Like how you can fry your electronics if they’re plugged in when the power comes back on from an outage, why can’t we “unplug” everything so to speak?
In: Planetary Science
We do, but it isn’t 100% effective. Solar flares and storms can induce currents in electronics even if they’ve unplugged/powered down and which can still cause damage.
The damage isn’t done because something is turned on. Solar flare, or any EMP is just a massive burst of electromagnetic energy (obviously by its name). Some of those wavelengths of energy like microwaves and radiowaves can cause current to flow inside conductors the same way a wireless charger can charge your phone. The flow happens whether or not the device is on and the flow is powerful enough to damage sensitive electronics.
The “X-class” events that can really hurt us are hours long, and even during those, 99.something% of the time our infrastructure can handle it.
Basically, the multi-hour shutdown we’d need to make ourselves safe would be more disruptive than the “fry” events we’d be likely to get, so risk management says leave stuff on. (They leave our city power on during lightning storms too, because of pretty much the same reasoning.)
Because of induced voltage in conductors.
Any electrical conductor in a coronal mass ejection ( plasma getting blasted off the sun) is going to have voltage introduced to it whether it’s plugged in or not.
Read about the Carrington event: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carrington_Event](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carrington_Event)
telegraph operators would get shocked even when the telegraph was not hooked up to anything
We have 12 to 48 hours of warning, coronal mass ejections don’t move at the speed of light. Induced voltage is proportional to length of conductor. So pull all the breakers in your house, unplug everything and you should be okay. If you’re worried about phones or whatnot wrap them in aluminum foil (to form a Faraday Cage) and lean them against a water pipe. You’ll be fine.
For the electrical grid, they are going to need to disconnect it into shorter segments. Reconnecting the segments and synchronizing the grid will be a huge pain in the ass, but not impossible. Yes, we will take some damage, but it won’t be catastrophic. All the fiber optic stuff will be fine, the glass doesn’t conduct.
The issue is that an EMP causes electricity to start flowing on its own, even without a power source. That’s how we generate electricity in the first place (mostly): a spinning magnet will cause electricity in a wire near it.
An EMP is a massively powerful magnet forming, and it will cause electricity to “materialize” inside most metal things. It would be easy to build a light bulb that light itself up in response to an EMP going off using the EMP itself as the power source even at a distance.
Unplugging stuff isn’t going to help much. Electricity will just happen anyway, and electricity at the wrong voltage and flowing the wrong way through parts can ruin them.
Thing about a radio antenna. What a radio antenna is basically is a wire either sticking up in the air or running horizontal to the ground. ( like in the classic TV antenna).
The distribution wires of the power grid are also wires running horizontal to the ground.
Because of this they can work as antennas. So a solar flare can create additional currents in the wires. Currents that are not supposed to be there. It doesn’t matter of the power is on or off its going to get currents that are not intended.
In the US, the devices that protect electrical infrastructure are required to meet a certain level of EM shielding — electromagnetic pulses are a much smaller concern than other kinds of radiation, including EM interference generated by other devices in an electrical substation.
Any event that causes an EMP powerful enough to damage the modern power grid is going to cause other, much more significant problems.
In it’s simplest form of explanation, EMPs *cause* current inside of electronics in massive waves, even if something is unplugged.
If it’s not shielded (*like most electronics aren’t)* the components inside will still get hit with that electromagnetic blast and current will flow through everything at a disastrous rate by destroying most sensitive electronics. The current either flows in the wrong direction, or is way too much, and things inevitably break.
There was a large solar storm event back in the days of Telegraph where operators were able to unplug their batteries and turn off all power while still sending clear signals. There was enough power getting energized into the wires themselves connecting the poles to zap operators as they worked.
With a big enough flare or solar storm event it doesn’t matter if we turn the devices off, there might be enough energy in the “air” that it powers the devices and bypasses all the safety features. Like holding a florescent tube light up to a Tesla coil and getting it to glow without touching anything.
With power coming from “everywhere” all at once it’s a grand mal seizure but for electronics.
Latest Answers