Why are there people measuring ground current? Even though random scientific interest is enough reason, I suppose it's more than that.
The 1989 coronal mass ejection caused lots of problems with radios, which is probably one of the better known side effects of a solar storm. But it also took out power grids because utilities got a phantom current that just showed up out of nowhere on their long cables. This current can also cause problems for other long metal things buried in the ground like oil pipelines.
IIRC a similar event in the 19th century electrocuted a bunch of telegraph operators. They unplugged the power as a safety measure, but the Earth's magnetic field generated so much current in the telegraph cables that they still worked.
True but you are underselling it a bit. Aurora was seen as far south as Colombia and in Colorado it reportedly was bright enough to wake people up because they thought it was day.
It is assumed that had that occurred today it would have fried the power grid on at least a continental scale.
You can't make a movie out of the latter, so nobody cares.
See, also, why people love sexy non-solutions to problems we don't have (let's colonize Mars), but turn their noses at solving real problems, which affect billions of people (climate change). You can't make a slick film about a superhero convincing people to cutting back on their energy use, and to carpool, or bus to work. It's not sexy.
https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2019/nasas-parker-solar...
The actual EMF effects, based on both the nature and targeting of the CME, aren't clear until it encounters some electrically-aware monitoring device. Of which most are in Earth orbit.
If countermeasures include such activities as widespread disabling / disconnecting of major grid elements and equipment, you'll want to minimise the false alarms, both on the basis of cost and because of the boy-who-cried-wolf factor.
According to the Wikipedia article, it only gave some electric shocks, not actually killed them.
I don't like being pedantic about language but given that the word is literally just a portmanteau of electricity and execution it's stupid to use it to refer to something other than death. It's not like execution can refer to someone being hurt. The only reason to use it to describe something nonlethal is because you don't realize that execution is part of the word.
Besides, "electrocuted" is a useful word and much less cumbersome than "killed via electrocution". We already have shock, arc, flash and burn for injuries and no other word to clarify lethality.
So I think that ship has sailed, whether you like it or not.
This is also a plea from an actual electrical engineer, because we generally use it to refer to death. It would be nice if everyone else did too because it's useful.
Electrocution means death by electricity and shock is damage by electricity up to but not including electrocution.
"So there I was at home and I cut through an electrical cable with some scissors."
"And you came to A&E because you got shocked?"
"Well I was shocked, yes. I didn't expect the cable to be live, there was a big bang and all the lights went off"
"OK you've had an electric shock?"
"No I was surprised, I was not electrocuted"
"So why are you here ..?"
(Paranoid partner made me go, though I was certain I was fine. Had some fluid taken from my spine; apparently electric shocks can cause "stuff to break down" and they were gonna use the fluid to confirm whether I'd been hit by electricity or not.)
So the ground is not as grounded as we'd like it to be?
There may be a correlation between the currents and weather/natural events.
> There may be a correlation between the currents and weather/natural events.
Ground currents are caused by the same thing as Auroras, in addition to normal weather. They occur constantly to a small degree. They are a problem everywhere in the world; if you lay out a 100 mile metal wire without taking proper precautions to make it safe electrically it will quickly start creating very dangerous discharges.
Think about it this way. It's very dangerous to fly a kite in a thunderstorm; the line will conduct electricity and makes it much more likely that the massive difference in charge between the air and ground will pick you to flow through. Ground currents are the same situation, except between two bits of ground. Civilized areas of the planet are totally cobwebbed by kite lines connecting these areas. It would be bad.
> The James Bay network went offline in less than 90 seconds, giving Quebec its second massive power outage in 11 months.[10] The power failure lasted nine hours and forced the company to implement various mitigation strategies, including raising the trip level, installing series compensation on ultra high voltage lines and upgrading various monitoring and operational procedures. Other utilities in North America and Northern Europe and elsewhere implemented programs to reduce the risks associated with geomagnetically induced currents (GICs).[9]
I’m totally okay with pure science for science’s sake, but you left me hanging.
Ground current means that there is a potential difference between two points. Over large distances a small current will lead to extremely large voltage differences. Wires over the same distance will have very low voltage differences (since they are low resistance), so the wire will be the same voltage as the place it was last referenced to ground. That may be very different from the ground or people at a different location.
This can be particularly important in improperly wired homes, which can have small voltages on a floating ground. Ground currents will cause that voltage to become much larger.
> The James Bay network went offline in less than 90 seconds, giving Quebec its second massive power outage in 11 months.[10] The power failure lasted nine hours and forced the company to implement various mitigation strategies, including raising the trip level, installing series compensation on ultra high voltage lines and upgrading various monitoring and operational procedures. Other utilities in North America and Northern Europe and elsewhere implemented programs to reduce the risks associated with geomagnetically induced currents (GICs).[9]