Posted on 06/15/2018 7:00:06 AM PDT by BenLurkin
One hundred fifty-nine years ago, our sun belched out a sea of charged particles aimed at Earth. It sped toward us at millions of miles per hour, walloping the planet hard enough to addle the world's telegraph systems and bring the northern lights as far south as Jamaica.
Damage from the solar storm, called the Carrington Event, was pretty limited — chiefly because the world didn't have a lot of very long wires that are susceptible to disruption. But that was then, and a massive solar storm will come our way again.
That's because the sun is constantly convulsing with titanic forces, sending megatons of feisty charged particles across the 93 million miles to Earth. Although our planet is shielded by a vast, invisible magnetic field, those charged particles can punch through. When they do, they can cause widespread disruption in today's continent-spanning electrical system. But not just the world's electrical grid. A massive wave of charged particle emissions can also cripple orbiting communications satellites and force planes to detour around radiation-bathed polar regions.
"An event of that scale could be catastrophic if it happened tomorrow," says Francis O'Sullivan, director of research for the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Energy Initiative. "It's not just the lights going off now. It's bank accounts disappearing.
(Excerpt) Read more at cnet.com ...
Setting telegraph recorders on fire and melting the circuit platinum contacts wasn’t exactly a minor event. Enough voltage was induced to run cross-country lines and relay stations with the batteries disconnected.
Applying a DC bias voltage to modern AC equipment in distribution runs, having a neutral with an earth connection, will pose an issue.
Actually, extreme solar flare activity crops up even when few sunspots become a trend.
Companies are starting to shift to High Voltage DC (HVDC) for long transmission runs.
Where is the “Not this shit again” guy?
Solar events will happen. Asteroids will happen. Yellowstone is going to happen.
Preparing for the event is going to cost trillions. We do not have trillions to be spent on something that may happen, some time, over the next thousand years.
Stuff is getting fixed as they are replaced. But it takes a long time to rebuild infrastructure.
For millions, perhaps more than a billion.
.....and I feel fine....
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