So they perished “with” geomagnetic storm, not “of” geomagnetic storm?
Would you say your jet was lost "with" the storm, or "because of" the storm?
It is important here because one could assume, only reading the title, that the satellite were lost due to electronic disturbances caused by the storm. Which is not what happened (if my understanding is correct).
From my understanding, they are the biggest existential risk to modern humanity, slightly ahead of rogue AI. From that context, whether misguided or otherwise, you can imagine that my heart skipped a beat when I read the link title.
It has already irrevocably caused the extinction of lots of species, and while certainly humans will continue to live, "modern humanity" will be replaced by something else.
1. Solar flares
2. Rogue AI
3. World war
3. Water scarcity (tied to war above)
5. Pandemic
6. Climate disasters
My naive perception heavily weighs future possible technological progress. Solar flare collapse is basically unmitigable due to a combination of unpredictability and deep systemic interdependence and dependence on susceptible technologies. Some governments paid lip service to this risk in the past, allegedly pushing to plan for this risk. Ultimately, only some organizations will have the resources to sustain the acute impact of a solar flare, but what good is Google if they're the only ones with working computers?
With climate, I'm very optimistic about the innovation that will result from economic and social pressures. I think 10 years ago I would have rated it at #2.
Edit: What are the chances. As I wrote this, JET started live-streaming an announcement about fusion energy...
Of course we're human and have a tendency to ignore large scale risks that haven't occurred in recent history as evidenced by the fact that no major electric grids have implemented this kind of protection. If we do get an 1894 level solar flare, many of the high voltage transformers will be fried. Some of them take months to build, so it would take years to recover from that kind of damage.
In my opinion, the reserve is cheap at 3x the price. $500mil is 7 F35 raptors, and we are buying ~130/year at this point. There are plenty of defense spending justifications for establishing the reserve - it would protect against EMPs and small targeted attacks. We are already seeing small arms attacks on high energy transformers, and last year someone tried to use a drone to take out a substation.
Not surprisingly, the biggest hurdles identified in the report were the needed land acquisitions and the logistics of transporting the large transformers.
https://energy.gov/sites/prod/files/2017/04/f34/Strategic%20...
https://www.everycrsreport.com/reports/R43604.html
https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/43015/likely-drone-att...
Having a full set of spares requires zero re-engineering of the existing grid, and will turn a multi-year grid failure catastrophe into a few days to restore critical components and some weeks of restoring full function.
Since our solid solar observation capabilities now give several days notice before arrival of such storms, some could even be pre-positioned at critical substations.
And you are absolutely correct that the DOD would have very good reason to do this - losing the grid nationwide would be an insane level national security risk.
Also, this would mean proactively shutting down the entire grid for days, at the first warning, then requiring days to restore power. So one warning would require a full week of zero power for the continent, and (I expect) saving only part of the grid.
But yeah, putting in some planning to do that would be a smart idea.
They could end up at war over this, and they both have nukes. They have relatively small stockpiles with relatively small nukes so you might not think this would be a big deal globally--a terrible tragedy still but just a regional tragedy.
Not so. Here is an article [1] and a paper [2] that looks at global consequences of India and Pakistan exchanging 100 nukes (about 1/3 of what they have) each the size of what the US used on Hiroshima at the end of WW II and directed at major population centers in the two countries.
Based on the amount of combustable material in those areas, they estimate that the resulting firestorms would put 1.8 Tg of soot aerosol into the upper atmosphere.
Climate models say the effect of that would be a 1.8℃ temperature reduction and an 8% precipitation reduction lasting for many years.
They then apply state of the art crop models to predict the effect on agriculture. The result would be a serious reduction in yield which would be largest in temperate regions of the US, Europe, and China for 10-15 years.
There would be food shortages and famine in rich countries that normally do not see famine. That can be pretty destabilizing and it is not a stretch to imagine some first world countries might go to war over food--including countries that have a lot more than small stockpiles of Hiroshima-sized nukes.
[1] https://blogs.ei.columbia.edu/2020/03/16/even-limited-india-...
I know Elon is screaming at his engineers right now to increase the amount of krypton in each and if this happens again, they're fired.
- i used to work at tesla.
You would say "the low-flying jet was lost due to 6 foot swells caused by a storm"
It's not the direct nor the first cause.
Saying the satellites were lost because of the geomagnetic storm could imply that the satellites suffered some sort of electronic damage. Which, as I understand, is not what happened. That is why the nuance here is important.
In your case, there is no other reason for the boat to be lost but because of the wind and waves.
The nuance isn't that important. The implication that a geomagnetic storm can only cause magnetic/electric damage is just wrong. It's like implying a hurricane can only cause damage through wind and rain.
Starlink lost 40 satellites following geomagnetic storm
https://spaceexplored.com/2021/11/29/spacex-raptor-crisis/
"Unfortunately, the Raptor production crisis is much worse than it had seemed a few weeks ago. As we have dug into the issues following the exiting of prior senior management, they have unfortunately turned out to be far more severe than was reported. There is no way to sugarcoat this...
...we will need all hands on deck to recover from what is, quite frankly, a disaster.
The consequences for SpaceX if we can not get enough reliable Raptors made is that we then can’t fly Starship, which means we then can’t fly Starlink Satellite V2 (Falcon has neither the volume nor the mass to orbit needed for satellite V2). Satellite V1, by itself, is financially weak, while V2 is strong.
In addition, we are spooling up terminal production to several million units per year, which will consume massive capital, assuming that satellite V2 will be on orbit to handle the bandwidth demand. These terminals will be useless otherwise"Musk clarified that stance on Twitter. They are not in fact close to bankruptcy. https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1465793233729069063
Frankly, I have issues with someone who defied every forseeable risk inherent in operating an LEO satcom network. There is a reason most long term comm infra tends to go to GEO... Replacing stuff in LEO because the atmo ate it is expensive.
Blocking astronomers, and they barely started:
https://img.bfmtv.com/i/0/0/9a6/8df134f9fd0a493fed36fcd3e66e...
And no they're not "blocking astronomers". https://www.caltech.edu/about/news/palomar-survey-instrument...
Please don't spread propaganda.
Was this an expected condition, or a new discovery?
I only have a layman's understanding of space, but like the idea that we (as a species) just learned something new.
Sorry I asked. I'll try to be less interested in science in the future.
Aluminum is not a "heavy metal". Not only is it of low density, it's not toxic in the way actual heavy metals like lead are.
Your inclusion of the adjective "heavy" was misleading as that wasn't in the source you referenced.
I just want to add that the term "heavy metal" associated with toxicity is not really a good choice, even if it has been used for a long time.
The so called toxic "heavy metals" are not toxic because they are heavy. They are toxic because their ions have a large size (when compared with metals like magnesium or iron).
The large size of their ions makes them interfere with the functions of the ions having a similar large size and which have important uses in all living beings, i.e. calcium or potassium or ammonium or sodium. Large ionic size is also associated with good solubility, which enhances the chances of those ions to be absorbed after ingestion and enter living cells.
"Metals with large ions" is longer and more inconvenient to say than "heavy metals", but it would be much more accurate. Saying "heavy" does not make you understand why e.g. cadmium (same ionic size as calcium) is very toxic, while indium and tin, which are heavier (but which have smaller ions), have low toxicity.
Shortened excerpt: "These storms cause the atmosphere to warm and atmospheric density at our low deployment altitudes to increase.... speed and severity of the storm caused atmospheric drag to increase up to 50 percent.... The Starlink team commanded the satellites into a safe-mode where they would fly edge-on (like a sheet of paper) to minimize drag...
Preliminary analysis show the increased drag at the low altitudes prevented the satellites from leaving safe-mode to begin orbit raising maneuvers, and up to 40 of the satellites will reenter or already have reentered the Earth’s atmosphere. The deorbiting satellites pose zero collision risk with other satellites and by design demise upon atmospheric reentry—meaning no orbital debris is created and no satellite parts hit the ground."