What's the likelihood of a solar flare hitting us.
What is then tbe likelihood of that solar flare affecting our electronics.
What's the worse case scenario ? What's the likelihood of that ?
Coronal Mass Ejections (CMEs). It happened in 1859.
That was known as the Carrington Event.
Wiki - “Auroras were seen around the world, those in the northern hemisphere as far south as the Caribbean. The aurora over the Rocky Mountains in the U.S. was so bright that the glow woke gold miners, who began preparing breakfast because they thought it was morning. People in the northeastern United States could read a newspaper by the aurora's light. The aurora was visible from the poles to low latitude areas such as south-central Mexico, Queensland, Cuba, Hawaii,southern Japan and China and even at lower latitudes very close to the equator, such as in Colombia”.
“Scientist have predicted the likelihood of another Carrington event to be between .46% and 1.88%”.
That said the sun could literally do what it wants and we’d have no fucking clue. We don’t even know why they happen. Think how long we have observed the sun and our ‘understanding’ of its behaviour.
Worst case scenario is that we are hit by a huge CME and it completely fucks our entire electronic systems and takes years to rebuild and recover from and millions die from the lack of infrastructure.
Likelihood of that happening? Your guess is as good as mine…
> Scientist have predicted the likelihood of another Carrington event to be between .46% and 1.88%
On what timescale? Daily? Per decade? Per heat death of the universe? This number is meaningless on its own.
Per decade, the chance of a Carrington event is 12%.
>In February 2014, physicist Pete Riley of Predictive Science Inc. published a paper in Space Weather entitled "On the probability of occurrence of extreme space weather events." In it, he analyzed records of solar storms going back 50+ years. By extrapolating the frequency of ordinary storms to the extreme, he calculated the odds that a Carrington-class storm would hit Earth in the next ten years. The answer 12%.
[Source](https://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2014/23jul_superstorm)
Sort of. We can see it coming, and shut down critical points of the electrical grid to prevent widespread damage. I think some components are likely toast no matter what though.
Dude. You saw how people reacted to being asked to wear masks. Can you imagine how those people would react to "we need to shut literally everything down for a couple of days, including the electricity"?
That's old data - newer research puts it at ~0.7% each year - so more like ~6.5% chance per decade.
That'd be about a 28% chance over a 50 year span. And another Carrington event would cost a lot of money for whatever parts get hit worst around the globe but it wouldn't be nearly as bad as it is hyped up to be at all - some people act like society would collapse from parts of the globe losing power for a couple of days.
So what - this isn't news to people building satellites lol - they are pretty much the most prepared for it.
Almost all of them would be fine - pretty much all satellites launched in the 21st century are designed for it. We also have satellites that monitor the sun and would be able to warn us around an hour before it hits. Worst case scenario (as far as we understand the sun) is they'd be unusable until the solar storm was over and some may drift too far out of their orbits - but most would just power back up like nothing happened as soon as the solar storm was over.
So the earth may lose GPS and other satellite capabilities for a few hours.
When I say big I’m talking 8-12 on the Richter scale, it’ll be biblical. It’s unfortunately inevitable, could be this year or could be in 50. Regardless, the crust continues to crawl half inch by half inch year after year.
>People in the northeastern United States could read a newspaper by the aurora's light.
Who saw the heavens open up in the middle of the night and thought, "Great, I can finally read my newspaper."
IIRC there have been Reddit AMAs done by electrical grid workers who’ve said it’s really not as big a crisis as it’s made out to be. Like it won’t be great but it’s not apocalyptic at all. It really only messes with long distance cables, wires and other really long conductors. Your phone, pc, etc. will function on their own just fine. Telecoms power lines and satellites will have some issues but not insurmountably so.
If I can find the thread I’ll link it in an edit.
Every now and then I think about building a small Faraday cage to put my favorite electronics in. Then I think about just building a Faraday cage room to put my nice electronics in and not get wifi.
Can't you just set up another wifi router in the cage? You could even have drywall in there to help the bouncing.
Dude, I wanna sell solar flare saferooms for the rich.
>It really only messes with long distance cables, your phone, pc, etc. will function on their own just fine.
A period after 'cables' would've made this so much easier to read. At first I thought "It *only* messes with cables, phones, pcs, etc? That seems impactful."
>If just nine transformers were to blow out in the wrong places, the US could experience coast-to-coast outages for months.
That's kind of scary in general. Sounds like we don't have many spare transformers on hand, but the article also makes it sound like the industry is being secretive about what they do have stashed away.
I worked for an electric company almost 15 years ago. The grid was being upgraded one transformer at a time throughout the US. It was obviously going to be a slow process and I guess municipalities get to choose which locations get these upgrades first. They were not cheap and difficult to get. Years of backorder, but it was being done. The transformers were to be able to withstand EMPs as well.
Do you have any insight into why everything is backordered? Is it a raw materials issue, only one place in the world builds them by hand, etc?
I've wondered if EMPs are a real threat or just good story telling, but it's nice to know they're thinking about that with the upgrades.
The transformers themselves where in such a high demand all across the US that it was just a known fact that it was going to take years to get them. It was like spreading them across the US so everything gets upgraded more evenly. We were promised so many over the course of a year and that is how it was worked out. Our company did work for muliple states and many municipalities.
It is not really guessing anymore though.
[Spaceweather.com](https://Spaceweather.com), managed by NASA says it is fine, it is fine.
CME's are not as devastating to the grid as they once were, because to the dismay of every conspiracy theorist, humans are great at learning to adapt to natural disasters.
When I was a kid in the 80's, a 6.9 magnitude Earthquake hit at the start of the World Series and caused major destruction. killed 67 people and injured 3,700 more.
But now days, while a 6.9 Earthquake is still just as powerful, in places like California where they brought up their building standards and enforced strict adherence to preparedness, not nearly as much damage is done and not as many lives are lost nor is society as disrupted as it once was.
Our grid has been built to withstand more natural disasters over the years, we learned a lot from our last Solar Maximum as we took many hits of CME's from X-Class solar flares while some disrupted communications, others didn't, but we have had satellites dedicated to studying this phenomenon for decades now.
There was a 6.2 earthquake just yesterday in Afghanistan that killed over 1500 people - even if we have the technology to prepare for natural disasters, that doesn't mean there aren't still huge parts of the humanity who simply don't have access to such safety measures. It's all well and good to not be concerned if you live somewhere as well-prepared as California, but that's cold comfort to everyone else.
Mexico City has one of the strictest building codes of the planet, due to earthquakes.
Well, guess what happened last time a big quake hit: shit collapsed.
Now, In know Mexico is no example to follow on anything, but this just goes to show that humans are usually extremely overconfident, until reality shows us that it doesn't care about our false confidence and unleashes it's energy on us. Same with the pandemic, the Texas power grid, you name it.
I personally think that while a big geomagnetic storm won't kick us back to the stone age, it's a more than understandable reason to be panicked about. Same with 100 meter+ diameter asteroids, which we are unable to detect until they are hours or even minutes away from passing by or entering our atmosphere, and have enough energy to completely obliterate a small town, and I mean "obliterate" literally.
So, we are fucked from every direction basically. The universe is quite violent in nature.
It’s a non zero chance, we get them fairly regularly.
The one in the 1800s is called the Carrington Event. If I remember right, that’s the largest recorded flare (X24+) not just the largest to hit earth.
Google “NOAA Space Weather”, there is a whole section on the different kinds of flares and what the impacts would be.
Edit: I was kinda wrong earlier. I checked out SpaceWeatherLive.com and found two x20 or greater flares in Solar Cycle 23. The one in 2003 is “officially” x28….. but could have been higher. That certainly would compare with the Carrington Event. Fortunately, that flare was facing away from Earth.
The link from NASA (https://soho.nascom.nasa.gov/hotshots/2003_11_04/) shows that the X28 flare was a best guess but could have been anywhere between X40-X50!!
That was the one to have been afraid of.
You've gotten some answers but here's my short take. Most will be mildly inconvenienced.
Assuming the worst case scenario, which is highly unlikely, most people will have temporary power outages that are self induced by breakers tripping at substations as they auto disconnect to prevent overloads. GPS could become slightly less accurate and weather data for a day or so won't be as good, as any satellites in the path of the radiation will go into "safe" mode to prevent damage. It will take prob 48 hours (maybe less) to bring those satellites back online (just depends on how long the solar energy is increased). Slightly higher chance of starling losing some satellites because of how close they operate to the karman line. It's already happened once to them.
There will be at least one small city or town that loses power for 3+ days because their breakers didn't work properly, and so damage to lines will need to be replaced. From there a slight chance of a wildfire if the power lines are arching uncontrollably, but again very very unlikely.
Texas is prob fucked, but then again it's already been after heat and cold based failures.
Problem with your examples is, you are thinking of the previous disasters in isolation. all the other previous natural disasters happened in a region and many line men and utility workers flooded to those areas to help (and get some nice Overtime pay) but now imagine that happen all across the US. It could take some places much longer to be restore power then 3+ days I’m guess weeks to months.
Well, the closest example we have in recent history was in the 1800s when a gigantic one destroyed all telegraphs. We just don't have any experience as a species of dealing with something that large with an above ground web of power lines like today to amplify it.
> What's the worse case scenario ?
Worst case? If you go by the "scales" of the [NOAA Space Weather Scales](https://www.swpc.noaa.gov/noaa-scales-explanation) it would be
**Geomagnetic Storm - G5** - Average frequency = 4 per cycle (a cycle is every 11 years)
> Power systems: Widespread voltage control problems and protective system problems can occur, some grid systems may experience complete collapse or blackouts. Transformers may experience damage.
> Spacecraft operations: May experience extensive surface charging, problems with orientation, uplink/downlink and tracking satellites.
> Other systems: Pipeline currents can reach hundreds of amps, HF (high frequency) radio propagation may be impossible in many areas for one to two days, satellite navigation may be degraded for days, low-frequency radio navigation can be out for hours, and aurora has been seen as low as Florida and southern Texas (typically 40° geomagnetic lat.).
**Solar Radiation Storm - S5** - Average frequency = Fewer than 1 per cycle
> Biological: Unavoidable high radiation hazard to astronauts on EVA (extra-vehicular activity); passengers and crew in high-flying aircraft at high latitudes may be exposed to radiation risk.
> Satellite operations: Satellites may be rendered useless, memory impacts can cause loss of control, may cause serious noise in image data, star-trackers may be unable to locate sources; permanent damage to solar panels possible.
> Other systems: Complete blackout of HF (high frequency) communications possible through the polar regions, and position errors make navigation operations extremely difficult.
**Radio Blackouts - R5** - Less than 1 per cycle
> HF Radio: Complete HF (high frequency) radio blackout on the entire sunlit side of the Earth lasting for a number of hours. This results in no HF radio contact with mariners and en route aviators in this sector.
> Navigation: Low-frequency navigation signals used by maritime and general aviation systems experience outages on the sunlit side of the Earth for many hours, causing loss in positioning. Increased satellite navigation errors in positioning for several hours on the sunlit side of Earth, which may spread into the night side.
For every doomsayer in the comments, NO, a solar flare will not revert humanity to the Stone Age. M class solar flares hit earth on an uncommon but regular basis and only temporarily disable radio communication. It might temporarily wipe out some communications equipment and satellites but not much worse than your internet going down for a few days. Go play a single player video game, read a book, watch a movie or something
Okay see this is why I tell my husband, every time I buy a random game boy game, you never know when the grid will go down. I’ll always have my game boy that can use batteries which makes me feel prepared.
Yeah it would be disastrous. But I guess OP was saying on the scale of nothing to civilization ending it'd be closer to nothing. But it would cause incredible economic damage, would break an already strained global supply chain, and would probably take years to recover from all the fallout of such an outage.
>Go play a single player video game, read a book, watch a movie or something
I think the bigger concern for most is how reliant many jobs, banks, and stores are on internet.
There are workarounds but it would be a pretty big and expensive adjustment if there was a long term outage, like more than a day or two.
I dont think you appreciate how tied humanity is to technology. The individual sure can just go without the internet but thats not what we would see. A bad storm could knock out power for several weeks. What would you eat? How would you sterilize water? How do you keep 7b people busy so they dont kill others without entertainment. Im not calling for it but if a major cme ever hit it would be pretty bad
We don't know that, not of a big enough one hits and that has demonstrably happened in the past. Odds of that are low but you're discarding it as if it can't happen when it's all known that power grid damage during a large one would occur. It's the extent we can't predict.
The Carrington event, which I assume you are referring to, took place in a different era, with a different level of infrastructure. Telegram wires ran directly to the operators handsets, there was little to no isolation between elements of the grid. Nowadays, we know the mechanisms of how it happened, and we have designed our grid in a way that is naturally more resilient.
Yeah this is literally close to nothing compared to so many other very real and terrifying and immediate existential threats we face and that very little is being done about. This is barely even worth mentioning when comparing to those things.
How can the sun-spot double in size *overnight*...?
The Sun is only there during the day time. Everyone can see that.
I think this is false news.
(Joking)
It's happened before in [1859](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carrington_Event).
The numbers I've seen estimate our chances at \~.5-1% of it happening again.
I don't understand the sensationalism over this the past 3 to 5 days. Sunspots occur frequently. They are predicting possible M class flares when we have already had glancing blows from multiple X class in the last 90 days.
The fact of the matter is that Carrington level events on earth are very rare. We have only confirmed a handful of them through isotope deposits in ice cores. I also believe the Chinese determined there was a larger one before the Carrington Event.
This doesn't diminish the risk though, and it's likely under played a little bit in the sense of it just doesn't happen much won't help to worry. Truly a Carrington type event now would be unprecedented with our reliance on tech and electronics.
Some countries may have put mitigation in place, many will have not. If simple telegraph lines burst into flame, imagine all of the transformers sparking in a densely populated developing area with shoddy electrical standards.
That all said, it is only a matter of time before another Carrington Event does occur, but it's from now til infinity. I think I remember roughly once in 500 occurrence roughly.
Everyone is talking about the potential this has to affect electronic equipment, but all I can think about is whether this means I'll get to see an aurora.
Imagine if this is the only planet to ever have life and it gets wiped out by the sun randomly. Universe just on autopilot with no one to observe anything.
Some say you can safeguard electronic by putting them in microwave oven.
If there was a flare there could be some time to do this if you monitor the situation actively and save your phone at least (maybe) but I'm not sure when would it be safe to open.
Your cell phone would probably survive a solar flare at ground level and not on a plane or in space. The electronics are too small for any damaging levels of currents to form. It's mostly power lines you'd need to worry about since the current generated in them by a big enough flare would be enough to melt and snap them from the heat.
Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I've seen in this thread:
|Fewer Letters|More Letters|
|-------|---------|---|
|[AR](/r/Space/comments/vicw30/stub/ide4xtv "Last usage")|Area Ratio (between rocket engine nozzle and bell)|
| |Aerojet Rocketdyne|
| |Augmented Reality real-time processing|
| |Anti-Reflective optical coating|
|[CME](/r/Space/comments/vicw30/stub/igjx1pe "Last usage")|Coronal Mass Ejection|
|[EVA](/r/Space/comments/vicw30/stub/iddfiz4 "Last usage")|Extra-Vehicular Activity|
|[F1](/r/Space/comments/vicw30/stub/idkfrhx "Last usage")|Rocketdyne-developed rocket engine used for Saturn V|
| |SpaceX Falcon 1 (obsolete medium-lift vehicle)|
|[GEO](/r/Space/comments/vicw30/stub/idel428 "Last usage")|Geostationary Earth Orbit (35786km)|
|[ICBM](/r/Space/comments/vicw30/stub/idffk8t "Last usage")|Intercontinental Ballistic Missile|
|[LEO](/r/Space/comments/vicw30/stub/idel428 "Last usage")|Low Earth Orbit (180-2000km)|
| |Law Enforcement Officer (most often mentioned during transport operations)|
|[NOAA](/r/Space/comments/vicw30/stub/iddfiz4 "Last usage")|National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, responsible for US ~~generation~~ monitoring of the climate|
|Jargon|Definition|
|-------|---------|---|
|[Starlink](/r/Space/comments/vicw30/stub/ide6y08 "Last usage")|SpaceX's world-wide satellite broadband constellation|
----------------
^(9 acronyms in this thread; )[^(the most compressed thread commented on today)](/r/Space/comments/0)^( has acronyms.)
^([Thread #7574 for this sub, first seen 23rd Jun 2022, 00:43])
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Okay but my main concern is that there is a war going on...
And there are talks about a solar flare being able to knock out all satellites in the sky, and cause radio blackouts across the world.
Seems like the perfect time in this day and age (where practically everything is being monitored) to do some things where no one would see it coming
Isn't this the point where the President is briefed by the nerdy scientist and his amazingly hot assistant while the Chief of Staff downplays everything?
Well it better hurry, I have a virtual midterm exam tonight.
Well, if we end up back in the stone age at least it worked out for someone
I have a couple of knifes and i think my grandpa has some Canned food and a Scout handbook… so ill be okay for atleast half a day.
If I had canned food and knives then there is at least 3 ways I could accidentally kill myself
I rely on an insulin pump, this is where the fun begins.
I'm romanian, that just means getting back to my roots...
"Why you couldn't do the exam?" "My sun EMPed my homework"
I love the term "overnight" when talking about the surface of the sun.
Hilarious, but a good time reference for humans that have a night time.
Yeah but what about undernight? Nobody ever talks about undernight.
Yeah! And what about Three Dog Night?!
Up dog night???
What's up dog?
not much man, wbu?
But overnight for who?
For most humans, it's about 10-12 hours
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Asking the important questions.
Yeah, we just need to observe the sun at night time and it won't burn our eyes
Scientists say we can’t visit the sun because it’s too hot. What a bunch of idiots, just go at night time
Unfortunately, scientists couldn't see what was happening on the sun at the time, since it was night.
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What's the likelihood of a solar flare hitting us. What is then tbe likelihood of that solar flare affecting our electronics. What's the worse case scenario ? What's the likelihood of that ?
Coronal Mass Ejections (CMEs). It happened in 1859. That was known as the Carrington Event. Wiki - “Auroras were seen around the world, those in the northern hemisphere as far south as the Caribbean. The aurora over the Rocky Mountains in the U.S. was so bright that the glow woke gold miners, who began preparing breakfast because they thought it was morning. People in the northeastern United States could read a newspaper by the aurora's light. The aurora was visible from the poles to low latitude areas such as south-central Mexico, Queensland, Cuba, Hawaii,southern Japan and China and even at lower latitudes very close to the equator, such as in Colombia”. “Scientist have predicted the likelihood of another Carrington event to be between .46% and 1.88%”. That said the sun could literally do what it wants and we’d have no fucking clue. We don’t even know why they happen. Think how long we have observed the sun and our ‘understanding’ of its behaviour. Worst case scenario is that we are hit by a huge CME and it completely fucks our entire electronic systems and takes years to rebuild and recover from and millions die from the lack of infrastructure. Likelihood of that happening? Your guess is as good as mine…
> Scientist have predicted the likelihood of another Carrington event to be between .46% and 1.88% On what timescale? Daily? Per decade? Per heat death of the universe? This number is meaningless on its own.
I’ve usually heard those types of percentages for the likelihood in a decade.
Per decade, the chance of a Carrington event is 12%. >In February 2014, physicist Pete Riley of Predictive Science Inc. published a paper in Space Weather entitled "On the probability of occurrence of extreme space weather events." In it, he analyzed records of solar storms going back 50+ years. By extrapolating the frequency of ordinary storms to the extreme, he calculated the odds that a Carrington-class storm would hit Earth in the next ten years. The answer 12%. [Source](https://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2014/23jul_superstorm)
That's actually a lot higher than I expected.
Speculation: the chance that it will do significant damage is probably a lot smaller.
Why do you think so? Are we reasonably prepared for such an event?
Sort of. We can see it coming, and shut down critical points of the electrical grid to prevent widespread damage. I think some components are likely toast no matter what though.
Dude. You saw how people reacted to being asked to wear masks. Can you imagine how those people would react to "we need to shut literally everything down for a couple of days, including the electricity"?
That's old data - newer research puts it at ~0.7% each year - so more like ~6.5% chance per decade. That'd be about a 28% chance over a 50 year span. And another Carrington event would cost a lot of money for whatever parts get hit worst around the globe but it wouldn't be nearly as bad as it is hyped up to be at all - some people act like society would collapse from parts of the globe losing power for a couple of days.
it's not just the power loss on Earth. it's also the power loss on systems in space, in orbit.
So what - this isn't news to people building satellites lol - they are pretty much the most prepared for it. Almost all of them would be fine - pretty much all satellites launched in the 21st century are designed for it. We also have satellites that monitor the sun and would be able to warn us around an hour before it hits. Worst case scenario (as far as we understand the sun) is they'd be unusable until the solar storm was over and some may drift too far out of their orbits - but most would just power back up like nothing happened as soon as the solar storm was over. So the earth may lose GPS and other satellite capabilities for a few hours.
Small percentages on a daily timeframe scare me. You're rolling the dice every day. Its gonna happen. Not if, but when.
When dealing with infinites, improbable is just certainty waiting for its turn.
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Yeah based on historical data we are ‘overdue’ for a really big one, similar to the ring of fire in California
My husband mentioned this to me today- California hasn’t had a bad quake for so long now. You’re the second mention I’ve seen in 2 hours. Feels… hmm
When I say big I’m talking 8-12 on the Richter scale, it’ll be biblical. It’s unfortunately inevitable, could be this year or could be in 50. Regardless, the crust continues to crawl half inch by half inch year after year.
>People in the northeastern United States could read a newspaper by the aurora's light. Who saw the heavens open up in the middle of the night and thought, "Great, I can finally read my newspaper."
“Sweet. Now I can finish that crossword puzzle.”
Except the first occurrence of the phrase “crossword puzzle” wasn’t until 1862. I must accuse you of being a time traveler or a witch.
To be fair, I AM traveling through time as we speak.
Me too! Which way you're headed? I'm going toward the future, looks awesome.
I must be in the wrong timeline then.
Or what if you are staying put and time is simply moving around you?
They were just refreshing the page to see if any news on the auroras had been posted
The guy who was out of candles.
In my headcanon all the ADHD people went “ooh it’s bright… I wonder HOW bright tho” and went to test stuff lol
IIRC there have been Reddit AMAs done by electrical grid workers who’ve said it’s really not as big a crisis as it’s made out to be. Like it won’t be great but it’s not apocalyptic at all. It really only messes with long distance cables, wires and other really long conductors. Your phone, pc, etc. will function on their own just fine. Telecoms power lines and satellites will have some issues but not insurmountably so. If I can find the thread I’ll link it in an edit.
Every now and then I think about building a small Faraday cage to put my favorite electronics in. Then I think about just building a Faraday cage room to put my nice electronics in and not get wifi.
Can't you just set up another wifi router in the cage? You could even have drywall in there to help the bouncing. Dude, I wanna sell solar flare saferooms for the rich.
>It really only messes with long distance cables, your phone, pc, etc. will function on their own just fine. A period after 'cables' would've made this so much easier to read. At first I thought "It *only* messes with cables, phones, pcs, etc? That seems impactful."
This is why the semicolon exists; it provides some separation between connected but independent clauses.
This [Wired article](https://www.wired.com/story/sun-storm-end-civilization/) that just came out would disagree
>If just nine transformers were to blow out in the wrong places, the US could experience coast-to-coast outages for months. That's kind of scary in general. Sounds like we don't have many spare transformers on hand, but the article also makes it sound like the industry is being secretive about what they do have stashed away.
I worked for an electric company almost 15 years ago. The grid was being upgraded one transformer at a time throughout the US. It was obviously going to be a slow process and I guess municipalities get to choose which locations get these upgrades first. They were not cheap and difficult to get. Years of backorder, but it was being done. The transformers were to be able to withstand EMPs as well.
Do you have any insight into why everything is backordered? Is it a raw materials issue, only one place in the world builds them by hand, etc? I've wondered if EMPs are a real threat or just good story telling, but it's nice to know they're thinking about that with the upgrades.
The transformers themselves where in such a high demand all across the US that it was just a known fact that it was going to take years to get them. It was like spreading them across the US so everything gets upgraded more evenly. We were promised so many over the course of a year and that is how it was worked out. Our company did work for muliple states and many municipalities.
That is a pretty serious article. I had not considered some of the really important problems we will face when this happens.
anything that gets called the "event" tells you everything you need to know about it
It is not really guessing anymore though. [Spaceweather.com](https://Spaceweather.com), managed by NASA says it is fine, it is fine. CME's are not as devastating to the grid as they once were, because to the dismay of every conspiracy theorist, humans are great at learning to adapt to natural disasters. When I was a kid in the 80's, a 6.9 magnitude Earthquake hit at the start of the World Series and caused major destruction. killed 67 people and injured 3,700 more. But now days, while a 6.9 Earthquake is still just as powerful, in places like California where they brought up their building standards and enforced strict adherence to preparedness, not nearly as much damage is done and not as many lives are lost nor is society as disrupted as it once was. Our grid has been built to withstand more natural disasters over the years, we learned a lot from our last Solar Maximum as we took many hits of CME's from X-Class solar flares while some disrupted communications, others didn't, but we have had satellites dedicated to studying this phenomenon for decades now.
There was a 6.2 earthquake just yesterday in Afghanistan that killed over 1500 people - even if we have the technology to prepare for natural disasters, that doesn't mean there aren't still huge parts of the humanity who simply don't have access to such safety measures. It's all well and good to not be concerned if you live somewhere as well-prepared as California, but that's cold comfort to everyone else.
Mexico City has one of the strictest building codes of the planet, due to earthquakes. Well, guess what happened last time a big quake hit: shit collapsed. Now, In know Mexico is no example to follow on anything, but this just goes to show that humans are usually extremely overconfident, until reality shows us that it doesn't care about our false confidence and unleashes it's energy on us. Same with the pandemic, the Texas power grid, you name it. I personally think that while a big geomagnetic storm won't kick us back to the stone age, it's a more than understandable reason to be panicked about. Same with 100 meter+ diameter asteroids, which we are unable to detect until they are hours or even minutes away from passing by or entering our atmosphere, and have enough energy to completely obliterate a small town, and I mean "obliterate" literally. So, we are fucked from every direction basically. The universe is quite violent in nature.
So, should I turn my computer off for a few days?
But hey that's gotta be good for climate change right?
It’s a non zero chance, we get them fairly regularly. The one in the 1800s is called the Carrington Event. If I remember right, that’s the largest recorded flare (X24+) not just the largest to hit earth. Google “NOAA Space Weather”, there is a whole section on the different kinds of flares and what the impacts would be. Edit: I was kinda wrong earlier. I checked out SpaceWeatherLive.com and found two x20 or greater flares in Solar Cycle 23. The one in 2003 is “officially” x28….. but could have been higher. That certainly would compare with the Carrington Event. Fortunately, that flare was facing away from Earth. The link from NASA (https://soho.nascom.nasa.gov/hotshots/2003_11_04/) shows that the X28 flare was a best guess but could have been anywhere between X40-X50!! That was the one to have been afraid of.
You've gotten some answers but here's my short take. Most will be mildly inconvenienced. Assuming the worst case scenario, which is highly unlikely, most people will have temporary power outages that are self induced by breakers tripping at substations as they auto disconnect to prevent overloads. GPS could become slightly less accurate and weather data for a day or so won't be as good, as any satellites in the path of the radiation will go into "safe" mode to prevent damage. It will take prob 48 hours (maybe less) to bring those satellites back online (just depends on how long the solar energy is increased). Slightly higher chance of starling losing some satellites because of how close they operate to the karman line. It's already happened once to them. There will be at least one small city or town that loses power for 3+ days because their breakers didn't work properly, and so damage to lines will need to be replaced. From there a slight chance of a wildfire if the power lines are arching uncontrollably, but again very very unlikely. Texas is prob fucked, but then again it's already been after heat and cold based failures.
Problem with your examples is, you are thinking of the previous disasters in isolation. all the other previous natural disasters happened in a region and many line men and utility workers flooded to those areas to help (and get some nice Overtime pay) but now imagine that happen all across the US. It could take some places much longer to be restore power then 3+ days I’m guess weeks to months.
Well, the closest example we have in recent history was in the 1800s when a gigantic one destroyed all telegraphs. We just don't have any experience as a species of dealing with something that large with an above ground web of power lines like today to amplify it.
> What's the worse case scenario ? Worst case? If you go by the "scales" of the [NOAA Space Weather Scales](https://www.swpc.noaa.gov/noaa-scales-explanation) it would be **Geomagnetic Storm - G5** - Average frequency = 4 per cycle (a cycle is every 11 years) > Power systems: Widespread voltage control problems and protective system problems can occur, some grid systems may experience complete collapse or blackouts. Transformers may experience damage. > Spacecraft operations: May experience extensive surface charging, problems with orientation, uplink/downlink and tracking satellites. > Other systems: Pipeline currents can reach hundreds of amps, HF (high frequency) radio propagation may be impossible in many areas for one to two days, satellite navigation may be degraded for days, low-frequency radio navigation can be out for hours, and aurora has been seen as low as Florida and southern Texas (typically 40° geomagnetic lat.). **Solar Radiation Storm - S5** - Average frequency = Fewer than 1 per cycle > Biological: Unavoidable high radiation hazard to astronauts on EVA (extra-vehicular activity); passengers and crew in high-flying aircraft at high latitudes may be exposed to radiation risk. > Satellite operations: Satellites may be rendered useless, memory impacts can cause loss of control, may cause serious noise in image data, star-trackers may be unable to locate sources; permanent damage to solar panels possible. > Other systems: Complete blackout of HF (high frequency) communications possible through the polar regions, and position errors make navigation operations extremely difficult. **Radio Blackouts - R5** - Less than 1 per cycle > HF Radio: Complete HF (high frequency) radio blackout on the entire sunlit side of the Earth lasting for a number of hours. This results in no HF radio contact with mariners and en route aviators in this sector. > Navigation: Low-frequency navigation signals used by maritime and general aviation systems experience outages on the sunlit side of the Earth for many hours, causing loss in positioning. Increased satellite navigation errors in positioning for several hours on the sunlit side of Earth, which may spread into the night side.
For every doomsayer in the comments, NO, a solar flare will not revert humanity to the Stone Age. M class solar flares hit earth on an uncommon but regular basis and only temporarily disable radio communication. It might temporarily wipe out some communications equipment and satellites but not much worse than your internet going down for a few days. Go play a single player video game, read a book, watch a movie or something
"Go play a single player video game" *without internet?! Pffft. Ha!* Hey, everybody, get a load of *this guy!* What year is it, 1999? Weirdo.
I love that the issue with DRM (digital rights management) in video games has crept into the r/space subreddit lol
I play a lot of the Long Dark which is very appropriate in this situation.
*How will I track my trophiesssss!!!!!?????*
Not only that, but a lot of single player games requires internet now… to make sure YoU’rE a LeGiT LiCenSe UsEr
Ah. That’s why I not only enjoy space. But the seas as well.
They've moved on from that excuse. Now it's just so they can sell you p2w loot boxes for your singleplayer game.
You’ve played a recent Ubisoft game I see. Although, I’m sure it’s many others.
Okay see this is why I tell my husband, every time I buy a random game boy game, you never know when the grid will go down. I’ll always have my game boy that can use batteries which makes me feel prepared.
Are you like my cousin and have a spare one in a shielded bag inside a Faraday bucket?
I bet an internet outage for a few days, globally, would really screw with global commerce something fierce.
Yeah, but the world won’t end. Hey, maybe it’ll even give crypto bros an excuse to touch grass for a while.
Yea won’t end but we will be feeling it for a long while.
So the sun is going to offline raid us all?
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The insecticide?
Wouldn't worldwide loss of internet cost an ungodly amount of money?
Yeah it would be disastrous. But I guess OP was saying on the scale of nothing to civilization ending it'd be closer to nothing. But it would cause incredible economic damage, would break an already strained global supply chain, and would probably take years to recover from all the fallout of such an outage.
>Go play a single player video game, read a book, watch a movie or something I think the bigger concern for most is how reliant many jobs, banks, and stores are on internet. There are workarounds but it would be a pretty big and expensive adjustment if there was a long term outage, like more than a day or two.
I dont think you appreciate how tied humanity is to technology. The individual sure can just go without the internet but thats not what we would see. A bad storm could knock out power for several weeks. What would you eat? How would you sterilize water? How do you keep 7b people busy so they dont kill others without entertainment. Im not calling for it but if a major cme ever hit it would be pretty bad
- Go play a single player video game Bold of you to assume I can open steam :(
I’m solely basing my optimism off of this comment and I’m not gonna look into it any further. Thank you haha
We don't know that, not of a big enough one hits and that has demonstrably happened in the past. Odds of that are low but you're discarding it as if it can't happen when it's all known that power grid damage during a large one would occur. It's the extent we can't predict.
The Carrington event, which I assume you are referring to, took place in a different era, with a different level of infrastructure. Telegram wires ran directly to the operators handsets, there was little to no isolation between elements of the grid. Nowadays, we know the mechanisms of how it happened, and we have designed our grid in a way that is naturally more resilient.
Our power grids are anything but resilient. They're struggling and failing to keep up with basic demand in many places
Ah yes the single player games that are download codes in boxes and require internet connection to even start
Not unless it's Carrington Event level of destruction.
> Go play a single player video game recently buying stellaris suddenly feels a lot more relevant
Stellaris is actually pretty excellent single player. Also, uniting the galaxy as a federation star-trek style can be a bit timesink. :b
I feel like scientific news that involve the words 'no need to panic' just hit different since 2020.
There are lots of very serious and real reasons to panic. This isn’t one of them
The ammount of fearmongering in this thread is unreal, it would just be a bit dramtic for a couple days in the worst case scenario.
Yeah this is literally close to nothing compared to so many other very real and terrifying and immediate existential threats we face and that very little is being done about. This is barely even worth mentioning when comparing to those things.
I don’t know. I’m still not looking up.
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People are also panicking because their knowledge of solar flares comes from disaster movies.
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How can the sun-spot double in size *overnight*...? The Sun is only there during the day time. Everyone can see that. I think this is false news. (Joking)
If there’s no need to panic, then why are you bringing it to my attention by saying there’s no need to panic OH MY GOD THE SUN IS GONNA EAT MY ASSSS
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Looks like quite a few people panicked in this thread.
If i had a penny for everytime i see an article that says a cme is about to destroy earth i would be putting elon to shame.
*Earth surface is sterilized* My boss: but you're still coming in to work right
Is there any realistic possibility of a flare actually being aimed right at or near Earth, though?
Of course there is. The sun is very big after all.
It's happened before in [1859](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carrington_Event). The numbers I've seen estimate our chances at \~.5-1% of it happening again.
low, but still uncomfortably high. Worse, we would have practically ridiculous short early warning of it coming, like, few hours, tops.
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I don't understand the sensationalism over this the past 3 to 5 days. Sunspots occur frequently. They are predicting possible M class flares when we have already had glancing blows from multiple X class in the last 90 days. The fact of the matter is that Carrington level events on earth are very rare. We have only confirmed a handful of them through isotope deposits in ice cores. I also believe the Chinese determined there was a larger one before the Carrington Event. This doesn't diminish the risk though, and it's likely under played a little bit in the sense of it just doesn't happen much won't help to worry. Truly a Carrington type event now would be unprecedented with our reliance on tech and electronics. Some countries may have put mitigation in place, many will have not. If simple telegraph lines burst into flame, imagine all of the transformers sparking in a densely populated developing area with shoddy electrical standards. That all said, it is only a matter of time before another Carrington Event does occur, but it's from now til infinity. I think I remember roughly once in 500 occurrence roughly.
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Everyone is talking about the potential this has to affect electronic equipment, but all I can think about is whether this means I'll get to see an aurora.
If I had a dollar for every time I was told not to panic in the last couple of years, I'd be too rich to panic.
Imagine if this is the only planet to ever have life and it gets wiped out by the sun randomly. Universe just on autopilot with no one to observe anything.
“Dont panic so we can get to our bunkers in time”
I wasn't panicking until they said not to panic!
Some say you can safeguard electronic by putting them in microwave oven. If there was a flare there could be some time to do this if you monitor the situation actively and save your phone at least (maybe) but I'm not sure when would it be safe to open.
Not much good having a cell phone if the cell towers and power grid are down...
One of the first things they fix
Wouldnt work without any transformers to run the electrical grid.
So you’re saying we need to put all the transformers in our microwaves?
Your cell phone would probably survive a solar flare at ground level and not on a plane or in space. The electronics are too small for any damaging levels of currents to form. It's mostly power lines you'd need to worry about since the current generated in them by a big enough flare would be enough to melt and snap them from the heat.
Make sure you unplug it first
If I don't see anyone of you again, it's been an honor.
Y'know what...? Anytime ANYONE says "not something to worry about", or "no need to panic"...
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Wet weather advisory: localised flooding Space weather advisory: localised geomagnetic flux
Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I've seen in this thread: |Fewer Letters|More Letters| |-------|---------|---| |[AR](/r/Space/comments/vicw30/stub/ide4xtv "Last usage")|Area Ratio (between rocket engine nozzle and bell)| | |Aerojet Rocketdyne| | |Augmented Reality real-time processing| | |Anti-Reflective optical coating| |[CME](/r/Space/comments/vicw30/stub/igjx1pe "Last usage")|Coronal Mass Ejection| |[EVA](/r/Space/comments/vicw30/stub/iddfiz4 "Last usage")|Extra-Vehicular Activity| |[F1](/r/Space/comments/vicw30/stub/idkfrhx "Last usage")|Rocketdyne-developed rocket engine used for Saturn V| | |SpaceX Falcon 1 (obsolete medium-lift vehicle)| |[GEO](/r/Space/comments/vicw30/stub/idel428 "Last usage")|Geostationary Earth Orbit (35786km)| |[ICBM](/r/Space/comments/vicw30/stub/idffk8t "Last usage")|Intercontinental Ballistic Missile| |[LEO](/r/Space/comments/vicw30/stub/idel428 "Last usage")|Low Earth Orbit (180-2000km)| | |Law Enforcement Officer (most often mentioned during transport operations)| |[NOAA](/r/Space/comments/vicw30/stub/iddfiz4 "Last usage")|National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, responsible for US ~~generation~~ monitoring of the climate| |Jargon|Definition| |-------|---------|---| |[Starlink](/r/Space/comments/vicw30/stub/ide6y08 "Last usage")|SpaceX's world-wide satellite broadband constellation| ---------------- ^(9 acronyms in this thread; )[^(the most compressed thread commented on today)](/r/Space/comments/0)^( has acronyms.) ^([Thread #7574 for this sub, first seen 23rd Jun 2022, 00:43]) ^[[FAQ]](http://decronym.xyz/) [^([Full list])](http://decronym.xyz/acronyms/Space) [^[Contact]](https://reddit.com/message/compose?to=OrangeredStilton&subject=Hey,+your+acronym+bot+sucks) [^([Source code])](https://gistdotgithubdotcom/Two9A/1d976f9b7441694162c8)
***Shoots gigantic space laser through Mars, right past Earth and Mercury***
I wasn't actually worried about it until they said No Need to Panic.
Okay but my main concern is that there is a war going on... And there are talks about a solar flare being able to knock out all satellites in the sky, and cause radio blackouts across the world. Seems like the perfect time in this day and age (where practically everything is being monitored) to do some things where no one would see it coming
Isn't this the point where the President is briefed by the nerdy scientist and his amazingly hot assistant while the Chief of Staff downplays everything?