Posted on 10/14/2009 8:32:04 PM PDT by TaraP
Natural fluctuations in the sun's atmosphere could cause it to fire a giant plasma ball at Earth, shutting down the planet's electric grids and leading to widespread social collapse, according to a report from the U.S. National Academy of Sciences (NAS).
Funded by NASA, the report draws attention to naturally occurring events known as coronal mass ejections (CME), in which a ball of plasma -- the charged, high-energy particles that comprise stars -- is fired from the sun. If such a ball strikes the Earth, it could produce rapid changes in the planet's magnetic field, leading to a surge of direct current in the long-range power lines that carry electricity through modern power grids.
Modern power grids are designed to carry electricity at extremely high voltage, making them especially susceptible to this kind of magnetic disruption. What they are not designed to do, however, is carry direct current. Transformers are particularly vulnerable, and sudden influx of direct current could cause the wiring inside the devices to melt. The NAS report estimates that within 90 seconds of a plasma ball hitting the Earth's magnetic field, power would be knocked out to 130 million people in the United States alone. The same effect is likely throughout the world.
A really large storm could be a planetary disaster," said power industry analyst John Kappenman.
In the First World, where everything from transportation to food and water distribution depends on electricity, this could create a humanitarian catastrophe.
"It's just the opposite of how we usually think of natural disasters," Kappenman said. "Usually the less developed regions of the world are most vulnerable, not the highly sophisticated technological regions."
According to the report, potable water would be one of the first losses in the event of such a disaster. Because water pumping relies on electricity, people would have access to tap water only for about half a day, until the amount already in the system ran out. High-rises, which rely on water being pumped to upper floors, would lose water immediately.
All electric-powered transport would stop at once, and automobiles could only run until they ran out of gas, since the pumps at gas stations also rely on electricity. This would quickly cause the shelves at stores to run bare, since the modern "just-in-time" delivery method relies on restocking shelves as they run out, with minimal storage inside shops themselves.
Backup generators at places like hospitals could only run until they ran out of fuel. According to the report, this translates into 72 hours of minimal care for only the most vulnerable patients. The absence of refrigeration would cause food and many prescription drugs to quickly spoil.
The NAS report notes that a technological meltdown on this scale might be impossible to undo. Pumping natural gas or oil requires electricity, and modern transport networks are required to keep coal plants supplied. Nuclear power plants automatically shut down if the power grid fails, and cannot be turned back on until the grid is back to normal. Very few spare transformers exist, meaning that new ones would need to be manufactured to replace most of the burned-out ones. Again, the lack of industrial infrastructure would make this a major challenge.
"We're moving closer and closer to the edge of a possible disaster," said Daniel Baker, chair of the committee that produced the report.
Although the scenario may sound fantastic and unlikely, scientists warn that there have been precedents. In 1859, a CME known as the Carrington event produced auroras as far south as the equator and caused severe disruptions to the world's telegraph systems. In 1989, a direct current overload in the power grid cut off electricity to 6 million people in Quebec province, Canada. And in 2006, a fluctuation in a small part of Germany's power grid caused a cascading power failure through the wider European grid.
Depends upon the speed of the mass ejected. Typically take 2 to 5 days for a CME to reach earth. Some faster, some slower. Apparently the speeds range from 500 km/s to 3200 km/s for the mass itself. Protons can reach earth much faster, at somewhat lesser than the speed of light.
With SOHO and other sats monitoring the sun, we should get a day or so warning if not more. That is, if 0Bozo’s wunnerful gummint decided to actually make it public instead of using it as their crisis- remember, can’t let a good crisis go to waste.
JMO...Howver, when I said *large*, I was thinking along the lines of something 1000 times larger then any previous event we happened to be aware of.
This should be no big deal.
Should be...lol....
I do have a masters in physics
Well, that is very impressive and commendable.
see #102
There is no likely scenario that would allow a 1000 times cme.
The one possiblity is an impact by a large object like a rogue jupiter that might cause this event and then, the odds of the cme aimed at earth is maybe one in a thousand if the 1000 times cme occurred.
I didn't say anything about a "likely scenario".
Fact is a CME 1000 times larger than anything we know about could happen. No?
It’s like the chances of you getting on a plane and crashing and dying are extremely remote...But it happens.
Existence itself is beyond comprehension, as far as that goes.
To see a world in a grain of sand,
And a heaven in a wild flower,
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand,
And eternity in an hour.
Existence itself is beyond comprehension, as far as that goes.
I agree, but compared to stars, everything else seems almost common...Stars are pretty neat.
What else burns a hole in space and time when it dies, or blow up with such intensity it can cast shadows 100 thousand light years away, while others spin like a massive searchlights sending out death ray beams across the universe.
I guess I really wouldn’t want to argue the point. Looking at a telescopic image of the sun, it is hard to comprehend what is actually there.
WTH??? That’s just weird! One heck of a smoke ring...
Read later
Ya know whats really an eye opener...Is one can look through an extremely powerful telescope at the stars, stars much larger than our sun, and they still only appears as tiny points of light, because of the great distances. Yet when this tiny planet turns revealing our star on the eastern horizon.....Man you know your close to that star....There ain't no mistaking it....lol
And looking at the moon at night, our star is generating so much light, you tell exactly where our star is even when it's dark, just by looking at the lunar surface.
I know it sounds really weird, but being this close to a star, just blows me away. lol...
As long as we're on the subject, what wigs me out is that the darkness of space that we see at night is filled with sunlight. It is streaming away from us of course, but all the same, it is invisible.
I didn’t know plasma’s were male....
We could also be wiped out without warning by Gamma- and X-rays spewed from a supernova explosion that may have happened billions of years ago. Puts Al Gore’s little climate change fraud in perspective.
People have been working this problem for some time now. Previous solar storms have incapacitated or fried distribution transformers, so that when a new one is put in or old one replaced, they make them solar-storm resistant.
http://k-inet.ee.t.kanazawa-u.ac.jp/~yamada/houkoku/PDF/020.pdf
If life seems jolly rotten, there’s something you’ve forgotten
And that’s to laugh and smile and dance and sing
When you’re feeling in the dumps, don’t be silly, chumps
Just purse your lips and whistle, that’s the thing
So, always look on the bright side of death
Just before you draw your terminal breath
Life’s a counterfeit and when you look at it
Life’s a laugh and death’s the joke, it’s true
You see, it’s all a show, keep them laughing as you go
Just remember the last laugh is on you
Always look on the bright side of life
And always look on the right side of life
Always look on the bright side of life
And always look on the right side of life
Since you've solved the one on Lee Harvey Oswaldo, you may be interested in
this as you hold the bilge from the MSM in such high regard.
I hacked it from Dan Rather's hard drive last night:
Nope, freepers got that one right. If you think I hold the MSM in high regard, then you don’t know me very well. :-)
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