The Carrington Event of 1859 disrupted telegraph lines

https://daily.jstor.org/the-carrington-event-of-1859-disrupted-telegraph-lines/

by Thevet • 3 years ago

168 150 3 years ago

daily.jstor.org

HerculePoirot2• 3 years ago

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/3165629_Characteris...

I'm reading this critical analysis of it (2013):

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/292848789_Geometry_...

The interpretation of individual rock art images and related art forms as local perspectives on a single celestial phenomenon requires a determination of scale, perspective, and temporal evolution. Peratt interpreted dotted circles and concentric circles as bottom-up renditions of a diocotron instability affecting the hollow outer sheets of the z-pinch (Peratt 2003:1209–1210,1212), while he derived ‘ladders’, ‘caterpillars’, ‘birds on sticks’, ‘squattermen’, ‘Kokopelli’, and many other forms from instabilities in the solid inner core of the lower segment of the auroral beam, viewed sideways or at an oblique angle (Peratt 2003:1193–1205). So far, so good— the matches between these respective instabilities and their petroglyphic correlates are indeed compelling. Problems appear when the geographic distribution of such designs is taken into account.

xattt• 3 years ago

I’m trying to understand what kind of phenomenon beams a column of light into the sky from the South Pole. I can understand auroral curtains, but a cylinder beam sounds far-fetched.

michaelsbradley• 3 years ago

Birkeland current

klondike_klive• 3 years ago

Peratt interpreted dotted circles and concentric circles as bottom-up renditions of a diocotron instability affecting the hollow outer sheets of the z-pinch

I love this sentence. I am pretty inarticulate in person, sometimes I fantasise myself delivering lines like this in a hastily erected mobile command centre.

"In English, please, professor?" growls a FBI agent. My acolyte pushes their glasses up "uh... uh... if you consider these petroglyphs as a correlate of an instability in the solid inner core of the lower segment of the auroral-" the FBI agent pinches his temples and rounds on the eager young researcher, "You better start making sense, pencil-neck!"

I step gently in between them "In simple terms, we're talking about... a Miyake Event."

ambicapter• 3 years ago

You're just a screenplay away from playing your dream self in a movie.

HerculePoirot2• 3 years ago

Got some more for you:

https://meetings.aps.org/Meeting/DPP21/Session/JP11.15

Since cosmic rays are unaffected by the galaxy’s gravity, they increase the buoyancy of the ISM. However, the cosmic ray fluid has a finite compressibility, increasing the energy required to form valleys. Linear theory suggests this compressibility dominates buoyancy, suppressing the instability.
To address this counterintuitive result, we run local simulations of injections of cosmic ray pressure in the galactic disk. This assumes a supernova as the source. If this physically motivated perturbation creates buoyant magnetic flux tubes, then it is likely the Parker instability can develop in the ISM even if instability criteria from linear theory are not met.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nova#Recurrent_nova

https://www.syfy.com/syfy-wire/bad-astronomy-a-micronova-is-...

ankitg12• 3 years ago

This does sound quite scary and impact of such a even would cross the impact what COVID-19 had on all of us.

hunter2_• 3 years ago

In some respects it would have an opposite effect: no more Zoom calls; if you want contact with someone, go out and find them.

Seems like it could require additional police presence, and they'll find it difficult to be effective without radios. We will need to look at centuries-old playbooks for virtually all aspects of life, temporarily. Hoaxes will spread without rapid fact checking.

graemep• 3 years ago

It would also lead to the collapse of vital systems: transport, utilities, payments....

Hoaxes will spread without rapid fact checking.

They already do. I think you have found the silver lining: hoaxes will spread a lot slower.

martinclayton• 3 years ago

If these events associate with solar motion through the local interstellar cloud perhaps the onset will take a while, and that will allow for some mitigations to be made, even if there is no way to predict when that might happen.

... what if one of the Voyager spacecraft is heading in the "right" direction to see something ...

denton-scratch• 3 years ago

and in the event we would lose the data almost as soon as we had found it.

Why? I suppose because the equipment to capture the data is electrical (or electronic).

But given that a Miyake Event is something that's never been observed, even using non-electrical detectors, I don't see why ordinary optical detectors (e.g. eyes) couldn't capture at least a lot of useful data. And if we can make detectors that work in the environment of the LHC, surely we can make detectors that are screened against a solar storm.

forgetfreeman3• 3 years ago

What is technically possible and what actually gets done bear very little relation.

dskrepps• 3 years ago

I've wondered for a while. Lots of people seem to think a Carrington Event will simply fry all small electronics and make everything stop working, but from my understanding all it'll actually do is cause power surges in long transmission lines and disrupt wireless signals. Apparently telegraph lines sparked and shocked people. So what effect will that actually have now? Will a massive power surge go through my house and destroy everything plugged in, and thus indirectly my desktop computer? Will every house on the grid catch fire, destroying all modern cities? Or will substations and transformers be destroyed but shield homes themselves from catastrophic damage? Will wildfires destroy every forest anywhere near modern infrastructure?

Turskarama8• 3 years ago

The big risk is a bunch of transformers blow up, essentially taking the grid down. Since we would have to bootstrap the grid again without the advantage of the grid... this would likely set civilization back pretty far, a new dark age is far from impossible.

hparadiz2• 3 years ago

From my understanding it mostly effects large pieces of metal like copper lines but would be unlikely to create a significant charge in small electronics and wouldn't destroy solar panels or the vast majority of components. Any transformer pieces that are in a disassembled state prior to the event would be easy to put together and bootstrap any such event. Some locations like inside concrete buildings or under ground would remain insulated from the event as well. Also it's likely that at the equator no effect will be felt.

dividedbyzero2• 3 years ago

Aren't transformers protected from this sort of thing nowadays?

Cthulhu_3• 3 years ago

a new dark age is far from impossible.

Nah, it's just transformers and the power grid, that can be fixed pretty quickly - see the response after natural disasters, Ukraine's power grid being directly attacked, etc.

The only limiting factor would be the availability of spare parts and personnel.

borbulon2• 3 years ago

having lived in the tech age, I'm not completely against that idea.

AtlasBarfed2• 3 years ago

Sooo.... widespread rooftop solar would probably help the resilience of at least domestic power?

Aardwolf2• 3 years ago

Since we would have to bootstrap the grid again without the advantage of the grid

That sounds exactly like what happens in the game Satisfactory when your nuclear power plant got clogged and you only find out when it's too late!

hattmall• 3 years ago

Don't modern transformers have surge decoupling devices? The same thing happens with lightning and long transmission lines and isn't that why lights will flicker during storms.

ianburrell3• 3 years ago

I read that it is fairly easy to protect equipment by grounding it. But that requires properly grounding lots of gear, and the power companies aren't willing to spend the money.

Also, the Carrington event has plenty of notice before arrives at Earth. It would be possible to shut down the grid, and maybe disconnect all the transformers. It would require a cold start, but better to shutdown for a day than forever. The problem is that this requires the power companies to practice for a shutdown and cold start.

rootusrootus2• 3 years ago

Fixing the transformers would be the difficult part. Restarting a completely blacked out grid is a scenario we have plans for. Off the top of my head, I know for sure that Bonneville Dam has black start turbines, and I wouldn't be at all surprised if all major hydroelectric dams provide the same ability.

zikduruqe• 3 years ago

This will be the most probably scenario based on this book which as based on an EMP, but regardless the same outcome - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One_Second_After

Then you will probably want have - https://www.howtoinventeverything.com

xrd• 3 years ago

After reading your summary, I'm thinking this might be the only way to get my kids to take a break from their iPads for a few days. That is terrifying and exciting at the same time.

kjkjadksj2• 3 years ago

I had lightning hit the pole near my house. Anything with a circuit board that was not on a surge protector died.

Qem• 3 years ago

The weak link in our electric grid are power transformers, because these are large, essential, long operational life equipment, whose inventory grew slowly over a century of electrification efforts. So if a large number of them blows at the same time, it takes the grid down and we don't have enough spares or production capacity to replace them timely.

Amapa state in Brazil got a taste of such disaster scenario, when the local electricity company was privatizated and management decided to eliminate redundancy and cut costs on maintenance to increase profit margins. The main transformer catched fire and no replacement or backup were available and the region endured weeks without power. See https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2020/12/18/the-crisis-in-...

cjohnson318• 3 years ago

Wow. That's exactly the sort of busted-bottleneck situation I was worried about during Covid. I'm used to hurricanes knocking out water and/or power for a few days, but a month is insane. There's no way a normal person with a normal amount of money and space can "prep" to live off-grid for a month. Part of the social contract is that you trade taxes in return for not having to worry about this kind of shit.

jcalvinowens• 3 years ago

DC current on long transmission lines saturates mains transformer cores, turning the high voltage primary into a short circuit at the peaks of the "unlucky" side of the AC waveform.

https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9652509

When CMEs strike the magnetic field of the Earth which provides protection against the fast-moving plasma becomes compressed and results in a varying magnetic field on the ground. This magnetic field variation generates a geoelectric field on the Earth’s surface and leads to Geomagnetically Induced Current flow through man-made technology. This GIC exhibits a very low-frequency quasi-Direct Current (DC) (less than 1 Hz) with amplitudes of 10–15 A and up to 300 A peak current for 1–2 minutes that flows along conductors and technological infrastructure. The power transformers which are connected by transmission lines are the most affected by GIC events. The GIC enters from the neutral ground point of the star-connected (wye) transformer windings and divides equally among the phases. When the GIC flows through the transformer windings, a DC magnetic flux is generated in the core, whose magnitude depends on the GIC flow magnitude. This DC flux is then superimposed on the AC flux in such a way that the asymmetrical saturation takes place in the magnetic cores of the transformers (half-cycle saturation) and increases their reactive power consumptions critically.
During saturation phenomenon, transformers draw an extremely large asymmetrical exciting distorted current that is rich in even and odd harmonics. These harmonics can trigger the relays improperly, overheating the generators and transformer’s windings and cores, leading to unstable operations of the power system and could result in long-term damage to the system’s components. These effects may turn into catastrophic failures (i.e., permanent damage or blackouts) if they persist for a few minutes. The 1989 geomagnetic storm in North America that lead to severe economic losses is an example of such catastrophic consequence due to the effects of GIC.

stareatgoats• 3 years ago

Good grief. Here is a thread of currently 58 comments (off the back of a erstwhile top comment no doubt) talking about the effects of a Carrington event. And granted, this is what is mentioned in the title here. But you just need to click on the article title to see that the title continues, with "A “Miyake Event” Would Be Far Worse", and the article goes on to explain how a Miyake event is orders of magnitude worse than a Carrington event.

One may conclude that if our modern society gets hit with such an event it's likely game over, at least as far as modernity is concerned.

That be as it may - this is the second time in a few days that I experience a severe and disappointing lack of interest in the actual linked text. A downside of the karma/gamification aspect here? Is it getting worse?

darklycan51• 3 years ago

It would be the equivalent of doing an EMP strike by detonating a nuke above a city, but worldwide... it would be bad, lots of casualties from lack of energy.

I do believe we are in urgent need to have some way of printing all code, including legacy of basically any consumer and industrial program, because were it to hit, even with everyone today surviving and writing in plain text what they know, we'd be lacking decades of software, that most modern day programmers would have very little idea on how to emulate, at least quickly enough.

Archelaos• 3 years ago

Consequently, more radiocarbon is packed into a single growth ring, and scientists can determine the exact year that ring was built. They can then count to the outer ring of the tree to know the year that it died.

The article somewhat confused the details. To determine the exact year the ring was built (and subsequently year the tree died) scientists look at the growth pattern of the surrounding rings and compare them with a reference data set of ring width of the same tree species in the same (wider) area. This works even if the outer ring is not present. The outer ring is only relevant if we want to determine the exact year a tree had been cut down, which is important for archaeology but not to establish the date of the Miyake event in the first place.

... providing definitive evidence that the Vikings beat Columbus to North America.
... The researchers speculated that the settlement was built sometime near the end of the first millennium

This was no "speculation", but has already been established as a fact for decades with the excavation of the settlement of L’Anse aux Meadows itself in the early 1960s. Tree ring dating only helped to identify the specific date of the settlement in the already established time frame, because the only fitting Miyake event was that of 992/993. (The article mentions this, but the chain of reasoning is not really accurate.)

The problem with determining the exact date of the settlement without the reference to the Miyake event was that we do not have a reference record for the tree rings at this site, as this requires an uninterrupted record of overlapping trees from the present back to the Viking Age for these particular timber species in the area.

This could perhaps been established with a lot of effort over the years, but with the Miyake events we have indeed a very interesting method to compile reference records even without a complete reference record to the present. However, it still remains uncertain, for example, to which Miyake event a particular piece of wood should be attributed without much context, whether we already know all the Miyake events of the last couple of millennia, and whether another, more local event could have led to a carbon-14 value that could be confused with a global Miyake event.

rwmj3• 3 years ago

Astronauts would undoubtedly receive lethal doses of radiation, and even people on board airplanes could encounter dangerous levels.

It sounds like a more immediate problem would be that all aircraft and spacecraft electronic systems would fail permanently? They wouldn't need to worry about the radiation doses.

arrowsmith• 3 years ago

Don't modern passenger jets have some kind of failsafe way they could still be controlled and landed safely if the electronics fail? I would assume they do. But then I know nothing whatsoever about aircraft safety and am only speculating.

lxgr3• 3 years ago

Modern fly-by-wire systems often don’t have a mechanic backup, and even for mechanically controlled ones (like the B737) I wouldn’t be too sure if they’d fare that well without any electronic controls.

But it’s not a given that an event of this type would even disrupt electronics not connected to the power grid. Even the longest possible line in an airplane is only on the order of a couple of meters, compared to thousands of kilometers for power and communication lines.

rwmj3• 3 years ago

Even in older jets the engines are controlled by electronic management units which take an electrical input from the throttle and decide how to turn that into valve actuations. There's a question (see sibling answer) about whether such electronics and wires are really vulnerable - maybe it only affects kilometers long runs - but if it is then I couldn't see the jet being flyable.

beerandt• 3 years ago

Electrically, I'd think the Faraday protection would be similar to current airplane lightning strikes. Ie, mostly survivable, if not damage free.

xvilka• 3 years ago

It's possible to build shielded (up to a certain point of course) electronics and power grids, it's just a lot of work and money. Ideally, all new devices, grid lines, transformers should be made with at least some level of protection from those events. In a few decades world will not be a sitting duck anymore if follow this strategy.

Cthulhu_3• 3 years ago

The power grid does have protections already - surge protectors, breakers, redunancy, etc. There's many possible sources for power surges. There's protections in place, contingency plans, 24/7 on-call fast response staff, spares, etc.

Of course, that's all contingent on budgeting, which is why it's important that governments invest and keep investing in infrastructure.

djmips• 3 years ago

I have a surge suppresor in the 15 year old power bar that feeds my computer so I'm set.

b800h• 3 years ago

If these Miyake events were so spectacular, why do they not appear in the historical record? I appreciate that 774 was in the "dark ages" but something as impressive as the Carrington event would appear in some chronicles, surely?

EDIT: Sorry, checked Wikipedia:

"Annus Domini (the year of the Lord) 774. This year the Northumbrians banished their king, Alred, from York at Easter-tide; and chose Ethelred, the son of Mull, for their lord, who reigned four winters. This year also appeared in the heavens a red crucifix, after sunset; the Mercians and the men of Kent fought at Otford; and wonderful serpents were seen in the land of the South-Saxons. — Anglo-Saxon Chronicle[9]"

rwmj3• 3 years ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/774%E2%80%93775_carbon-14_spik...

tomjakubowski2• 3 years ago

Some random Australian gold prospector wrote about his experience (quoting Wikipedia):

Lights of every imaginable color were issuing from the southern heavens, one color fading away only to give place to another if possible more beautiful than the last, the streams mounting to the zenith, but always becoming a rich purple when reaching there, and always curling round, leaving a clear strip of sky, which may be described as four fingers held at arm's length.

The northern side from the zenith was also illuminated with beautiful colors, always curling round at the zenith, but were considered to be merely a reproduction of the southern display, as all colors south and north always corresponded.

It was a sight never to be forgotten, and was considered at the time to be the greatest aurora recorded [...].

The rationalist and pantheist saw nature in her most exquisite robes, recognising, the divine immanence, immutable law, cause, and effect. The superstitious and the fanatical had dire forebodings, and thought it a foreshadowing of Armageddon and final dissolution.

Maybe it's just survivor bias but: crikey! People could really write back then!

snypher• 3 years ago

But this was not in reference to the 774AD event surely! Do you have a citation for the above quote?

Edit: you probably meant the Carrington event, I am starting my next coffee now.

Maultasche• 3 years ago

It would be the "dark ages" in Europe, but not in China. It was also during a time of scholarship and observation in the Islamic world. If it was observed, I would have expected it to be mentioned by Islamic astronomers. Perhaps it was.

mensetmanusman• 3 years ago

It’s interesting, considering that this is very likely in humanity’s future. Probably long after these HN comments, but it will happen, and unless our future ancestors are amazing planners, it may end up being one of the most disruptive events in human civilization.

I wonder if an architecture like micro grids per city block running on small fusion or fission reactors 1000 years from now would protect them, however.

dividedbyzero2• 3 years ago

As far as Carrington-like events are concerned I believe consensus is that most equipment and electronics would be fine, satellites would take damage, radio communication would be out, the electrical grid would go down and be hard to restart, but at least the most important grid transformers would be protected and survive the event, as would cars, computers and machinery. Would a Miyazake event change that meaningfully? Can we know for sure?

api2• 3 years ago

If they are many times larger it sounds like they could be more like an EMP from a thermonuclear bomb.

Looks like they happen on average every few thousand years. We really should be looking at how we recover from such an event, and whether we can do things in the design of power grids to minimize damage.

If there were humans living on the Moon or Mars these seem like they could be even more fatal unless they were living underground.

Given how profoundly useful and powerful electronics are, perhaps events like this are why electricity and electronics are not used at large scale by organic life. Have you ever wondered why humans and other life forms are so unaffected by EM that we can subject ourselves to things like MRI scans without even noticeable effects? Maybe there has been selection against anything that is vulnerable to EM because every few thousand years anything else is culled.

nicoburns• 3 years ago

Electricity is used widely by organic life: it’s a key mechanism by which nerves and neurons function.

jron• 3 years ago

I think this is the key takeaway for me at least. If we don't blow ourselves up first, the sun will basically blast us into the stone-age every 6000 years at best or 200 years at worst.

ianburrell3• 3 years ago

Electronics should be fine from solar flares and EMP. The confusion about electronics being damaged comes from nearby and high-altitude EMP behaving differently. Nearby EMP damages electronics. High-altitude EMP induces current in long conductors. Solar flares behave similarly to high-altitude EMP, but whole hemisphere.

Aerbil3132• 3 years ago

Do you know the amount of hours into grid breakdown before widespread lawlessness begin?

My memory is not very clear, but I remember it was around 48 hrs.

shitstorms2• 3 years ago

One of the more likely black swan events that has the potential to cause global upheaval. Quite a bit of data now from other solar systems in terms of likelihood of these events. So far it looks like it is slightly more likely to occur in the ramp up stage of a cycle, not at the very peak.

We would most likely see a very large sunspot(s) days before the event and have 10-15 hours to take action, decoupling transformers etc, but the effects would be massive nonetheless.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/July_2012_solar_storm

https://spaceweatherarchive.com/2023/06/06/how-big-was-carri...

Georgelemental• 3 years ago

It's not a black swan if there are historical examples, is it?

shitstorms2• 3 years ago

That's true. More of a grey swan if it has to be a bird.

bigyax2• 3 years ago

A 1 percent chance of happening in the next decade. It's the inevitability of it that's most terrifying, society will fundamentally collapse, there's no way we could prepare for how rapidly our lives would be changed, and absolutely nothing we can do to to stop it.

Only hope is that for when it happens it's far enough down the road for technology to have adapted to bring enough resiliency and/or redundancy into the grid such that we are not so completely vulnerable

namlem• 3 years ago

We could decouple transformers to stop them from being destroyed. Wiring is easy to repair, it's the transformers that are vulnerable.

bigyax2• 3 years ago

That would certainly be the most immediate mitigation strategy. I wonder though would there be enough time? Would it be possible to isolate the transformers so completely such that they would not be affected by an event of this magnitude

pixl9710• 3 years ago

We 'could' at least in theory. The actual response I expect is something closer to "don't look up"

delfinom2• 3 years ago

As long as it kills cryptocurrencies, I'm more than happy to live without electricity.

dwaltrip• 3 years ago

Are you willing to living without food?

alted• 3 years ago

The probability may actually be much higher: about 12% per decade for a -850mT event; 1.5% for -1700mT [1].

Wikipedia estimates the Carrington was anywhere from -800 to -1750 [2].

[1] "On the probability of occurrence of extreme space weather events", Pete Riley, 2012, doi:10.1029/2011SW000734

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carrington_Event

uoaei• 3 years ago

What can be done to mitigate such effects in pre-2000 ICE vehicles? Would lead-acid batteries succumb to a violent death if subject to such a storm? Would the wires fry or would the chassis-as-capacitor smooth out the effect?

housebear• 3 years ago

Check out A Canticle for Leibowitz for an entertaining (and often depressing) read on life restarting after an extinction event. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Canticle_for_Leibowitz

"Set in a Catholic monastery in the desert of the southwestern United States after a devastating nuclear war, the book spans thousands of years as civilization rebuilds itself. The monks of the Albertian Order of Leibowitz preserve the surviving remnants of man's scientific knowledge until the world is again ready for it."

rootusrootus2• 3 years ago

And then of course after mankind recovers and rebuilds to the same technological level, they start another nuclear war. Figures.

pixl9710• 3 years ago

Time does not repeat, but it does rhyme in a phrase that ends in global thermonuclear war.

swader999• 3 years ago

One thing is certain, my mortgage and visa bill will still be due.

JJMcJ• 3 years ago

disrupted telegraph lines

As in, started fires.

In 1859, telegraph lines were the only wiring anywhere in the world.

If it hit today, it would be a colossal disaster. Maybe shutting off electrical power world wide for a few days, if it was anticipated.

The Carrington Event of 1859 disrupted telegraph lines

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