AURORAL CURRENT

[spectre]

http://spectregroup.wordpress.com/2009/09/04/auroral-current/

THE GREAT GEOMAGNETIC STORM OF 1859
http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3182/2409221941_3d5fa9e718.jpg
http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2009/09/telegraphs-ran-on-electric-air-in-crazy-magnetic-storm-150-years-ago/
Telegraphs Ran on Electric Air in Crazy 1859 Magnetic Storm
BY Alexis Madrigal / September 2, 2009

On Sept. 2, 1859, at the telegraph office at No. 31 State Street in
Boston at 9:30 a.m., the operators’ lines were overflowing with
current, so they unplugged the batteries connected to their machines,
and kept working using just the electricity coursing through the air.
In the wee hours of that night, the most brilliant auroras ever
recorded had broken out across the skies of the Earth. People in
Havana and Florida reported seeing them. The New York Times ran a
3,000 word feature recording the colorful event in purple prose. “With
this a beautiful tint of pink finally mingled. The clouds of this
color were most abundant to the northeast and northwest of the
zenith,” the Times wrote. “There they shot across one another,
intermingling and deepening until the sky was painfully lurid. There
was no figure the imagination could not find portrayed by these
instantaneous flashes.”

As if what was happening in the heavens wasn’t enough, the
communications infrastructure just beginning to stretch along the
eastern seaboard was going haywire from all the electromagnetism. “We
observed the influence upon the lines at the time of commencing
business — 8 o’clock — and it continued so strong up to 9 1/2 as to
prevent any business from being done, excepting by throwing off the
batteries at each end of the line and working by the atmospheric
current entirely!” the astonished telegraph operators of Boston wrote
in a statement that appeared in The New York Times later that week.
The Boston operator told his Portland, Maine counterpart, “Mine is
also disconnected, and we are working with the auroral current. How do
you receive my writing?” Portland responded, “Better than with our
batteries on,” before finally concluding with Yankee pluck, “Very
well. Shall I go ahead with business?”

In terms of the relationship between the Earth and its star, it is
probably the weirdest 24-hours on record. People struggled to explain
what had happened. NASA’s David Hathaway, a solar astronomer, said
that people in the solar community were beginning to understand that
there was a relationship between events on the sun and magnetism on
Earth. But that knowledge was not widely disseminated. Another theory
held that auroras were actually atmospheric phenomena, that is to say,
weather of a particular type. Proof of various sorts was offered.
Auroras apparently had a sound, “the noise of crepitation,” or
crackling, that marked them as Earth-bound phenomena. Even weirder
explanations arose, like meteorologist Ebenezer Miriam’s hilariously
quacky quote in The New York Times. “The Aurora (electricity
discharged from the craters of volcanoes) either dissolves in the
atmosphere, and is thus diffused through space or concentrated into a
gelatineus[sic] substance forming meteors, called shooting stars,”
Miriam wrote. “These meteors dissolve rapidly in atmospheric air, but
sometimes reach the earth before dissolving, and resemble thin
starch.”

But some scientists were on the right track. Eighteen hours before the
storm hit, Richard Carrington, a young but well-respected British
astronomer, had been making his daily sunspot observations when he saw
two brilliant spots of light. We know now that what he was seeing was
the heating up of the surface of the sun beyond its standard fusion-
powered temperature of about 5,500 degrees Celsius. The energy to do
so came from a magnetic explosion as a distended part of the sun’s
magnetic field snapped and reconnected. “They give off the energy
equivalent of about 10 million atomic bombs in the matter of an hour
or two,” Hathaway said. “[The 1859] one was special, and it was
noticed because it was a white light flare. It actually heated up the
surface of the sun well enough to light up the sun.”

Though back then Carrington didn’t know what he was looking at, five
years of staring at the sun had taught him that what he was seeing was
unprecedented. When in the wee hours of the next night, the skies all
over the globe began turning brilliant colors, Carrington knew he was
on to something. “I think that it represents a tipping point in
astronomy because for the first time, astronomers had concrete
evidence that a force other than gravity could communicate itself
across 93 million miles of space,” said Stuart Clark, author of the
book The Sun Kings: The Unexpected Tragedy of Richard Carrington and
the Tale of How Modern Astronomy Began.

Still, it would be decades before the scientific theory would catch up
with the observations. British heavyweights like Lord Kelvin opined
that the sun could never deliver the level of energy that had been
observed on Earth. Understanding what was happening without
understanding how the sun worked or the nature of particles was not
exactly easy. “It’s a great example of where theory and observation
don’t match up,” Clark said. “The scientific establishment tends to
believe the theory, but it’s usually the other way around, and the
observations are correct. You have to build up a critical mass of
observations to shift the scientific theory.”

Over time, more and more observations did shift the theory, and the
sun was held properly responsible for geomagnetic storms. The
technological lesson that electrical equipment could be disturbed was
largely forgotten, though. When a geomagnetic storm hits the Earth, it
shakes the Earth’s magnetosphere. As the magnetized plasma pushes the
Earth’s magnetic field lines around, currents flow. Those currents
have their own magnetic fields and soon, down at the ground, strong
electromagnetic forces are in play. In other words, your telegraph can
run on “auroral current.”

Geomagnetic storms, though, can have less benign impacts. On August 4,
1972, a Bell Telephone line running from Chicago to San Francisco got
knocked out. Bell Labs researchers wanted to find out why, and their
findings led them right back to 1859 and the auroral current. Louis
Lanzerotti, now an engineering professor at the New Jersey Institute
of Technology, went digging in the Bell Labs library for similar
events and explanations. Along with field research, the history became
the core of a new approach to building more robust electrical systems.
“We did all this analysis and wrote this paper in ‘74 for the Bell
Systems Technical Journal,” Lanzerotti said. “And it really made a
helluva of a difference in Bell Systems. They redesigned their power
systems.”

The fight to secure the Earth’s technical systems from geomagnetic
anomalies continues. Late last year, the National Academies of Science
put out a report on severe space weather events. If a storm even
approaching 1859 levels were to happen again, they concluded the
damage could range upwards of a $1 trillion, largely because of
disruptions to the electrical grid. The data on how often huge storms
occur is scarce. Ice cores are the main evidence we have outside human
historical documents. Charged particles can interact with nitrogen in
the atmosphere, creating nitrides. The increased concentration of
those molecules can be detected by looking at ice cores, which act
like a logbook of the atmosphere at a given time. Over the last 500
years of this data, the 1859 event was twice as big as anything else.

Even so, the sun remains a bit of a mystery, particularly these
tremendously energetic events. Scientists like Hathaway are able to
describe why one geomagnetic storm might be bigger than another based
on the details of how it arose, but they are hard pressed to predict
when or why a freakishly large storm might arise. Scientific
understanding of how the sun impacts the Earth and its tech-heavy
humans isn’t complete, but at least we know when it got its start: the
early hours of September 2, 1859. “It’s at that point we realize that
these celestial objects affected our technologies and the way we
wanted to live our lives,” Stuart said. And it turns out, our burning
hot star still does.

SPACE WEATHER PREDICTION CENTER
http://www.swpc.noaa.gov/ace/
http://www.srl.caltech.edu/ACE/ASC/
http://www.srl.caltech.edu/ACE/
http://www.srl.caltech.edu/ACE/ASC/related_sites.html#Complementary
http://solar.physics.montana.edu/press/faq.html

EMP COMMISSION
http://www.empcommission.org/

OFF THE GRID
http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2009/images/severespaceweather/collapse_strip2.jpg
http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2009/images/severespaceweather/transformermap.jpg
http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2009/21jan_severespaceweather.htm
BY Dr. Tony Phillips / 01.21.2009

The problem begins with the electric power grid. "Electric power is
modern society's cornerstone technology on which virtually all other
infrastructures and services depend," the report notes. Yet it is
particularly vulnerable to bad space weather. Ground currents induced
during geomagnetic storms can actually melt the copper windings of
transformers at the heart of many power distribution systems.
Sprawling power lines act like antennas, picking up the currents and
spreading the problem over a wide area. The most famous geomagnetic
power outage happened during a space storm in March 1989 when six
million people in Quebec lost power for 9 hours.

According to the report, power grids may be more vulnerable than ever.
The problem is interconnectedness. In recent years, utilities have
joined grids together to allow long-distance transmission of low-cost
power to areas of sudden demand. On a hot summer day in California,
for instance, people in Los Angeles might be running their air
conditioners on power routed from Oregon. It makes economic sense—but
not necessarily geomagnetic sense. Interconnectedness makes the system
susceptible to wide-ranging "cascade failures."

To estimate the scale of such a failure, report co-author John
Kappenmann of the Metatech Corporation looked at the great geomagnetic
storm of May 1921, which produced ground currents as much as ten times
stronger than the 1989 Quebec storm, and modeled its effect on the
modern power grid. He found more than 350 transformers at risk of
permanent damage and 130 million people without power. The loss of
electricity would ripple across the social infrastructure with "water
distribution affected within several hours; perishable foods and
medications lost in 12-24 hours; loss of heating/air conditioning,
sewage disposal, phone service, fuel re-supply and so on."

"The concept of interdependency," the report notes, "is evident in the
unavailability of water due to long-term outage of electric power--and
the inability to restart an electric generator without water on site."

The strongest geomagnetic storm on record is the Carrington Event of
August-September 1859, named after British astronomer Richard
Carrington who witnessed the instigating solar flare with his unaided
eye while he was projecting an image of the sun on a white screen.
Geomagnetic activity triggered by the explosion electrified telegraph
lines, shocking technicians and setting their telegraph papers on
fire; Northern Lights spread as far south as Cuba and Hawaii; auroras
over the Rocky Mountains were so bright, the glow woke campers who
began preparing breakfast because they thought it was morning. Best
estimates rank the Carrington Event as 50% or more stronger than the
superstorm of May 1921.

"A contemporary repetition of the Carrington Event would cause …
extensive social and economic disruptions," the report warns. Power
outages would be accompanied by radio blackouts and satellite
malfunctions; telecommunications, GPS navigation, banking and finance,
and transportation would all be affected. Some problems would correct
themselves with the fading of the storm: radio and GPS transmissions
could come back online fairly quickly. Other problems would be
lasting: a burnt-out multi-ton transformer, for instance, can take
weeks or months to repair. The total economic impact in the first year
alone could reach $2 trillion, some 20 times greater than the costs of
a Hurricane Katrina or, to use a timelier example, a few TARPs.

What's the solution? The report ends with a call for infrastructure
designed to better withstand geomagnetic disturbances, improved GPS
codes and frequencies, and improvements in space weather forecasting.
Reliable forecasting is key. If utility and satellite operators know a
storm is coming, they can take measures to reduce damage—e.g.,
disconnecting wires, shielding vulnerable electronics, powering down
critical hardware. A few hours without power is better than a few
weeks.

NASA has deployed a fleet of spacecraft to study the sun and its
eruptions. The Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO), the twin
STEREO probes, ACE, Wind and others are on duty 24/7. NASA physicists
use data from these missions to understand the underlying physics of
flares and geomagnetic storms; personnel at NOAA's Space Weather
Prediction Center use the findings, in turn, to hone their forecasts.
At the moment, no one knows when the next super solar storm will
erupt. It could be 100 years away or just 100 days.

ZERO SUNSPOTS CURRENTLY
http://www.spaceweather.com/
http://spaceweather.com/glossary/sunspotnumber.html
http://spaceweather.com/glossary/sunspotplotter.htm
http://sidc.oma.be/index.php3

SPOTLESSNESS :: THE LINGERING SOLAR MINIMUM
http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2008/23sep_solarwind.htm
http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2008/30sep_blankyear.htm
Spotless Sun: Blankest Year of the Space Age
BY Dr. Tony Phillips / Sept. 30, 2008

Astronomers who count sunspots have announced that 2008 is now the
"blankest year" of the Space Age. As of Sept. 27, 2008, the sun had
been blank, i.e., had no visible sunspots, on 200 days of the year. To
find a year with more blank suns, you have to go back to 1954, three
years before the launch of Sputnik, when the sun was blank 241 times.
"Sunspot counts are at a 50-year low," says solar physicist David
Hathaway of the NASA Marshall Space Flight Center. "We're experiencing
a deep minimum of the solar cycle."

A spotless day looks like this:
http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2008/images/blankyear/20080927_1600_mdi_igr_strip.gif
{SOHO image of the sun taken Sept. 27, 2008}

The image, taken by the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) on
Sept. 27, 2008, shows a solar disk completely unmarked by sunspots.
For comparison, a SOHO image taken seven years earlier on Sept. 27,
2001, is peppered with colossal sunspots, all crackling with solar
flares: image. The difference is the phase of the 11-year solar cycle.
2001 was a year of solar maximum, with lots of sunspots, solar flares
and geomagnetic storms. 2008 is at the cycle's opposite extreme, solar
minimum, a quiet time on the sun.

And it is a very quiet time. If solar activity continues as low as it
has been, 2008 could rack up a whopping 290 spotless days by the end
of December, making it a century-level year in terms of spotlessness.
Hathaway cautions that this development may sound more exciting than
it actually is: "While the solar minimum of 2008 is shaping up to be
the deepest of the Space Age, it is still unremarkable compared to the
long and deep solar minima of the late 19th and early 20th centuries."
Those earlier minima routinely racked up 200 to 300 spotless days per
year.

Some solar physicists are welcoming the lull. "This gives us a chance
to study the sun without the complications of sunspots," says Dean
Pesnell of the Goddard Space Flight Center. "Right now we have the
best instrumentation in history looking at the sun. There is a whole
fleet of spacecraft devoted to solar physics--SOHO, Hinode, ACE,
STEREO and others. We're bound to learn new things during this long
solar minimum."

As an example he offers helioseismology: "By monitoring the sun's
vibrating surface, helioseismologists can probe the stellar interior
in much the same way geologists use earthquakes to probe inside Earth.
With sunspots out of the way, we gain a better view of the sun's
subsurface winds and inner magnetic dynamo." "There is also the matter
of solar irradiance," adds Pesnell. "Researchers are now seeing the
dimmest sun in their records. The change is small, just a fraction of
a percent, but significant. Questions about effects on climate are
natural if the sun continues to dim."

Pesnell is NASA's project scientist for the Solar Dynamics Observatory
(SDO), a new spacecraft equipped to study both solar irradiance and
helioseismic waves. Construction of SDO is complete, he says, and it
has passed pre-launch vibration and thermal testing. "We are ready to
launch! Solar minimum is a great time to go." Coinciding with the
string of blank suns is a 50-year record low in solar wind pressure, a
recent discovery of the Ulysses spacecraft. The pressure drop began
years before the current minimum, so it is unclear how the two
phenomena are connected, if at all. This is another mystery for SDO
and the others.

SEVERE SPACE WEATHER EVENTS [REPORT]
http://www.nap.edu/catalog.php?record_id=12507
Societal and Economic Impacts
Authors: Committee on the Societal and Economic Impacts of Severe
Space Weather Events: A Workshop, National Research Council

CONTACT
John Kappenman
http://www.metatechcorp.com/aps/apsmain.html
jo...@metatechcorp.com / kapp...@Metatechcorp.com

STARCOUNT DONE BY EYE, BEFORE LIGHT POLLUTION
http://www.mayacalendar.com/f-cuenta.html
http://www.mayacalendar.com/menu.html
http://www.mayacalendar.com/f-mayamath.html
http://www.mayacalendar.com/f-components.html
"The Maya year has a basic unit called Kin, a word that means day,
Sun, etc."

MAYAN ASTRONOMY
http://www.michielb.nl/maya/
http://ircamera.as.arizona.edu/NatSci102/text/extmayaastronomy.htm
http://www.authenticmaya.com/maya_astronomy.htm
http://www.kuxansuum.net/page8.php
http://www.hermetic.ch/cal_stud/maya/boehm/boehm51.htm
http://www.greatdreams.com/2012.htm
http://www.mayacalendar.com/mayadivination1.htm

A BAKTUN (def.)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baktun
"It contains 144,000 days or 400 tuns or nearly 400 tropical years.
The Classic period of Maya civilization occurred during the 8th and
9th baktuns of the current calendrical cycle. The current (13th)
baktun will end, or be completed, on 13.0.0.0.0 (December 21, 2012
using the GMT correlation). This also marks the beginning of the 14th
baktun, as such a term is usually used among Mayanists."

2012
http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2009/04/storms2012/
The Geomagnetic Apocalypse — And How to Stop It
BY Brandon Keim / April 24, 2009

For scary speculation about the end of civilization in 2012, people
usually turn to followers of cryptic Mayan prophecy, not scientists.
But that’s exactly what a group of NASA-assembled researchers
described in a chilling report issued earlier this year on the
destructive potential of solar storms.

Entitled “Severe Space Weather Events — Understanding Societal and
Economic Impacts,” it describes the consequences of solar flares
unleashing waves of energy that could disrupt Earth’s magnetic field,
overwhelming high-voltage transformers with vast electrical currents
and short-circuiting energy grids. Such a catastrophe would cost the
United States “$1 trillion to $2 trillion in the first year,”
concluded the panel, and “full recovery could take four to 10 years.”
That would, of course, be just a fraction of global damages. Needless
to say, shorting out the electrical grid would cause major disruptions
to developed nations and their economies.

Worse yet, the next period of intense solar activity is expected in
2012, and coincides with the presence of an unusually large hole in
Earth’s geomagnetic shield, meaning we’ll have less protection than
usual from the solar flares. The report received relatively little
attention, perhaps because of 2012’s supernatural connotations. Mayan
astronomers supposedly predicted that 2012 would mark the calamitous
“birth of a new era.”

But the report is credible enough that some scientists and engineers
are beginning to take the electromagnetic threat seriously. According
to Lawrence Joseph, author of “Apocalypse 2012: A Scientific
Investigation into Civilization’s End,” “I’ve been following this
topic for almost five years, and it wasn’t until the report came out
that this really began to freak me out.”

Wired.com: Do you think it’s coincidence that the Mayans predicted
apocalypse on the exact date when astronomers say the sun will next
reach a period of maximum turbulence?
Lawrence Joseph: I have enormous respect for Mayan astronomers. It
disinclines me to dismiss this as a coincidence. But I recommend
people verify that the Mayans prophesied what people say they did. I
went to Guatemala and spent a week with two Mayan shamans who spent 20
years talking to other shamans about the prophecies. They confirmed
that the Maya do see 2012 as a great turning point. Not the end of the
world, not the great off-switch in the sky, but the birth of the fifth
age.

Wired.com: Isn’t a great off-switch in the sky exactly what’s
described in the report?
Joseph: The chair of the NASA workshop was Dan Baker at the Laboratory
for Atmospheric and Space Physics. Some of his comments, and the
comments he approved in the report, are very strong about the
potential connection between coronal mass ejections and power grids
here on Earth. There’s a direct relationship between how
technologically sophisticated a society is and how badly it could be
hurt. That’s the meta-message of the report. I had the good fortune
last week to meet with John Kappenman at MetaTech. He took me through
a meticulous two-hour presentation about just how vulnerable the power
grid is, and how it becomes more vulnerable as higher voltages are
sent across it. He sees it as a big antenna for space weather
outbursts.

Wired.com: Why is it so vulnerable?
Joseph: Ultra-high voltage transformers become more finicky as energy
demands are greater. Around 50 percent already can’t handle the
current they’re designed for. A little extra current coming in at odd
times can slip them over the edge. The ultra-high voltage
transformers, the 500,000- and 700,000-kilovolt transformers, are
particularly vulnerable. The United States uses more of these than
anyone else. China is trying to implement some million-kilovolt
transformers, but I’m not sure they’re online yet.

Kappenman also points out that when the transformers blow, they can’t
be fixed in the field. They often can’t be fixed at all. Right now
there’s a one- to three-year lag time between placing an order and
getting a new one. According to Kappenman, there’s an as-yet-untested
plan for inserting ground resistors into the power grid. It makes the
handling a little more complicated, but apparently isn’t anything the
operators can’t handle. I’m not sure he’d say these could be in place
by 2012, as it’s difficult to establish standards, and utilities are
generally regulated on a state-by-state basis. You’d have quite a
legal thicket. But it still might be possible to get some measure of
protection in by the next solar climax.

Wired.com: Why can’t we just shut down the grid when we see a storm
coming, and start it up again afterwards?
Joseph: Power grid operators now rely on one satellite called ACE,
which sits about a million miles out from Earth in what’s called the
gravity well, the balancing point between sun and earth. It was
designed to run for five years. It’s 11 years old, is losing steam,
and there are no plans to replace it. ACE provides about 15 to 45
minutes of heads-up to power plant operators if something’s coming in.
They can shunt loads, or shut different parts of the grid. But to just
shut the grid off and restart it is a $10 billion proposition, and
there is lots of resistance to doing so. Many times these storms hit
at the north pole, and don’t move south far enough to hit us. It’s a
difficult call to make, and false alarms really piss people off. Lots
of money is lost and damage incurred. But in Kappenman’s view, and in
lots of others, this time burnt could really mean burnt.

Wired.com: Do you live your life differently now?
Joseph: I’ve been following this topic for almost five years. It
wasn’t until the report came out that it began to freak me out. Up
until this point, I firmly believed that the possibility of 2012 being
catastrophic in some way was worth investigating. The report made it a
little too real. That document can’t be ignored. And it was even
written before the THEMIS satellite discovered a gigantic hole in
Earth’s magnetic shield. Ten or twenty times more particles are coming
through this crack than expected. And astronomers predict that the way
the sun’s polarity will flip in 2012 will make it point exactly the
way we don’t want it to in terms of evading Earth’s magnetic field.
It’s an astonoshingly bad set of coincidences.

Wired.com: If Barack Obama said, “Lets’ prepare,” and there weren’t
any bureaucratic hurdles, could we still be ready in time?
Joseph: I believe so. I’d ask the President to slipstream behind
stimulus package funds already appropriated for smart grids, which are
supposed to improve grid efficiency and help transfer high energies at
peak times. There’s a framework there. Working within that, you could
carve out some money for the ground resistors program, if those tests
work, and have the initial momentum for cutting through the red tape.
It’d be a place to start.

CALL FOR RESISTORS
http://www.metatechcorp.com/aps/GeomagneticStorms.html
http://www.metatechcorp.com/aps/SuperStormAnimation.html
Wired.com talked to Joseph and John Kappenman, CEO of electromagnetic
damage consulting company MetaTech, about the possibility of
geomagnetic apocalypse — and how to stop it.

Wired.com: What’s the problem?
John Kappenman: We’ve got a big, interconnected grid that spans across
the country. Over the years, higher and higher operating voltages have
been added to it. This has escalated our vulnerability to geomagnetic
storms. These are not a new thing. They’ve probably been occurring for
as long as the sun has been around. It’s just that we’ve been
unknowingly building an infrastructure that’s acting more and more
like an antenna for geomagnetic storms.

Wired.com: What do you mean by antenna?
Kappenman: Large currents circulate in the network, coming up from the
earth through ground connections at large transformers. We need these
for safety reasons, but ground connections provide entry paths for
charges that could disrupt the grid.

Wired.com: What’s your solution?
Kappenman: What we’re proposing is to add some fairly small and
inexpensive resistors in the transformers’ ground connections. The
addition of that little bit of resistance would significantly reduce
the amount of the geomagnetically induced currents that flow into the
grid.

Wired.com: What does it look like?
Kappenman: In its simplest form, it’s something that might be made out
of cast iron or stainless steel, about the size of a washing machine.

Wired.com: How much would it cost?
Kappenman: We’re still at the conceptual design phase, but we think
it’s do-able for $40,000 or less per resistor. That’s less than what
you pay for insurance for a transformer.

Wired.com: And less than what you’d willingly pay for insurance on
civilization.
Kappenman: If you’re talking about the United States, there are about
5,000 transformers to consider this for. The Electromagnetic Pulse
Commission recommended it in a report they sent to Congress last year.
We’re talking about $150 million or so. It’s pretty small in the grand
scheme of things. Big power lines and substations can withstand all
the other known environmental challenges. The problem with geomagnetic
storms is that we never really understood them as a vulnerability, and
had a design code that took them into account.

Wired.com: Can it be done in time?
Kappenman: I’m not in the camp that’s certain a big storm will occur
in 2012. But given time, a big storm is certain to occur in the
future. They have in the past, and they will again. They’re about one-
in-400-year events. That doesn’t mean it will be 2012. It’s just as
likely that it could occur next week.