Could The Next Big Solar Storm Fry the Grid? (msn.com) 44
Long-time Slashdot reader SonicSpike shared the Washington Post's speculation about the possibility of a gigantic solar storm leaving millions without phone or internet access, and requiring months or years of rebuilding:
The odds are low that in any given year a storm big enough to cause effects this widespread will happen. And the severity of those impacts will depend on many factors, including the state of our planet's magnetic field on that day. But it's a near certainty that some form of this catastrophe will happen someday, says Ian Cohen, a chief scientist who studies heliophysics at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory.
Long-time Slashdot reader davidwr remains skeptical. "I've only heard of two major events in the last 1300 years, one estimated to be between A. D. 744 and A. D. 993, and the other being the Carrington Event in 1859.
But efforts are being made to improve our readiness, reports the Washington Post: To get ahead of this threat, a loose federation of U.S. and international government agencies, and hundreds of scientists affiliated with those bodies, have begun working on how to make predictions about what our Sun might do. And a small but growing cadre of scientists argue that artificial intelligence will be an essential component of efforts to give us advance notice of such a storm...
At present, no warning system is capable of giving us more than a few hours' notice of a devastating solar storm. If it's moving fast enough, it could be as little as 15 minutes. The most useful sentinel — a sun-orbiting satellite launched by the U.S. in 2015 — is much closer to Earth than the sun, so that by the time a fast-moving storm crosses its path, an hour or less is all the warning we get. The European Space Agency has proposed a system to help give earlier warning by putting a satellite dubbed Vigil into orbit around the Sun, positioned roughly the same distance from the Earth as the Earth is from the Sun. It could potentially give us up to five hours of warning about an incoming solar storm-enough time to do the main thing that can help preserve electronics: Switch them all off.
But what if there were a way to predict this better, by analyzing the data we've got? That's the idea behind a new, AI-powered model recently unveiled by scientists at the Frontier Development Lab — a public-private partnership that includes NASA, the U.S. Geological Survey, and the U.S. Department of Energy. The model uses deep learning, a type of AI, to examine the flow of the solar wind, the usually calm stream of particles that flow outward from our sun and through the solar system to well beyond the orbit of Pluto. Using observations of that solar wind, the model can predict the "geomagnetic disturbance" an incoming solar storm observed by sun-orbiting satellites would cause at any given point on Earth, the researchers involved say. This model can predict just how big the flux of the Earth's magnetic field will be when the solar storm arrives, and thus how big the induced currents in power lines and undersea internet cables will be...
Already, the first primitive ancestor of future AI-based solar-weather alert systems is live. The DstLive system, which debuted on the web in December 2022, uses machine learning to take data about the state of Earth's magnetic field and the solar wind and translate both into a single measure for the entire planet, known as DST. Think of it as the Richter scale, but for solar storms. This number is intended to give us an idea of how intense a storm's impact will be on earth, an hour to six hours in advance.
Unfortunately, we may not know how useful such systems are until we live through a major solar storm.
Long-time Slashdot reader davidwr remains skeptical. "I've only heard of two major events in the last 1300 years, one estimated to be between A. D. 744 and A. D. 993, and the other being the Carrington Event in 1859.
But efforts are being made to improve our readiness, reports the Washington Post: To get ahead of this threat, a loose federation of U.S. and international government agencies, and hundreds of scientists affiliated with those bodies, have begun working on how to make predictions about what our Sun might do. And a small but growing cadre of scientists argue that artificial intelligence will be an essential component of efforts to give us advance notice of such a storm...
At present, no warning system is capable of giving us more than a few hours' notice of a devastating solar storm. If it's moving fast enough, it could be as little as 15 minutes. The most useful sentinel — a sun-orbiting satellite launched by the U.S. in 2015 — is much closer to Earth than the sun, so that by the time a fast-moving storm crosses its path, an hour or less is all the warning we get. The European Space Agency has proposed a system to help give earlier warning by putting a satellite dubbed Vigil into orbit around the Sun, positioned roughly the same distance from the Earth as the Earth is from the Sun. It could potentially give us up to five hours of warning about an incoming solar storm-enough time to do the main thing that can help preserve electronics: Switch them all off.
But what if there were a way to predict this better, by analyzing the data we've got? That's the idea behind a new, AI-powered model recently unveiled by scientists at the Frontier Development Lab — a public-private partnership that includes NASA, the U.S. Geological Survey, and the U.S. Department of Energy. The model uses deep learning, a type of AI, to examine the flow of the solar wind, the usually calm stream of particles that flow outward from our sun and through the solar system to well beyond the orbit of Pluto. Using observations of that solar wind, the model can predict the "geomagnetic disturbance" an incoming solar storm observed by sun-orbiting satellites would cause at any given point on Earth, the researchers involved say. This model can predict just how big the flux of the Earth's magnetic field will be when the solar storm arrives, and thus how big the induced currents in power lines and undersea internet cables will be...
Already, the first primitive ancestor of future AI-based solar-weather alert systems is live. The DstLive system, which debuted on the web in December 2022, uses machine learning to take data about the state of Earth's magnetic field and the solar wind and translate both into a single measure for the entire planet, known as DST. Think of it as the Richter scale, but for solar storms. This number is intended to give us an idea of how intense a storm's impact will be on earth, an hour to six hours in advance.
Unfortunately, we may not know how useful such systems are until we live through a major solar storm.
Wouldn’t 15 minutes be enough? (Score:3, Interesting)
Maybe it’s different in the second and third world and they would be way worse at adapting, but that’s pretty much the rule for, ahem, everything.
Re:Wouldn’t 15 minutes be enough? (Score:5, Informative)
The power generation has to be matched to the load, so that means shutting down all the plants ASAP. That is not a trivial thing (e.g. nuclear doesn't just turn "off", has to be cooled down for a while), and it's also not just flipping a switch to turn them back on. Bringing the grid and plants back up takes time and careful coordination to match load added to generation capacity enabled. And that's assuming no problems at the plants from fast shutdowns.
Also, there'd probably still be line issues (that may only be found when trying to re-energize them), such as damaged transformers along the way (there's not a remote-control switch at every transformer).
But then again... basically some pop-sci author "rediscovers" this potential issue every few years and writes a scare story to fill pages and get clicks.
Re: (Score:2)
Shutting down everything means that you need to do a cold startup of the grid. As I understand it that's not an easy thing (see this Practical Engineering video about it [youtube.com])..
As such you'd need to be very confident you didn't have any false alarms and that may be a hard thing to do.
No. (Score:3)
It's a low probability catastrophe, so nobody's prepared for it. There are others.
IIRC, when New York suddenly went down it took several days to largely recover, and there were still isolated problems months later.
As for warning... different kinds of plants require different amounts of warning. And cutting off users before you must can lead to law suits. 15 minutes wouldn't be enough time to evaluate the need, much less to shut things down. (IIUC, nuclear plants require months before it's safe to just t
Re: (Score:2)
A solar storm compresses the earth magnetic field.
Imagine a party balloon, hold it in your hands and press it smaller.
Then release it it, it will rapidly expand.
The same happens when the solar storm ceases and the earth magnetic field rapidly expands.
It will induce high currents into every conductor. Unless it is shielded by an magnetic faraday cage. Yes, magnetic, as we do not talk about a lightening impact, but about something that gets the magnetic field lines away from the stuff in question. Ferromagnet
Re: (Score:2)
Someone knows more than I do about this, so tell me if I’m wrong, but arent 1-st world grids designed to be reconfigurable within seconds or minutes? They respond that quickly to major power demand fluctuations all the time. If the power companies get 30 minutes of warning to “disconnect the pieces of the grid NOW or the whole thing fries” I suspect that large parts of the system would accomplish exactly that. The switches are remote-control nowadays. Right?
Maybe it’s different in the second and third world and they would be way worse at adapting, but that’s pretty much the rule for, ahem, everything.
Blacking out entire nations? Possibly for days or weeks? You want the plant staff to make that call in 15 minutes?
And what if the alert system that's really hard to test is on the fritz, then the head of the system needs to start calling plant managers in a panic telling them to do the shut down in the next five minutes or their fried... Oh, it was a social engineering deepfake and some terrorist group just took out half the grid.
Exactly! (Score:5, Funny)
"Long-time Slashdot reader davidwr remains skeptical. "I've only heard of two major events in the last 1300 years, one estimated to be between A. D. 744 and A. D. 993, and the other being the Carrington Event in 1859."
And not a single phone or TV was affected!
Must be a hoax.
Re: (Score:3)
No, people totally don't get it!
Remember that 1860 Waldmuller painting, "The Expected One" [vice.com]? You know, where the young woman appears to be holding a cell phone? Well she WAS holding a cell phone, and the reason she's staring at it mournfully is the Carrington Event burned it out!
Re: (Score:2)
They are rare, but not as rare as you are supposing. They need to be exceptionally strong to show up in the archaeological record. (I think Carrington would be invisible.) Much weaker things could be highly destructive to a civilization based on long distance transmission of electrical power. It's still probably only once every other century or so, but the sample size is so small that that estimate has really huge error bars. And the potential destructive effects are immense. That kind of thing can in
Re: (Score:1)
It's still probably only once every other century or so,
Oh, good. They only happen every other century, give or take. Since Carrington was just 164 years ago, we're good for another century or two. Probably more.
Our tech is so much better than it was in 1859, so nothing to worry about. It was mostly telegraph lines that were affected. When's the last time you saw a telegraph line? So we should be good.
Re: (Score:2)
> And not a single phone or TV was affected. Must be a hoax.
Not true, my carrier pidgin was fried by radiation. Tasty, but messages couldn't go out.
Re: (Score:2)
"Long-time Slashdot reader davidwr remains skeptical. "I've only heard of two major events in the last 1300 years, one estimated to be between A. D. 744 and A. D. 993, and the other being the Carrington Event in 1859."
And not a single phone or TV was affected!
Must be a hoax.
I don't know, I'm pretty sure the Carrington Event interrupted an episode of Coronation Street [wikipedia.org].
Hmmm. (Score:2)
I get emails from spaceweather.com when solar flares and coronal mass ejections (particularly X-class) are detected, or the sunspot acidity is such that a flare is likely. This gives a lot more notice of potential problems than a few hours, using existing satellites and solar observatories such as SOHO, and has done for years.
What is described in TFS is the same as putting a weather vane on your front porch and complaining you don't get much notice of an incoming tornado, oh noes, what can we do, the sky is
Did the previous one fry it? (Score:2)
No.
There's your answer then.
Re: (Score:2)
Sad, how stupid the discussions on slashdot become have.
Editors (Score:2)
Gotta love the editors. That doesn't sound skeptical. That's evidence this does happen and will happen again, just as described in the article.
Check my math (Score:2)
"...putting a satellite dubbed Vigil into orbit around the Sun, positioned roughly the same distance from the Earth as the Earth is from the Sun. "
Ummm. If it were in line with the Sun, then it would be 'on the Sun'. If it were laterally positioned, then I suppose it could be anywhere...
Lagrange point (Score:3)
"...putting a satellite dubbed Vigil into orbit around the Sun, positioned roughly the same distance from the Earth as the Earth is from the Sun. "
Ummm. If it were in line with the Sun, then it would be 'on the Sun'. If it were laterally positioned, then I suppose it could be anywhere...
That's probably a science/tech writer's description of a LaGrange point [wikipedia.org].
The satellite is in the same orbit as Earth, but 1 AU forward or back from the position of the Earth. This forms an equilateral triangle and the forces work out so that it's a stable equilibrium - if the satellite moves from this point the forces will tend to bring it back. Usually satellites are set to orbit the Lagrange point, presumably so that many satellites can be put there without crashing into each other.
Re: (Score:2)
I think they're talking about the 60 degree Trojan position. But you're right, technically it could be in lots of different places.
Buy Backups (Score:2)
For the electric grid, wouldn't the wise thing to do be to have a national emergency stockpile of transformers and other equipment that could be used to bring the grid back up in the case of a devastating event?
Events in Ukraine suggest that there are important national security reasons that we should have an emergency stockpile of transformers and other electrical grid equipment anyway. Even if we aren't expecting our grid to be hit having that stockpile would let us help other countries if their grids ar
Don't even need a storm (Score:1)
Just live in Texas.
Re: (Score:1)
Just live in Texas.
Hey - don't you dare criticize the Republican god serving Freedom Grid.
Re: (Score:2)
The record is in tree rings. Carbon-14 I believe.
Planetary Surge Protector (Score:2)
From what I have read of the Carrington event, this cats cradle of wires that suspends our electricity dependent civilization above the abyss got a big surge of induced current. Not sure how useful AI would be to cope with that sort of a problem. While all of my electronics float on surge suppression power bars or regenerative UPS supplies, doubt that this is anywhere typical. And would be curious as to how all the high voltage transmission lines would hold up.. Maybe a really big surge suppressor network.
Could it tho? (Score:2)
Not if the VLF bubble works (Score:1)
https://www.nasa.gov/missions/... [nasa.gov]
Yep (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
The transformers need to be disconnected and the end of the transmission lines grounded. The earth's magnetic field gets pushed around by the CME, and the moving field lines induce the current in the power lines. The transformers are fine just sitting there. Their leads are too short to make an effective antenna.
This is the opposite of the nuclear EMP. That's a short wavelength effect.
A thought; if a Carrington is on its way and they dump the grid, should I plug in a space heater? If any voltage is generate
Re: Yep (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
It's not putting Terawatts into the grid, the energy is tiny. The problem is that the grid doesn't have a whole lot of DC resistance, so the extreme low frequency induced currents can build up even with small amounts of energy ... which pushes the transformer into saturation, which blows it up. If the transformer isn't being driven, the DC current will do bugger all. Hell, it probably can't even build up enough voltage to jump the high voltage switches in the breaker yards.
The transformer won't be driven in
EMP weapons (Score:2)
EMP weapons use a similar technique to F-up electronics. Thus, there's 2 reasons to shore them up. EMP would be an "ideal" way for N. Korea and other rogue nations to attack us because they wouldn't need many missiles to pull it off.
Nobody ever got a ticker tape parade (Score:1)
You see this all the time with banking regulations. 1% find a new way to siphon money. It crashes the economy, maybe after a short boom period caused mostly because they were too busy with their scam to turn their gaze on us, we put a few halfhearted regulation in place to stop the next crash, people forget what those regulations were there for and demand these "Job Killing Regulations" be repealed. Next crash is worse.
It's a near certainty? (Score:2)
it's a near certainty that some form of this catastrophe will happen someday
Correction, it's a 100% certainty that some form of this catastrophe will happen someday.
Someday, the sun itself is going to explode.
Re: (Score:2)
It's not, but you're right about the inevitablility of it's demise.
Re: (Score:2)
https://www.sciencealert.com/s... [sciencealert.com]
When a star dies it ejects a mass of gas and dust – known as its envelope – into space. The envelope can be as much as half the star's mass.
I think it's fair to describe this scenario, where the sun ejects half its mass, as an explosion.
Carrionton level solar storms (Score:2)
The fact is that Carrington solar storm happen more frequently than expected. Most of them just happen when Earth is not aligned with the solar spot. Last Carrington level solar storm took place in the year 2012. Earth was slightly out of alignment with the solar storm so it just passed by Earth. Other big one was in 2001 and that was in part aligned with Earth. That one was a X20 solar storm.
Wikipedia list of solar storm.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
The 2001 solar storm information.
https://soho.nascom. [nasa.gov]
actually, about 3 days rough heads-up, then about (Score:2)
major solar storms come from earth-facing coronal mass ejections, and take about three days to travel the distance from the sun to earth. the exact moment of arrival is unknown until it's about half an hour away tho. so it's true we only have a little bit of time of accurate warning but we also have about three days of rough warning.
some solar storms are surprises, arriving at the 30-minute outpost unexpectedly, without any correlated CME. but those are minor ones.
just visit spaceweather.com once a day to
Um. (Score:2)
Yes. And yes, we already know about it. (Score:2)
But in a slight paraphrase of that famous moment from The Young Ones [imgur.com];
"But we already knew that and they don't care, so where's the surprise?"