If we could only solve global warming and climate change then we could go back to just worrying about asteroid strikes and supervolcano eruptions as threats to human civilisation. Or so I thought. But consider this:
In September of 1859, the entire Earth was engulfed in a gigantic cloud of seething gas, and a blood-red aurora erupted across the planet from the poles to the tropics. Around the world, telegraph systems crashed, machines burst into flames, and electric shocks rendered operators unconscious. Compasses and other sensitive instruments reeled as if struck by a massive magnetic fist. For the first time, people began to suspect that the Earth was not isolated from the rest of the universe. However, nobody knew what could have released such strange forces upon the Earth–nobody, that is, except the amateur English astronomer Richard Carrington.
That’s how Stuart Clark describes the Carrington event, after the astronomer who nutted out what was going on during eight days of chaos way back in 1859. Now the New Scientist has told us that we should start worrying again.
The surface of the sun is a roiling mass of plasma – charged high-energy particles – some of which escape the surface and travel through space as the solar wind. From time to time, that wind carries a billion-tonne glob of plasma, a fireball known as a coronal mass ejection (see When hell comes to Earth). If one should hit the Earth’s magnetic shield, the result could be truly devastating.
As a result the copper wire within the transformers in our electricity grids would simply melt within 90 seconds. The impact in the US is shown on this map:
Obviously lights, electrical heating and cooling would go. So would water instantly where it has to be pumped into high rise buildings. But it would cease to flow everywhere within a day. Electrified transport would stop, but remember also that no-one could fill their vehicles at a service station either. Hospitals would cease to operate after their emergency generators ran out of fuel, assuming that the staff turned up for work. Food distribution, along with waste removal and sewerage would be a problem.
The article then cheerfully tells us that transformers could not be easily replaced because we don’t have stacks of them in store and they normally take a year or more to make.
The result?
A year later and millions of Americans are dead and the nation’s infrastructure lies in tatters. The World Bank declares America a developing nation. Europe, Scandinavia, China and Japan are also struggling to recover from the same fateful event – a violent storm, 150 million kilometres away on the surface of the sun.
The article was based on a NASA funded National Acadamy of Sciences report issued in January.
The New Scientist editorial says that we and indeed our politicians should worry. Even if a full-scale disaster does not occur the sun is entering a more active phase and “worsening space weather is likely to cause GPS failures on a weekly basis” over coming years.
We do have one aged satellite sitting out there between us and the sun to give 15-45 minutes warning of any incoming geomagnetic disturbances. 15 minutes is what is required to prepare electricity grids for such disturbances. It’s just that the big one, the one that matters, would come way faster than that.
Well that took my mind off the GFC.
Basically such an event would send us back to a mechanical world to start all over again. Most jobs would be redundant and the farmers the new squires.
I would assume weapon systems would also be broken thus super powers not so super.
Time to find a quiet little plot of land with some chickens and veges, far from the maddening crowd.
Madding. But yours still makes a lot of sense.
BBB
Thomas Paine, I assume military hardware would be the most resilient – superpowers have been worried about EMP weapons for a long time, and likely have a good proportion of their systems hardened against such an event. It’s possible only the superpowers have any real protection, and so the plasma would do most damage to lesser militaries, and thus widen the power gap, not lessen it.
I was thinking a few months food supply in store and the capacity to grow our own. It’s not very likely but if it did happen you’d think there would be social breakdown and millions of deaths.
@BBB – no, I agree with Thomas, the “maddening” crowd.
Start saving seeds, install a tank if you haven’t already.
It may amaze you all to know that there is only one type of electrical transmission system that is (most likely) immune to such a disturbance. The Huggybunny global underground and sea High Voltage DC power transmission system.
It is a serious problem, a small disturbance in 1989 took out part of the Quebec power system.
Interestingly, the telegraph systems in the 19Th century were able to operate without batteries during solar storms- at least until they too were damaged.
The damage caused to the High Voltage AC transmission systems from a big solar storm would be immense. They would simply explode and burn up along the entire length of the afflicted system.
This is an entertaining account of the consequences:
http://sunearth.gsfc.nasa.gov/sechtml/storms.html
Huggy
Oh my god – the end of blogging as we know it.
Don’t forget about wind.
I’m training my pigeon now Bernice.
Yes, but how can we blame neoliberals for this?
Actually, PC, a wind generator like that, if it still produces AC power, would be toast just like any other appliance in a corona storm. The propellers might keep turning, but as for the transformer, don’t stand near it during the storm unless you like loud noises and you feel you’ve got too many fingers.
Sorry, there’s no avoiding the cold hard fact that we are all hopelessly doomed. UTTERLY HOPELESSLY DOOMED.
PC – dunno if the copper coils in turbines will be any less prone to melting than those in transformers. I guess it’s probably thicker wire, but still…
Appropriately (or is it ironically) enough, it might only be solar PV that would survive. No coils, and good honest DC current.
Better train more than one, Helen. You might need to eat them.
My first thought on reading this story was ’1859, eh — I wonder what Dickens said.’ He would have had a pithy remark for the occasion, I’m sure, and he loved this kind of stuff.
Blaming the neo-libs? neo-libs = electricity privatisation = obscene chase for profits =inability to create infrastructure to withstand solar storm ’cause business won’t spend any money on it = solar storm destroys modern world as we know it.Easy, Required @ 11.
Liam wrote:
Not me. I have a backup plan
Last night I didn’t google other sources. Wikipedia has the information under Geomagnetic storm. It seems, Helen, that the pigeons lose their sense of direction!
It’s not too good for satellites or astronauts in space. Lethal for both, it seems.
There’s more here from NASA. It seems that as far as can be told, and they really don’t have enough information, that these things may show up every 500 years on average. Carrington in 1859 is said to be nearly double the next most severe in the past 500 years.
For such severe event that’s disturbingly frequent.
I’m wondering whether there would be any damage to transformers if the power was turned off. If not our best bet may be earlier warning systems, and back up beyond one aging satellite. Would we be OK if we put everything underground (huge expense)?
PC, I believe there is an incredible story about how Carrington discovered what was going on and what happened to him then. I did hear it at some length a couple of years ago on the radio, but can’t remember the detail.
Good work, Brian.
I knew that if I lurked long enough, I would see the words plasma, solar wind, solar plasma here at LP.
But what a horrid prospect. It’s one thing to enjoy reading about the astrophysics of the solar corona, solar photosphere, sunspots, filaments, Alfven waves, solar wind when the Sun’s surface is quiescent or mildly active.
I never thought this physics could link to a planetary catastrophe. So thank you very much!!
Well, Lurker, I tend to specialise in the scary stuff. So the pleasure is mine, as it were!
Bugger. No more internet then?
So…I shouldn’t sign up for that tempting 24-month mobile plan then?
Mercurius, the lesson is that you should sign up for it, especially if you can’t afford it. As the TISM song goes:
I suspect that the only reason hospital generators might survive is that they’re typically in the basement of reinforced concrete buildings so they’ll be somewhat shielded. A generator is just an electric motor, so anything that destroys ones will destroy the other. Likewise, HVDC systems generally use transformers on the AC sides (at each end) and if they go you’ve lost the link. Not to mention that they’re only useful if something is generating power to feed through them.
Having a CME hit the earth today would be interesting in terms of what electrical stuff survives. I’m betting that quite a lot of small, simpler stuff will survive, possibly including some non-obvious stuff like cellphones – they might just be too small to generate enough voltage to cause a problem.
The good thing is that my bicycle would survive, so I’d still have transport.
MOZ, The geomagnetic storms produce large dc currents in transmission lines and distribution systems. These current saturate the transformers and generators that are connected to the transmission lines and the distribution system and can also cause flash-overs on the line insulators. Its not so much the energy from the geomagnetics that is the problem it is the dc that saturates the inductive components and the energy in the system itself fries the components.
Dc transmission is already designed to cope with dc current (how amazing) so it is less sensitive to saturation effects. However you are correct about the interface transformers, they could saturate.
Hospital generators will survive as they are normally disconnected from the hospital distribution system and switched off.
There are measures that can be taken to protect transformers but transmission lines are another order of magnitude more difficult.
Serious consideration is being given to dc distribution systems by groups within the power industry. It has a number of advantages; not the least being that it can be reticulated underground with very low losses and the intrinsic efficiency is higher than AC.
Huggy
I am glad someone also mentioned supervolcanoes. These are what we really need to worry about, and most of us will be well and truly cactus when one blows its top; and it wont be a pretty end either.
Here’s another take on this topic.
And here’s your perfect site, Brian, though I’m sure you’re quite aware of all of the scenarios therein.
For up-to-date reports on the space weather over Australia, see:
http://www.ips.gov.au/Space_Weather
Though what they really need is a single threat level, which they can set to “high” and then forget about.
Paul @ 26. Coincidently I have just borrowed book 3 in this series, from the library. Really enjoyed the first two. In that scenario we(planet earth) had plenty of warning and was able to set up the solar shields.
Thanks Brian, scary, but interesting.
Thanks, folks. It’s a wonderful thing, teh internets and blogging. You get so much back. So enjoy it while we can.
Closer to home, I’ve had a smaller catastrophe, not terminal but annoying. I had a bit of a prang in my old ute on Monday and the buggers won’t repair it. Not worth it, they say. So now I have to go and find a new secondhand ute!
I thought the nano-machines are going to turn us into grey goo within 20 minutes of something.
Thanks Brian, the purchase of a rural bolt hole with purpose built fall-out shelter, solar panel/windmill and lots of tinned food has jumped a few places on the to-do list.
With lots of guns and ammo of course, to keep out them pesky city types who wouldn’t listen!!!
Meh. I’d rather worry about something we can influence, viz, global warming.
If this shit happens, it happens.
Brian@30 – bugger!
But Lefty, the fun of this is to worrying about what you cant do nuttin about! That’s why I’m glad Brain mentioned supervolcanoes. It doesn’t matter how much I try to make people take the threat posed by then seriously no one does!
What I’ve learnt from this is that there is a lot of serious things around that could completely screw up life as we know it (including global warming), however worrying about it aint gonna change it. We can, however, as you indicate, try and do our own little bit to change what we can- save worrying for the things we can’t change.
Actually I’ve had a half-finished draft of a post on supervolcanos in the bin for ages. Bugger global warming, I think I’ll have to dig it out and finish it.
You beauty Brian!
jo @ 33, thanks, it’s a bit exciting. I’m letting my fingers do the walking on the internet today.
@ 31, growing up under the shadow of the bomb in the 50s and 60s, living in Brisbane I used to mentally work on a plan B in case civilisation was wiped out and Brisbane was left standing. I reckoned we could just about walk to the old farm, only 400 km away.
Then my brother sold it and moved north of Rockhampton…
Right – Moz @ 23 – you’re the hope and future of the blogsphere. When it happens, you’ve got to get on that bike, delivering those – what are they called? Those bits of paper with writing on them? Letters?
btw, about a week or so ago we just got missed by a very, very large piece of space rock.Just sayin’.