Kind: captions
Language: en
could a massive wave of particles from
the sun
knock out our electrical grid all this
plasma that comes rushing towards us
actually interacts with the earth's
magnetic field and all those energetic
particles come
rushing in they can induce currents
and end up overloading the system and
when you overload the power grids it
could cause blackouts
imagine you wake up to go to work one
morning
only to discover that it is not morning
yet
what you have mistaken for the sunrise
is actually a massive space weather
event
causing bright auroras so aurora
is the beautiful result of space weather
as those energetic particles from the
sun are
funneled by by the earth's magnetic
field
down towards our atmosphere those
energetic particles hit nitrogen and
oxygen atoms
in the atmosphere and they light up this
is exactly what happened to many people
including
miners in the rocky mountains in 1859
during the carrington event the largest
geomagnetic storm
or major disturbance of the earth's
magnetosphere in recorded history
what happened there is you were able to
see the aurora down to hawaii
aurora normally is centered on either
the north or south poles
this was a major disturbance in the
atmosphere
even though the miners were not
observing the sunrise
this event can be traced back to the sun
a solar flare is when the magnetic
fields on the sun
reconnect in an absolutely explosive way
when the magnetic field snaps and
reconnects
in a huge release of energy and that
release of energy
is the solar flare a solar flare is
often accompanied by a coronal mass
ejection
or cme this is what caused the
carrington event
the sun expels billions of tons
of charged particles to travel through
space
and once they reach earth they interact
with earth's magnetic field compressing
earth's magnetic field in one way you
can think of it as as when you ring a
bell and it vibrates
while the cme smacks into earth and
earth's magnetic field
vibrates the carrington event of 1859
did cause a disruption in communication
due to damaged telegraph lines
but it is nothing compared to the impact
an event like that could have today
on the modern electrical grid basically
the power grid is like an antenna and we
have this current that gets induced in
our transmission line
we call it geomagnetically induced
current
and it is this induced current that can
wreak havoc
in 1989 the quebec region experienced a
geomagnetic storm resulting from a
significantly large coronal mass
ejection
causing six million people to lose power
for up to nine
hours now the 1989
blackout was a wake-up call for our
industry the root cause
was that between quebec and the united
states
we have long corridors of transmission
lines to transfer this huge amount of
power between canada and the united
states
you have to support and maintain a
healthy voltage across the network
during these geomagnetic disturbance we
lost seven
of these devices that are critical to
maintain voltage and we saw a voltage
collapse
a blackout there's truly no other
phenomena that can cause such
a wide area failure so slowly but surely
we put all the pieces together and we
figure out that
the root cause was this geomagnetically
induced
current this particular event led
engineers and researchers to better
understand the harmful
impacts of geomagnetic storms on the
power grid
and prompted them to create new industry
standards
the power grid operators have to take
certain protective actions
to maintain the stability of the grid
it's very much like a chess
game good chess players can almost
visualize moves and counter moves
but that's exactly what we do every
minute we're running
thousands upon thousands of what-if
scenarios
trying to check-mate this geomagnetic
disturbance
the power grid isn't the only thing on
earth affected by geomagnetic storms
they can also wreak havoc on gps
technology
you really don't want to land a plane
when you don't have gps
airlines might reroute based on a threat
from space weather
and they can really confuse pigeons
pigeons get lost we interact with the
pigeon racing community
and provide them with details of the
geomagnetic activity
before they launch their pitches because
if it's too geomagnetically disturbed
they might not return
for many reasons it is important to know
when space weather might impact earth
and researchers are getting better at
being able to predict it
today we are where terrestrial weather
was about 20 years ago
there's a lot we learned in that
evolution of meteorology
that we can apply to the evolution of
space weather
when we see a solar flare we have eight
minutes
from the time that that flare happens
until that the most energetic particles
get
here 12 hours to fit 18 hours for the
coronal mass ejection itself to hit
we can put out a watch when we first
detect this thing and determine it's
earth directed
that gives the utility companies time to
get ready for this we are now
entering a new 11-year solar cycle which
means for the next several years the
activity on the sun will increase
until we reach what is called solar
maximum in 2025.
as you approach solar maximum the
probability and likelihood of
having more and more cms increases
so as we start a new cycle and approach
solar maximum again should we be
concerned about the next
big geomagnetic storm
your worry level should be low but
that doesn't mean we shouldn't prepare
for it because there's no guarantee that
it won't happen tomorrow for power
companies for airlines for
human space flight for satellite
operators
maybe pigeon racers you know they have
to keep this in mind
we can say that we understand the
problem we have situational awareness
we have operating procedures and we
continue to engineer the problem
out designing a grid that can withstand
a one in a hundred year type of event
we've done our homework and we're ready
to handle the next
solar cycle
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