Gadgetory

the Sun explodes with billion ton proton blasts of gas plasma actually plasma is energy and gaseous form actually happens quite frequently but usually those blasts go out into space and have nothing to do with us every now and then though blaster the issue from the northwest quadrant of the sun's facebook from sun spots which are storms on the Sun explode and travel the 93 million miles and hit the earth our magnetic field is designed to protect us from these blasts and usually it does the most significant net result is the Aurora which are beautiful so nobody from coins about the Aurora but rarely seems like once or twice a century a mammoth blast comes in and really does some spectacular things the largest such plus we know it was in 1859 called the Carrington event the Carrington event was actually two blasts August twenty-eighth 1859 next one in 77 first kaboom kaboom it came in and it lit the sky up at midnight it diffused electricity into the telegraph wires even burned down a few telegraph station but aside from the scientific curiosity about it it had a very little impact on society that would not be so today if a blast of the side of the 1859 Carrington event or bless are almost as large that followed in 1909 and 1921 where to hit us today and crash through our magnetic field well it would knock out the electrical power grid such that up to 130 million Americans would be without electricity for months or years that's not just according to me as according to the National Academy of Sciences landmark report called severe space weather events that report was also co-sponsored & Co researched by NASA National Academy of Sciences is no fringe group was founded by Abraham Lincoln during the height of the civil war and today it's probably the most prestigious scientific membership organization in the world according to the National Academy of Sciences if we were to be hit by one that happened in 1859 or another 1909 or 1921 we could be in big trouble trouble trouble the likes of which we've never seen our society is held together by a power grid today electricity is the cornerstone technology of his society there's nothing that we depend on more except maybe air water and food and we've come to rely on electricity for so much more it's not just no telecom needs in many cases little or no water or gasoline because the pumps are like it a little little or no refrigeration banking law enforcement military security pretty much everything we rely on to function and the question is okay well but why don't we just fix it that's what utility crews are for right there's no repair guys and prepare a pair of people or form it would be nice but unfortunately that doesn't work if a coronal mass ejection hits the earth and hits a transformer it doesn't just sort of walk it out it fuses the copper windings inside so the transformer has to be replaced now these babies the biggest ones way over a hundred tons there's a three-year waiting list in the world market for these things and none of them is made in the United States anymore on Halloween 2003 the Halloween storm hit didn't do much to the North Pole but it says South Africa got 14 major transformers not got and their their their electrical infrastructure was crippled for years we think well South Africa they're always having problems we tend to be dismissive perhaps and find no relevance in their situation but you know transformers the Transformers it's not because it's African or American it's a transformer and they had a devil of a time in June 2010 the United States House of Representatives voted unanimously unanimously these guys to take the steps to protect the powder it and they won't cross the aisle to perform the Heimlich maneuver and yet the US House of Representatives did so and pass the bill which I have to control my anger at this which died in the Senate on addressed ostensibly the question was they couldn't decide in the Senate which subcommittee had jurisdiction over the power grid a bunch of it's not the lack of money it's not the lack of technology that's keeping this from happening and now it's not even the lack of legal authority but it's the way that the grid came to be the grid was not created in one fell swoop like the federal highway system you grew up in it's a patchwork of public and private authorities commissions utilities with different jurisdictions overlapping state and regulatory agencies it's a mess legally I used to be chairman on advanced plasma physics research company in albuquerque new mexico one day in late two thousand for the principal scientist Roger Remy came to me and said the Sun is making mayonnaise oh yeah shut up Roger Roger the nine guy so mostly just to shut him up i went on the european space agency and nasa websites so the sun had been behaving more tumultuously and the only thing that astronomers could seem to agree upon was that this act the next climax of this activity would be in 2012 so I'm impulse I googled 2012 and fell down this rabbit hole of new age very colorful stuff Mayan astronomy very interesting not the kind of stuff that normally moves me to action but it was when you looked at the ancient mayan astronomy you say it was a work of genius i mean without so much as a lens much does a computer or spacecraft they did great jobs in predicting eclipses and even the movement of moon other planets and you move into the solar system iran the galaxy to me it was just the coincidence of contemporary astronomers pointed to 2012 as the next climax of solar activity and ancient mayan astronomers saying that 2012 would be a watershed year and it's that coincidence that got me interested in this research we need to do is stick a surge suppressor in between the ground and the transformer not really nuclear science scientists are not perfect they intimidate a lot of journalists a lot of politicians not necessarily out of any malignant intent but just because people don't know people are afraid to look stupid and sometimes you know they need what they're saying is does not hold I was attacked after I wrote new york times I bed peace by he has such a nice name ahead of the Hayden Planetarium famous scientists deGrasse Tyson Thank You Neil deGrasse Tyson thank you viciously attacked and in a letter you wrote to the to the times as an educator is my duty to empower you to think so that you can go forth and think accurate thoughts about world is put together inoculating you against the charlatans out there will exploit your ignorance on anything they possibly can well guess what Congress and the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission looked into the matter far more deeply they agree with me you see a superior scientist to me absolutely i'm not a scientist was I right on this issue yes I am I'm 58 years old and I have an eight year old and an 11 year old I am firmly convinced that if not within my life span within there's the power grid will be knocked out by solar electromagnetic khalsa solar blasts if nothing is done to protect it I don't want my daughter and son to have to go through that because I think would be I think it would could well result in anarchy and horror it means a lot to me they'd be safe you