
Electrical Ground Current Event Detected in Norway - duncancarroll
https://spaceweather.com/archive.php?view=1&day=07&month=01&year=2020
======
Stratoscope
Spaceweather.com always has the most interesting news. The site is run by Dr.
Tony Phillips, a science writer for NASA and high school teacher in Bishop,
California.

His students launch balloons to the edge of space to conduct research and to
carry up trinkets that they sell to fund their missions. If you scroll down on
the linked page, you'll see one of the silk roses they sent up on a recent
mission.

More details in a discussion from last year:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20372021](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20372021)

~~~
drmpeg
Still renders correctly in Netscape Communicator 4.76.

[http://www.w6rz.net/netscape.png](http://www.w6rz.net/netscape.png)

~~~
tomcam
What a relief. I thought I was going to have to upgrade version 5.1 or
something

~~~
qw
Netscape 5 was never released. They skipped that version when they decided to
focus on the Gecko engine (later used in Firefox).

Netscape 6 was released using the new Gecko engine.

~~~
gibolt
Thus why upgrading is complicated. Requires writing the upgrade yourself

~~~
bballer
Almost spit out my coffee that was so funny.

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cmroanirgo
Wow.

> _About 15 minutes before the disturbance in Norway, the interplanetary
> magnetic field (IMF) near Earth abruptly swung around 180 degrees, and the
> solar wind density jumped more than 5-fold. Earth may have crossed through a
> fold in the heliospheric current sheet--a giant, wavy membrane of electrical
> current rippling through the solar system. Such crossings can cause these
> kind of effects._

~~~
brylie
Would this type of event potentially affect human behavior, such as sleep
patterns?

I am genuinely curious because, anecdotally, my son and I had a difficult
night sleeping and a friend said she and her son also had difficulty sleeping
that night.

~~~
ncmncm
Hey, I did too! Took a sick day yesterday.

And, today I learned of the existence of the heliospheric current sheet!

[http://wso.stanford.edu/gifs/HCS.html](http://wso.stanford.edu/gifs/HCS.html)

Last I heard, astronomers didn't permit current flow in space. Or, anyway,
talking about it.

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duncancarroll
Am I understanding the article correctly? They're guessing that because there
was no solar wind which would normally trigger aurora, the Earth must have
passed through a sort of rogue wave in the heliosphere, which also was strong
enough to induce a current in the ground?

~~~
wahern
Not rogue. And I'm unsure if wave is the correct term. I think what they're
implying is that when passing through a "fold" in the heliospheric current
sheet
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heliospheric_current_sheet](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heliospheric_current_sheet))
the polarity flips. I presume that the tighter the fold, the less distance
between the polarity change, the greater the induced current; tight enough and
the polarity is different between two close points on earth, inducing a
greater than normal current.

But I didn't pay enough attention in high school physics, so....

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pwrsysengineer
This kind of event can cause transmission power outages.

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geomagnetically_induced_curr...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geomagnetically_induced_current)

~~~
hwillis
It can even kill tons of animals/people at once[1]. Four legged animals are
more vulnerable than humans, since the voltage across your heart depends on
how far apart your feet are. Also, we wear shoes.

Imagine how spooky it would be to be struck by ground current without
understanding... Whether or not you survive could depend entirely on what
direction you're standing. One direction will mean your feet are at different
voltages and current jumps into your nice conductive veins and arteries, all
passing right through your heart. The other direction means the front and back
of each foot is at different voltages, and you may not even feel it. Hundreds
of people just drop dead of heart attacks around you.

[1]: [https://www.theverge.com/2016/8/29/12690402/lightning-
strike...](https://www.theverge.com/2016/8/29/12690402/lightning-strike-kills-
norway-reindeer-death-why-science)

~~~
duelingjello
FUD. It’s not lightning.

~~~
martin_a
The effect is the same, does not really matter what causes the current
gradient in the ground.

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Dylan16807
You need a huge voltage density. Ten volts between your feet is going to do
nothing at all.

~~~
martin_a
I'm not aware of anything like "voltage density", what do you mean by that?

The potential gradient is the thing that kills you. It can either be created
by a lightning strike or by voltage induced into the ground as mentioned here.

~~~
Dylan16807
I'm talking about the potential gradient without bringing up new terminology.

> It can either be created by a lightning strike or by voltage induced into
> the ground as mentioned here.

If 'it' is lethal levels, then I don't think that 'or' is correct.

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gpvos
Why are there people measuring ground current? Even though random scientific
interest is enough reason, I suppose it's more than that.

~~~
Rebelgecko
Space weather events can have measurable effects on electrical things that are
supposedly grounded.

The 1989 coronal mass ejection caused lots of problems with radios, which is
probably one of the better known side effects of a solar storm. But it also
took out power grids because utilities got a phantom current that just showed
up out of nowhere on their long cables. This current can also cause problems
for other long metal things buried in the ground like oil pipelines.

IIRC a similar event in the 19th century electrocuted a bunch of telegraph
operators. They unplugged the power as a safety measure, but the Earth's
magnetic field generated so much current in the telegraph cables that they
still worked.

~~~
thinkcontext
> event in the 19th century electrocuted a bunch of telegraph operators.

True but you are underselling it a bit. Aurora was seen as far south as
Colombia and in Colorado it reportedly was bright enough to wake people up
because they thought it was day.

It is assumed that had that occurred today it would have fried the power grid
on at least a continental scale.

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_storm_of_1859](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_storm_of_1859)

~~~
riversflow
I honestly think it’s crazy that we don’t give this more attention as a
society. Like, there is serious talk that we need to look out for Asteroids.
But nothing about hardening ourselves against the next high output solar
event, which seems more likely to be a problem.

~~~
eli
My understanding is that the only early warning system we have relies on old
and failing satellites and provides only minutes of warning.

~~~
chrisco255
"In August 2018, NASA's Parker Solar Probe launched to space, soon becoming
the closest-ever spacecraft to the Sun. With cutting-edge scientific
instruments to measure the environment around the spacecraft, Parker Solar
Probe has completed three of 24 planned passes through never-before-explored
parts of the Sun's atmosphere, the corona."

[https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2019/nasas-parker-
solar...](https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2019/nasas-parker-solar-probe-
sheds-new-light-on-the-sun/)

~~~
eli
Oh neat. I was at a lecture about space weather some years ago and several
scientists were lamenting the delays in that project. Glad it got sorted!

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themagician
So freaking wild. Never seen this website before. I just learned like 10 new
things.

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brandmeyer
What are the units on the current and magnetic field graphs, I wonder?

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hwillis
The magnetometer stuff is declination, not intensity. Direction of the field.

The electrical measurement is in 10s of microvolts per meter and was ~10 mV/m.
It's hard to translate that to current since the ground impedance can vary,
but it's in the milli- or microamps per meter. This is high for this kind of
activity, but much lower than the limit the grid can handle.

In the bad old days a storm like this would have been enough to kill.
Telegraph operators would have been exposed to kilovolts across their ears on
a line 100s of km long. The ground current may a couple milliamps, but that
could still cause hundreds of amps to flow.

Original observer's notes:
[https://spaceweathergallery.com/indiv_upload.php?upload_id=1...](https://spaceweathergallery.com/indiv_upload.php?upload_id=147572)

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ycombonator
near realtime photos of aurora
[https://spaceweathergallery.com/aurora_gallery.html](https://spaceweathergallery.com/aurora_gallery.html)

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matt_the_bass
I’d love to know HOW such a measurement is made. What’s the reference
“ground”?

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zamadatix
Measure between 2 points of ground in a planned fashion, the difference should
be 0

[https://openei.org/wiki/Telluric_Survey](https://openei.org/wiki/Telluric_Survey)

~~~
matt_the_bass
cool thanks!

Does this imply that the points a pretty far away from each other to measure
an effect from such a large imf? If so, I’m curious as to the equipment that
would enable such a measurement. This is A wholly different ball game than
measuring ground currents across a pcb.

~~~
hwillis
In this case the probes were 40 meters apart. At that distance the voltage is
normally ~40 mV, which is trivially measurable. Fluke makes a line of fancy
multimeters for this kind of thing

~~~
matt_the_bass
Oh! Only 40 meters. I had assumed the distance must have been mush greater for
these scale effects.

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VLM
Two topics have not been covered yet:

1) Because its more spectacular there's been discussion of exploding
substations and arcing power lines. Which is true.

However a more practical HN topic would be "we all know" that inter building
LAN networking should be optical for power isolation reasons, but "we all
know" that often you can get away for years with copper network cables over a
short enough distance if they're on a similar enough electrical feed. If you
live in Florida, world capitol of thunderstorms, the wiring and switch ports
won't survive a week, but maybe northern yankees can do copper inter building
networking for years between lightning related failures. Anyway, yesterday, if
you lost some ethernet switch ports or entire switches connected to 100 meter
copper lines over long distances maybe to an outbuilding or up a tower or to
the roof for cameras or something, well, you kinda know why now. Of course you
probably lose 0.1% per year of hardware anyway under normal conditions so
maybe losses were mere coincidence... or was it? There's probably a dollar
value to blown ethernet ports related to that storm; can't say if its $10K or
$10M worldwide but I'm sure at least SOME money was lost in hardware and lost
productivity.

2) Aside from bulk power transport, and wired signalling, a third application
of ground current is archaeological / geological resistance surveys.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electrical_resistance_survey](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electrical_resistance_survey)

The idea is underground "stuff", perhaps geology layers, perhaps ancient
ruins, has varying DC resistance compared to typical background dirt and rock,
and we have the technology to measure and map those electrical anomalies and
therefore determine things about underground stuff. Cool. When the background
electrical and magnetic fields are quiet/constant -ish, anyway.

I've always wanted to participate in one of those, never got the chance.
Anyway weird earth currents mean its probably pretty hopeless to try gathering
research data during a geomagnetic storm. Yeah I know the 4-wire technique is
supposed to help and differential measurements and all that, but the gear is
designed for normal conditions not crazy storms so there seems no way you're
gonna get good data during a severe storm.

I mean, even the most obvious non-ground measurement problem is even
differential GPS is going to get annoyed at massive ionospheric disturbances
so you're going to have time/location noise in the data, if nothing else. I
wonder how bad the geomagnetic weather has to be to keep construction civil
engineering surveyors home for the day, probably pretty bad indeed, but I bet
a lot less and a lot more likely to happen than it takes to "short out
substations" and vaporize high voltage lines or whatever doomsayer stuff.

Aside from DC resistance measurements, I know the same people do magnetic
surveys and likewise having a huge geomagnetic storm as a noise source would
seem likely to degrade the gathered data.

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tilt_error
Moskstraumen?

~~~
zandor
Straumnes.

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77544cec
The earth is about to flip !

\-
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E31FHHH9is4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E31FHHH9is4)

\-
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1UJKZTjGCss](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1UJKZTjGCss)

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abcleb
USA might have used harp to cause an earthquake in Iran near a nuclear
location. That might be the cause of what we have seen. (I did not check the
time nor that if that is possible)

~~~
martin_a
I think you might be onto something here. Will start looking for my tinfoil
hat, while you keep us posted.

~~~
77544cec
Triggering earthquakes is a thing. This dude has devoted his whole career to
it.

[http://www.ihed.ras.ru/mg/novikov.htm](http://www.ihed.ras.ru/mg/novikov.htm)

~~~
martin_a
I doubt he is responsible for that. Iran is experiencing earthquakes over and
over again, nothing really new for them and most likely not the work of some
"weather machine".

~~~
77544cec
Think about this: this guy may well have doubts.

