A huge Solar Flare could wipe out the entire worlds Electrical grid for 10 to 20 years.
08-06-2010, 06:32 PM
08-06-2010, 06:32 PM
The above is a worst case condition(hopefully), but current technology lets us watch the sun and might gives us a few hours warning before the solar flare hits.
Given that amount of warning, political leaders that are wise and CEO's that understand or will listen to the electrical engineers and astronomers then the power companies can shut down the electrical grid and start fully isolating enough transformers so that we could have the grid back up mostly in say 3 to 7 years.
The telecommunication network won't be so easy to fix and every satellite in orbit will have to be replaced and given the current crowding that means each of the dead satellites now in orbit will have to be manually removed before others can take their place.
There has been at least one mega flare in the last 151 years that directly hit Earth and it was called the "Carrington Event" it occured in 1859.
Read the description below and imagine what it would do to the modern power and communication networks.
/QUOTE/
Carrington Event
Bursts of electromagnetic radiation have occurred before, the most notable being the Carrington event when the most powerful solar storm in recorded history hit earth. Just before noon on September 1st 1859, Richard Carrington -- a 33 year old British astronomer -- was observing an image of the sun on a white screen and was drawing the sunspots and solar flares. Suddenly, two beads of intense white light appeared over the sunspots. In sixty seconds the light had significantly diminished, and within five minutes completely disappeared from the screen. Just before dawn the next day, skies all over planet earth erupted in red, green, and purple auroras so brilliant that newspapers could be read as easily as in daylight. Carrington wrote that the glow of the flare brought campers out of their beds. They thought it was morning. They began preparing breakfast! Stunning auroras pulsated even at near tropical latitudes over Cuba, the Bahamas, Jamaica, El Salvador, and Hawaii. Worldwide, telegraph systems -- the only equipment resembling today's Internet and electrical grid in place at the time -- went berserk. Carrington's report makes reference to spark discharges that electrified telegraph lines, shocked telegraph operators and set telegraph paper on fire. Even when the telegraphers disconnected the batteries powering the lines, aurora-induced electric currents in the wires still allowed messages to be transmitted!
/END QUOTE/
Howard Melton
God bless
Given that amount of warning, political leaders that are wise and CEO's that understand or will listen to the electrical engineers and astronomers then the power companies can shut down the electrical grid and start fully isolating enough transformers so that we could have the grid back up mostly in say 3 to 7 years.
The telecommunication network won't be so easy to fix and every satellite in orbit will have to be replaced and given the current crowding that means each of the dead satellites now in orbit will have to be manually removed before others can take their place.
There has been at least one mega flare in the last 151 years that directly hit Earth and it was called the "Carrington Event" it occured in 1859.
Read the description below and imagine what it would do to the modern power and communication networks.
/QUOTE/
Carrington Event
Bursts of electromagnetic radiation have occurred before, the most notable being the Carrington event when the most powerful solar storm in recorded history hit earth. Just before noon on September 1st 1859, Richard Carrington -- a 33 year old British astronomer -- was observing an image of the sun on a white screen and was drawing the sunspots and solar flares. Suddenly, two beads of intense white light appeared over the sunspots. In sixty seconds the light had significantly diminished, and within five minutes completely disappeared from the screen. Just before dawn the next day, skies all over planet earth erupted in red, green, and purple auroras so brilliant that newspapers could be read as easily as in daylight. Carrington wrote that the glow of the flare brought campers out of their beds. They thought it was morning. They began preparing breakfast! Stunning auroras pulsated even at near tropical latitudes over Cuba, the Bahamas, Jamaica, El Salvador, and Hawaii. Worldwide, telegraph systems -- the only equipment resembling today's Internet and electrical grid in place at the time -- went berserk. Carrington's report makes reference to spark discharges that electrified telegraph lines, shocked telegraph operators and set telegraph paper on fire. Even when the telegraphers disconnected the batteries powering the lines, aurora-induced electric currents in the wires still allowed messages to be transmitted!
/END QUOTE/
Howard Melton
God bless