Terrorists may be able to steal a nuke and deploy one for their nefarious reasons. Lets say a terrorist group gets a briefcase nuke from somebody, then blows it up in a major city. 500+kt is strategic level, if superpowers used it we're all screwed. But the typical nuke is tactical-level, or ~10kt or so. And tactical-level nukes could be t…

The whole point of MAD is that they are perfectly willing to use nukes on eachother. For MAD to work, the threat must be credible. You can't both say that there's nothing to worry about, and claim that MAD works. [1]

A launch in response to a false alarm, a poor decision, or a miscommunication of launch codes are all possible outcomes of the current way that nukes are handled by Russia and the United States. [2]

Of all the things I am concerned about, 'Terrorists stealing a nuclear weapon and blowing it up ten city blocks from me' ranks so far below 'Some idiot in Washington/Moscow/A radar station in Greenland/A submarine off the coast of Kamchatka makes the wrong decision, and ends the world', or 'A bug in the Russian Dead Hand system[3] results in a full nuclear attack against the United States', it's not even worth worrying about.

> There are rumors that as the USSR collapsed, it lost track of a number of their small tactical-nukes (even if they kept good tabs on their strategic nukes).

Nuclear weapons have a shelf-life, and require constant maintenance. Anything that may have been lost 3 decades ago is more likely then not to be junk.

[1] For MAD to actually work, both sides must have perfect information, believe that their opponent has perfect information, be rational, believe that their opponent is rational, to never make a mistake, and assume that their opponent never makes a mistake. [4] There are fairy tales that are more plausible then this. Every year that the current situation continues, we are taking another spin at Russian Roulette.

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_nuclear_close_calls - there have been failures of communication, bugs in software and hardware systems, and typical peace-time posturing being interpreted as the start of a war.

In one of these incidents, two out of the three commanding officers were ready to end the world.

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead_Hand

[4] And for anti-ICBM technologies to not exist... And yet, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_missile_defense_...

If MAD is such a great thing, why are we trying our damned hardest to destabilize it?

Re: New York Sky Turns Bright Blue After Transformer Explosion

#164

Post by lvs »

mirimir wrote: post #41
lvs wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a good question. It depends on whether we're observing arc discharge or just combustion. If it's arcing, it could surely have a significant UV component. But I suspect this is burning copper or aluminum. HV transformers are filled with some kind of cooling oil, and I suspect that just has to burn off. If it were totally uncontrolled arcing, I'd guess there would be lots of reports of broadband interference that…

With that sort of light, there clearly was arcing. But most of the billowing smoke was from burning transformer oil. And about radio interference. This is 60 Hz, so I doubt that's an issue.

No, spark discharge EMI is a broad spectrum signal.

Re: New York Sky Turns Bright Blue After Transformer Explosion

#165

Post by nkozyra »

ryanmercer wrote: post #98
nkozyra wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sometime in the future we'll look back and wonder how our televisions and movie screens became vertical. This post will go into the evidence basket.

I lol'd, I'm reading this on a vertical monitor right now. My secondary monitor is vertical due to cramped desk space, so I can have my horizontal monitor still centered when I look straight ahead.

Developers are a bit different in this regard. I used to use a vertical monitor in 2007 because, well, it's pretty great for big chunks of code and web development in general.

As good as it was, I never wanted to watch videos in that way.

Re: New York Sky Turns Bright Blue After Transformer Explosion

#166

Post by askvictor »

kolinko wrote: post #93
askvictor wrote: post #60

Once as a teenage (somewhere in the early 90s) I was watching a thunderstorm in suburban Sydney. I saw lightning strike (probably 5-10km) away, then a couple of seconds after the strike from about where the lightning hit, a blue 'bubble' (though with diffuse edges) rose (as though inflating) then fell/deflated over the course of a few seconds. I've never gotten a good explanation for what it was, though this picture…

Ball lightning?

As I understand it, ball lightning is typical small; this bubble would have been in the order of 100m; also it was blue not white like ball lightning is typically.

Re: New York Sky Turns Bright Blue After Transformer Explosion

#167

Post by nradov »

jp555 wrote: post #108
JoeAltmaier wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Non-nuclear EMP devices are surely real. They can fit in somebody's basement, don't have to be delivered by missile.

My high school physics says that’s BS, but EMP scare tactics does make for a great info-war weapon. It’s quite the boogeyman if you don’t have much science background. Stuxnet like attacks are way way more plausible and likely.

You shouldn't be down voted. Non-nuclear EMP devices exist but due to the inverse square law (which we learned in high school physics) we know that they have short effective range. And they require a large conventional explosive to generate the pulse. So they work but are not a major threat worth worrying about.

What does actually work and have been operationally used are graphite bombs designed to short out electrical equipment. Those are much cheaper and more effective than EMP weapons.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graphite_bomb

Re: New York Sky Turns Bright Blue After Transformer Explosion

#168

Post by kalleboo »

MrBuddyCasino wrote: post #75
kalleboo wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://electrical-engineering-portal.com/north-american-ver... This page has a good diagram showing the difference between US and EU distribution systems - how the US has many small transformers vs the EU having few large ones, and how US customers get three-wire single phase vs EU three-phase

> Generally, North American designs result in fewer customer interruptions. I suspect this is offset greatly by the differences in infra, where EU uses buried cables instead of US style utility poles.

It also goes on to say "European systems need more switches and other gear to maintain the same level of reliability" so European utilities probably just spend their way to better reliability (burying power lines is one way to do that)

Re: New York Sky Turns Bright Blue After Transformer Explosion

#169

Post by duskwuff »

AznHisoka wrote: post #76
djohnston wrote: post #20

“No injuries, no fire, no evidence of extraterrestrial activity,” made me chuckle

I hope the mention of extraterresterial wasnt tongue in cheek though. Because it might be a legitimate threat someday.

There were apparently some rumors circulating that the bright lights were the result of alien activity. The press event had some fun with those rumors. :)

Re: New York Sky Turns Bright Blue After Transformer Explosion

#170

Post by kw71 »

abainbridge wrote: post #62
opless wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Though it makes sense if you're watching it on your phone maximised in its natural orientation.

We should just make phones square.

No, we should have the phones deliver electric shocks whenever taking video in portrait mode.
Post reply on HN