What Damage Would the Carrington Event Cause Today?
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- Опубликовано: 21 сен 2024
- The aurorae in early 2024 were beautiful, but sunspots also have a small chance each year to do major damage to our energy grid and satellites. An event like this occurred in 1859 and was known as the Carrington Event.
So I’m an electrical engineer and work for a major electric company in the US. Most developed countries have invested a significant amount of money into hardening their infrastructure against electromagnetic radiation be that from solar radiation or a man made emp. For the US grid, it would take a major major solar storm (at least 10x but realistically more like 50-100x worse than the carrington event), a once in 10,000-1,000,000ish year storm to cause catastrophic damage to the modern grid. Not only that, but electric companies regularly have trainings often in conjunction with the government/military preparing for restoring the grid after major disasters such as a nuclear attack or solar storm. So if there was a solar storm big enough to cause major issues with the grid there would be other things to worry about, primarily the atmospheric/biological impacts of a storm like this.
As far as satellites go, I’m not super familiar with them, but I am pretty sure that modern critical satellites are pretty well protected.
So far as household and small electronics like cell phones and vehicles. It’s really hard to say with certainty, but tests generally show that the electromagnetic radiation rarely causes disabling level damage to these types of systems. Any damage would likely be sporadic and dependent on a lot of factors
I'm encouraged but surprised to hear this, as it doesn't match my understanding based on my reading. These are two papers which informed my views about how much damage a modern Carrington event would cause. The first finds damage to be likely, while the second is perhaps a little more moderate. If you have any go-to references that show we are reasonably well prepared, I'd be eager to see them and update my views.
agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1029/2019GL086524
www.researchgate.net/profile/Hugh-Hill-3/publication/339995038_International_Legal_and_Ethical_Issues_of_a_Future_Carrington_Event_Existing_Frameworks_Shortcomings_and_Recommendations/links/5f4e551592851c250b853019/International-Legal-and-Ethical-Issues-of-a-Future-Carrington-Event-Existing-Frameworks-Shortcomings-and-Recommendations.pdf
I think the last solar flare that hit a week ago was the same intensity as a carrington event. Guess we were prepared :/
That doesn't match my understanding. The sunspot that caused last weeks event was the same size as the one that caused the Carrington event, but the energy released was significantly less.
Wouldn't cause any dmg to humans but is the equivalent of a high altitude detonation of an EMP
That's right, no direct damage to humans, but the indirect effects could be harmful!
Fearmongering behind science isn't something I'm a fan of personally.
The chances of an event like the Carrington event mentioned is next to nil. The solar patterns we're seeing aren't special or unique, and in fact based on previous 11 year cycles (which is how often the sun goes through periods of high and low activity) this year has been comparatively low in severity and there's no reason to expect any unusual activity.
Could something like the Carrington event happen again? Sure - but the odds are astronomically (quite literally) low since the polar fields have to be aligned in a specific manner, a CME roughly 10x larger than a typical massive CME would have to occur and we would have to be in the path. The odds of such a CME happening is already very low, but being in it's path considering the size and location of the earth around the sun is incredibly low too.
Most of these are just clickbait and honestly, I'm kind of getting tired of it. I mean no disrespect to the poster but if they're really a scientist then they should know these things which makes this even worse.
What do you espect from a channel called "vegan space scientist"?..
Thank you for sharing, I appreciate your candor. I take your point, but I'm hoping to ask which part of the video you found fearmongering, besides perhaps my "I don't mean to sound alarming" opening, which is intentionally vague to hook people regretfully.
As I say in the video, an estimate for the likelihood of a Carrington level event is 0.1% per year, but I do believe that unlikely events of a certain magnitude are worth paying more attention to.
I used this study from 2019 as the basis for this, which estimates 0.92% likelihood over 10 years (0.092% or ~0.1% per year). www.nature.com/articles/s41598-019-38918-8
Note another study from 2020 claims 0.7% chance per year, but I went with the lower one. agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1029/2019GL086524
I hope this doesn't come across as too defensive. Naturally as a scientist I care about my academic rigour, which includes finding out when I get stuff wrong or am too clickbaity.
Edit to add: I do agree that most videos on this topic are clicbait, misleading, and fearmongering, which is why I tried to communicate about this without being misleading. If I missed the mark, I am humbled and chagrined.
@@spacescienceguy "academic rigor" "I'm not fearmongering"
Puts spooky soundtrack.
LoL
@@gautiergueguen I take your point. There's a tension between being rigorous and actually being able to get people to engage with your video and learn, especially for platforms like RUclips and Tiktok. My hope is that the soundtrack and opening lines gets people to stop, but then the content of the video speaks for itself and is as accurate and measured as possible.
@@gautiergueguen Hopefully some stuff about space science and some stuff about veganism!
As I publish this, NASA has detected a new coronal mass ejection that is either heading directly towards Earth or directly away, and they can't tell yet. Hopefully it's not too big and we just get some nice aurorae.
just a few hours for an epic storm is totally enough time to send broadcasts all over the world to shut things down and disconnect grids. we have the internet now for this, we didn't back then. we'll be fine.
this is an event that will affect all devices regardless whether the are turned on. It puts charge on disconnected devices.
Yes, the internet will allow communication but we still need plans for such an event because no government can react this quickly.
@@bFix i already watched this happen with radio towers and the most recent massive geomagnetic storm. they were shut down to prevent damage. also in terms of grid and damage, lots of the grid is enclosed in a Faraday cage, so damage depends on whether or not they still have massive antennas attached to them (transmission lines).
So are we at very likely for this to happen don’t forget the last flare narrowly missed earth
0.1% chance per year is the best estimate for a Carrington level event. I'm guessing you're referring to the huge CME that narrowly missed us in 2012? That probably would have been Carrington level event.
The question I don't know the answer to though, is how often do large CME's or flares 'narrowly' miss us? If you follow mainstream news, you'll see a headline along the lines of 'Asteroid narrowly misses Earth' once a year or so, only to read that it passed somewhere between the Earth and the moon. So I don't really know how to reconcile these two points.