solar flares and the electric grid

[Isard]

Trousers, upon, cranium.



And finally reddit delivers. (this not making the frontpage was my first clue to its ridiculousness)

http://www.reddit.com/r/news/comment..._cause/c2bv4tm

http://www.reddit.com/r/news/comment..._cause/c2bv4tm

http://www.reddit.com/r/news/comment..._cause/c2bv7h2



Herp to the derp.

[auroraglacialis]

Haha, seriously, you are quoting visitor comments on reddit proper sources? That is really looking deperate

Here is another interesting article with some interviewers fromt he field of science:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/s...vastation.html

and a partial rebuttal:
Nasa's 2013 solar flare warning: how much do we need to worry? – Telegraph Blogs
That guy was really set out on destroying the theory, but had to admit, that there is a lot more to it than he had thought, though he hopes that there will be adequate measures taken and hopes that they will work...
So regard this a s a more "calming" article that still is spelling out some worries like that "Legislation in the US has just passed Congress to help harden the grid against solar flares" (which would not come to effect in time for 2013 but possibly to the next cycle) - "The extreme events like the 1859 Carrington Event are 1-in-100-year probabilities, about the same probability as a storm of the level of Katrina hitting New Orleans" - "Dr Clark warns that “average levels of solar activity has fallen does not mean that the Sun is immune from large flares or even giant ones. Low average levels of activity may even promote the giant flares."

And I especially liked the closing paragraph:
"Of course, if those precautions are taken, and actually work, and no damage is done, then everyone will cry that it was all a big fuss over nothing, like they always do. So the scientists can’t win, really. But that’s just how it is."


Overall that blog post says more or less that the effects will probably not be so bad, but it assumes that there will not ba a "1 in 100 years event" and that if there are bigger flares, they will miss us.

[Isard]

You didn't read anything I posted. They quoted sources, they did the work, I'm just delivering the final evidence that you've reached the end of the line.

[auroraglacialis]

Bull****. This solar cycle has been unusually quiet and won't reach two-thirds the sun spot activity of the previous cycle.
[...]
Guess you can stop digging shelters and hording coffee beans. The tin-foil hat suits you, though. Keep it.

Yes, I can imagine that this is your style.

But yes, they quoted a source. This one: NASA/Marshall Solar Physics (You could have just posted that and spared us the smug comments of some reddit users, but I guess you wanted to "rub it in" for me, yes?)

Basically what it says is that there are less solar flares in this cycle. Bummer. I was looking forward to see them...

But I guess the point in the original article was not so much that "we will all die in 2013", but to say that if a flare hits (and there always are more or less of them), the effects would be what they described.

This may be what they were referring to by the way: http://www.nap.edu/catalog.php?record_id=12507 - that is from 2009 though, but the implications are still valid (effects of a solar flare on technolgy and society)

And I think the article that was possible the cause of the whole deal may be this one from NASA:
http://science.nasa.gov/science-news...oaaprediction/
It has this sentence in it:

"Even a below-average cycle is capable of producing severe space weather," points out Biesecker. "The great geomagnetic storm of 1859, for instance, occurred during a solar cycle of about the same size we’re predicting for 2013."

Which basically says that a low number of sunspots does not mean that there cannot be a big one coming...


So conclusion by me: The risk may not be higher than usual (maybe even lower). But there is a heightened activity (as in every cycle) and that will be in 2013. Also my conclusion is that despite this lower activity cycle there is a substantial risk that during the peak activity there could be a "big one" coming, as in 1859. But I also have to say that the likelyhood is not as big as the original article seems to imply.

[applejuice]

I think there's a subtlety that makes things very different for a Scientist and a Engineer. Several claims are made by Scientists who are familiar with Solar activity and the physical principles that make the electric grid work. The rebuttals are coming from people that have a scientific background and the experience bound to the practice of Engineering. Being myself an Engineer, my experience tells me that modern electric grids are very well protected against such transitory events. An integral part of designing such networks is their protection from atmospheric events, the main being an electrostatic atmospheric discharge. If a major Solar cycle is going to take place, and if the most extreme products of such activity reach the Earth, there will be interruptions of electric power in, probably, a global scale. However, those interruptions will be solved in a matter of hours or days at most. The protection systems will act and that will stop damage to essential components of electric grids, such as transformers (which easily can take up to 24 months to build or repair). Companies invest enormous amounts of money and work in the protection systems and those will certainly act as designed. No doomsday if such event takes place.

[Isard]

Your heart might give out in the next 12 second. You'd better be afraid of that!

Watching you back peddle and try to salvage some semblance of credibility is hilarious. Damage has been done, give it up.

[Human No More]

A low number by absolutely no means proves that they will be any stronger just because of one specific event.
Any disaster could happen any time from in 10 seconds to in billions of years.

[Moco Loco]

Solar flares are nuts, but we don't have the ability to predict them well at all. I am not worrying about this.

[Isard]

Oh my god you were right