The Geomagnetic Storm Continues
swpc.noaa.gov
swpc.noaa.gov
https://i0.wp.com/planetaria.ca/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/J...
Recently I've been building a server room, and naturally a question of EM insulation came up. If I were to protect my servers from this, I needed to wrap the room in a grounded mesh with holes of λ in diameter. What wavelengths am I protecting against? I couldn't find an answer online, perhaps because there isn't a mechanism which could flip bits or otherwise cause potential difference across my electronics, after a coronal ejecta reaches Earth. I can imagine how charged solar wind can interact with our atmosphere and cause voltage on long stretches of cable like telegraph or electricity lines, and consumers have surge protectors for this in multiple parts of the grid.
Is there something that I've missed?
The last of the risk can be functionally eliminated by your off-site backup.
Underground or at the other side of the planet or both?
The issue would be that wires start getting induced current in them ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geomagnetically_induced_curren... ) that arcs and shorts out the device.
However, if you've got a backup tape there's nothing from the current that will flip the bits on the tape itself.
There are good reasons to have the backup be off site (other physical calamities) - but the aurora isn't going to flip any bits on a backup. At worst, it will destroy the machinery from a surge from the grid and an extremely powerful one may destroy the machinery from arcing in the device itself (this would be extremely powerful)... but the media itself is fine.
Both ideally sure. The more backups and more locations the better. Diminishing returns pretty quickly but why not if the data is important.
Electromagnetic energy from the sun only has a chance of damaging equipment and only some of the bits of that equipment will be affected. You could have two servers in the same datacenter where one gets hit and the other does not. Or even two drives in the same chassis. And even then, it might not be all the data on that drive.
Of course no security is absolute (learned that early from my uncle that owned a convenience store at a lake: He spent extra on doors, locks, windows, etc and someone drove a truck through the brick wall to rob the place). Same here: if a solar event happens that would wipe out all of your onsite and offsite servers “on the surface” then there is a much bigger problem.
It really was an honest question. Thanks for the detailed response even though that wasn't obvious.
https://www.swpc.noaa.gov/products/goes-x-ray-flux
https://www.epa.gov/radtown/radiation-solar-activity
> Solar flares are large eruptions of energy coming off the Sun containing several different forms of energy: heat, magnetic energy, and ionizing radiation. The ionizing radiation released during solar flares includes x-rays and gamma rays. These rays of ionizing radiation can damage satellites because they are in space and are not protected by the Earth’s atmosphere. Magnetic energy from solar flares can interrupt radio communication on Earth or damage communications satellites.
Unless you've got a satellite, this likely isn't impacting you.
Bit flips tend to be from from heavy charged particles. https://www.scienceabc.com/innovation/what-are-bit-flips-and...
I believe you're more likely to have a bit flip from radioactive decay in the chip itself than a cosmic ray.
Something like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carrington_Event would probably make quite a mess, of the nature where individual server rooms are probably a secondary consideration.
Telegraphs
Because of the geomagnetically induced current from the electromagnetic field, telegraph systems all over Europe and North America failed, in some cases giving their operators electric shocks.[22] Telegraph pylons threw sparks.[23] Some operators were able to continue to send and receive messages despite having disconnected their power supplies.[24][25] The following conversation occurred between two operators of the American telegraph line between Boston, Massachusetts, and Portland, Maine, on the night of 2 September 1859 and reported in the Boston Evening Traveler:
Boston operator (to Portland operator): "Please cut off your battery [power source] entirely for fifteen minutes."
Portland operator: "Will do so. It is now disconnected."
Boston: "Mine is disconnected, and we are working with the auroral current. How do you receive my writing?"
Portland: "Better than with our batteries on. – Current comes and goes gradually."
Boston: "My current is very strong at times, and we can work better without the batteries, as the aurora seems to neutralize and augment our batteries alternately, making current too strong at times for our relay magnets. Suppose we work without batteries while we are affected by this trouble."
Portland: "Very well. Shall I go ahead with business?"
Boston: "Yes. Go ahead."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Q_code#All_services_(QRA%E2%80...
Carrington Event was in 1859, the first Q codes in the early 1900s.
Makes me think it would be very cool if the aurora at this level were constant or at least consistent. We'd have effectively unlimited clean and easy power...
Question, 'tho — to what extent is the geomagnetic field necessary, adding, or diminishing the effect?
For sure, as the charged particles arrive, their paths are being bent by the magnetic field, so stealing energy from the core.
But to what extent are we 'harvesting' that energy?
Seems the flares would still create a gradient across dozens or hundreds of miles of wire even without the core and our geomagnetic field.
If the field is enhancing or multiplying that effect, then we can certainly be said to be harvesting that energy. But, if it is neutral or diminishing the induced currents, it seems just like a side effect.
Also makes me wonder how much energy is there, and how long solar flares would take to deplete it...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space-based_solar_power
This is not a new idea, and we can do much better than powering a distributed network.
As I recall it would be bad and do a lot of damage in the short term. Lots of things, especially in communications, would obviously be damaged and very expensive to fix. But hard drives would mostly be ok and therefore the most crucial pillars of society would emerge intact.
What you'll find on the insurance side of thing is this sort of claim from Lloyds of London (https://assets.lloyds.com/assets/pdf-solar-storm-risk-to-the...):
> A Carrington-level, extreme geomagnetic storm is almost inevitable in the future. While the probability of an extreme storm occurring is relatively low at any given time, it is almost inevitable that one will occur eventually. Historical auroral records suggest a return period of 50 years for Quebec-level storms and 150 years for very extreme storms, such as the Carrington Event that occurred 154 years ago.
If anything I think the solar flare risk is understated.
Wow. I knew this was a possibility but I didn't know we were overdue. Echoes of COVID a bit as a "once in a hundred years pandemic".
Looking forward to the space mandated holiday to be honest.
I wonder if we have enough replacement parts on hand to recover after an event like that. Given our labyrinthine supply chains, if it becomes a manufacturing bottleneck it could take years to retool.
In a morbid way though, I'm also looking forward to the holiday. I'm really curious to see what changes we make while the lights and cameras and payment systems are offline.
No clue what sort of plans major governments have for it. Hopefully they have some. We're incredibly dependent on electricity—the point of that Connections episode was largely that human history is a series of events in which we take on some critical new technology, it permits a huge boom in productivity/population/whatever, and from then on, we're flat-out dependent on it to avoid disaster—and that, now (for 1978 values of "now"), electricity has become one of those things that we have to have or most of us will die.
I'm more worried about electrical lines shorting out transformers than I am about the world's data being erased all in one go. The Carrington event showed large amounts of current generated on long telegraph lines. Data is protected by error checking and surge protectors. Electrical lines are protected by old transformers that like to catch on fire when they short out.
That document is a very interesting read though, thank you. I don't fully trust insurers though - it's in their interest to create a feeling of risk.
Yes, but the timing of those fixes could be an enormous problem
From what I've read, a large part of the problem will be burnt-out transformers all over the grid, from the major stations down to the street-level. Replacing any one of those is only a job of a few hours, when you have one available. The problem is that fabricating them takes a long time, and there is nowhere near enough inventory to replace the numbers that would fry in a Carrington-like event (or an EMP attack). It could take YEARS to replace them, during which time the economy is pretty much back to the 1800s, but with 2000s-level population to feed.
The estimates to create a stockpile of transformers so that they could be replaced in weeks-to months range around $500 million. It would give the nation a huge strategic economic advantage to be able to fully recover on a timescale of double-digit weeks instead of years. But, since the problem is so un-sexy that it is never brought up (the last infrastructure bill would have been a good time to do so).
Even if we could individually have power with rooftop solar+battery (also sufficiently protected), it'd be hard to thrive with the entire transport web broken (no grid electricity to pump gasoline/diesel, etc.).
Still, I want to know how vulnerable is rooftop solar, and what it would take to protect it (and prevent an event from burning down the house). Any experts have some pointers?
It also isn't correct to assume that the grid is wholly unprotected. Substations have extensive protection in the form of interrupters. We will lose power in a Carrington scenario, potentially for days, but there won't be an apocalypse of exploding transformers. If that happens, nobody is going to care too much about charging their Teslas. They will be too busy fending off hordes of radioactive zombies.
At least one electricity network on the west coast of Norway already does this to cope with the inevitable damage caused by seasonal thunderstorms.
You make a good point about rooftop solar+battery. Perhaps an event like this would make us more open to decentralised energy production.
Regarding how vulnerable solar panels are - in my limited understanding the problem comes from things that will induct electrical currents from EM, so basically anything with long wires (transmission lines and transformers etc.) So I would guess that semiconductors like solar panels would not be damaged directly. I'd also like to hear from any experts though.
So it certainly does matter, but there are different risks that each demographic takes.
That really depends on how much you'd need to spend I think to prep.
There was a US commission evaluating the threat of an EMP attack (http://www.empcommission.org/docs/empc_exec_rpt.pdf) which seems to suggest that radiation-hardening transformers for such an event would also seem likely to protect them from failing due to geomagnetic storms.
The additional cost for radiation hardening:
> New units can be EMP-hardened for a very small fraction of the cost of the non-hardened item, e.g., 1% to 3% of cost, if hardening is done at the time the unit is designed and manufactured. In contrast, retrofitting existing functional components is potentially an order of magnitude more expensive and shouldbe done only for critical system units.
For that sort of overhead I think that it's justifiable to require it of new transformers at least.
A sufficiently powerful solar flare event would probably lead to millions of deaths, as I understand it.
Wait, how did we go from "bringing down the full power grid" to "millions of deaths" so quickly?
```It's difficult to give an accurate estimate of the number of lives that could be lost in the event of a global-scale transformer destruction due to a Carrington-level solar storm, as there are many variables that could affect the outcome. However, I can provide some information that may be helpful in making an estimate.
A report by the U.S. Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) suggests that a large-scale transformer failure due to a geomagnetic disturbance (GMD) could result in widespread and prolonged power outages, affecting multiple states or even the entire country. The report estimates that the total economic impact of such an event in the United States could range from $1 trillion to $2 trillion, and that recovery could take years.
If we assume that the impact of a GMD-induced transformer failure would be proportionate to the global population, then it's reasonable to assume that the number of lives lost could be in the hundreds of thousands or even millions. This is because prolonged power outages could lead to a wide range of consequences, including shortages of food and water, breakdowns in transportation systems, and disruptions to medical care.
However, it's important to note that the actual number of lives lost would depend on many factors, including the severity and duration of the power outages, the availability of resources and emergency services, and the ability of individuals and governments to respond effectively to the crisis.```
Typical frustrating GTP :)
That's an interesting response from it, but I would not trust gpt at all to make this kind of estimation - it will only regurgitate permutations of the information that's already out there, and I don't think anyone really knows.
But yes you are probably right that I've underestimated.
Some people think that 90% of people in the USA would die in a year if the electric grid completed failed.
As far as I understand we don't have the parts to repair the grid in any reasonably timely manner.
https://emptaskforce.us/wp-content/uploads/2023/01/A-Call-to...
Connections, episode 1, "The Trigger Effect".
TL;DW shit gets very, very dicey in a matter of days if the power goes out—and most of our ways of recovering with any speed rely on power so if it goes out for most or all of the world at once, that's extremely bad.
If it hit the wrong time of year, I could easily see a global power outage killing millions in the very first day. Loss of air conditioning and heating could push it into the millions all on their own.
Long-range EMP is caused by nuclear blast at high altitude. It induces currents is long conductors but doesn't touch electronics. The main effect is knocking out power over large areas. It has very similar effects to large solar flare.
The modern power grid has lots of places where it can trip nearly instantaneously upon adverse conditions. Assuming we can automatically trip any segments of transmission, I think most of the damage could be isolated. Long conductors that aren't connected to anything can't cause any damage beyond the lines themselves.
I don't think transformers and generators sitting in storage are going to feel much of anything.
Hot pixels are when the CCD (camera sensor) achieves its max level and becomes bright. Pixel overloaded (should also result in spillover).
Difference is really just what part of the system receives the energy. For example, you can overload a pixel with a laser, but you also should get spillover. Bit flips tend to be more localized, affecting only one part. In reality, the difference doesn't matter too much, as long as we're keeping our discussion to cosmic events. But also note that images experience a lot of (non-gaussian) noise and plenty of this is from cosmic excitation as well as from other natural and man made sources. Just the levels are a lot lower and unlikely to result in a bitflip (which is a pretty high energy event).
Instead, what's happening in GGP's experiment is that actual electrons, created in the bulk of the active silicon region by a passing cosmic ray, are getting detected by the CCD, and it will (correctly) read out some value between 00000 and 11111, depending on how many electrons it saw. In principle you can actually make a histogram of these readout values and observe the Bethe-Bloch distribution of energy loss for ionizing particles through the (very thin) bulk of silicon! On the other hand, random bit flips (which are much rarer!) would just give you a random distribution of the numbers {00000, 00001, 00010, 00100, 01000, 10000}.
> Bit flips from cosmic rays.
I don't think that's it. IIRC, if a geomagnetic storm/coronal mass ejection is big enough, it can cause certain effects that are similar to an EMP. What the OP is talking about sounds like a distorted version of that danger: a nuclear EMP could directly fry microelectronics, a solar storm is a kind of EMP (solar EMP), but is missing most of the effects that could directly damage microelectronics, and many people conflate the two.
I've had a computer blow out (sparks, smoke and everything) due to a power surge when the main power went out and then back on, rapidly.
So while the "direct" causes might be different between EMP and CME, the end results are basically the same. I could only imagine what our current (very power sensitive) electronics would do in that scenario.
From the wikipedia Carrington Event you posted:
> Because of the geomagnetically induced current from the electromagnetic field, telegraph systems all over Europe and North America failed, in some cases giving their operators electric shocks.[22] Telegraph pylons threw sparks.
> So while the "direct" causes might be different between EMP and CME, the end results are basically the same.
Not necessarily. My understanding is a CME solar EMP would take out grid-connected devices (via power surges over the grid), but leave most unconnected devices unharmed (e.g. laptops running on battery), but a nuclear EMP would take out both.
So the radio would fail to connect to many bluetooth devices at the time (because Bosch), the application had no way of telling what state the radio (that it was meant to speak to) was in (because of the faulty protocol), and the application was riddled with other bugs (because lowest-bidder contractors), but by god it was safe from lightning and cosmic rays (except not really because they could just as easily alter the program as the state the program was operating on).
The story goes that Mario 64 speedrunner accidentally triggered a glitch which was thought to require that a particular value is "true" (Mario is touching a ceiling) which was not in this case. The following glitch hunt had many people concluding that the most likely thing that happened was a bit-flip via cosmic radiation which caused the exact distance change which could have otherwise been caused by a different but similar glitch.
Again and again, headlines blare doom narratives about flares, but I am unaware of major impacts recently.
In regards to the Faraday cage (grounded mesh), assuming you have a very good path to ground and a sufficiently robust mesh material, you are shielding against any emissions with a wavelength larger than λ. You will have better results versus wavelengths that are much larger however. If you want a deeper dive on that, you can actually read Faraday, or Wikipedia or just ask your search engine about a basic dipole antennae and work up from there.
Many computer components are somewhat shielded/tolerant of standard levels of RF interference in the environment so you might not even need to bother (depending on application). Normally (in my experience) you see problems arise with sensors, digital control lines and some human interface devices in very noisy environments (industrial facilities with a lot of high power variable speed electric motors).
Regarding aperture size λ, figure out what source of RF you're most concerned about, determine the range of wavelengths emitted, concentrate on the most powerful bands and then make your aperture smaller than that. Examples are 'the sun', cosmic rays, north korean nukes, the welding robots on the other side of the wall etc.
Finally, if you're going to shield, don't half ass it or you waste money. Gaps around doors, or anywhere you poke cable through a wall can cause problems if not handled correctly.
Something around hundreds of meters. It's large enough that people don't treat it like a wave. Also, it's often semi-stationary, so you have to care to make your protection long-lived, and not only surge-based.
Coronal ejecta is formed by charged particles. The ones that can move only a few meters into the atmosphere. You don't have to catch those. There is also no high-frequency EM radiation.
I used to build space radiation shields. I'll give you three answers.
What you should do:
Throw up a few sheets of metalized mylar or some aluminum foil. Make sure everything (including the foil) is electrically isolated and grounded. Be more worried about the grid more than the air. Don't let the grid kill your components, because it WILL be overloaded.
You want to be very secure:
Do the above, but be in a concrete building. Better if under ground. Idk, add some chicken-wire or other mesh? Don't ground to the grid, ground to the ground (use a grounding rod and bury it deep).
The overkill (an explanation):
Ground based radiation shields tend to be different than space based as you don't care about weight on earth. How to stop radiation? Mass. Even still, the two follow a pattern: layers of differing material. Plastics (sometimes doped with boron, titanium, or other materials) are good insulation and protect well against neutrons (not much of a worry for you unless we're talking nuclear weapons), but you'll still want some because these are layered with conductors (copper or aluminum). Conductors pick up charged particles (the majority of radiation).
There is a lot of confusion about radiation and it took me awhile to actually learn this. People will talk about attenuation distances and {alpha,beta,neutron}-cross-sections, but if we're talking about high energy particles, then a lot of this doesn't actually matter. Mass does. So don't worry about optimizing materials or any of that, just put mass in the way. Reading told me one thing but testing and simulation told me another thing. These cross-sections and attenuation depths are mostly for lower energy particles (like you'd find in a reactor). Your mass doesn't have to include any metal, but that will help because the biggest component is that you'll want some grounding. Also, use ECC memory and other such server grade components.
I haven't seen anything in the news, but apparently some cities in Russia also reported Aurora sightings pretty far south.
Color was Green/Purple
Event 103876 -- 04.23.2023 15:29 PJM-RTO
Warning: Geomagnetic Disturbance Warning
A Geomagnetic Disturbance Warning has been issued for 15:29 on 04.23.2023 through 08:00 on 04.24.2023. A GMD warning of K7 or greater is in effect for this period.
Ended: 04.24.2023 08:00 (Eastern time)
This was a non-problem. It never got above the "Warning" level.
You can read the grid status live if you look through the PJM web site and figure out how to access the dashboard. There's also a long PJM training document on this that I linked the last time people got wound up about this.[1]
https://emptaskforce.us/wp-content/uploads/2023/01/A-Call-to...
All governments of note have taken some precautionary measures; hardening critical machinery/infrastructure, but you can't plausibly do that for every bit of hardware in your country. Imagine the effect of seeing most cars dead on the street because the EMP took them out. Imagine not being able to call home, or having refrigerated foods.
No impact
>society
You get to see the northern lights
>tech
For a G4 storm, there may be some HF radio blackouts and power grid errors.
[1] https://twitter.com/MtWilsonObs/status/1650643784110157824
That's the current time. Looks like its ending now.
The forecast was updated at 1:00PM EDT so I believe it ends Tuesday at 8:00AM EDT
Seems like it's decaying, the decaying forecast is linked on their homepage and other space weather sites are forecasting it decaying as well.
[0]: https://www.swpc.noaa.gov/news/geomagnetic-storm-continues-d...
Its just a G3/G4 even we long term average about one a month.
Get a couple G5 per decade, mildly more impressive.