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EMP is very damaging and can cause blackouts and other bad results specially on electronic devices , so i heard that our sun is going to make an electromagnetic pulse during the next 50 years ..is that true ? and how is it going to affect us ?

honeste_vivere
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Sandy Danial
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    No, the sun is not making EMPs and coronal mass ejections aren't quite as dangerous as the people who don't understand the difference between infrastructure back in the days of the Carrington event and modern infrastructure make them out to be. – CuriousOne Jul 03 '16 at 01:18
  • @CuriousOne Perhaps you could write an answer and include what went wrong in Canada? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/March_1989_geomagnetic_storm You should also factor in the damage to satellites and people on them. https://weather.com/science/space/news/solar-storm-1859-less-than-day-to-prepare-global-disruption-impact It seems to me this is a perfectly reasonable question. – ProfRob Jul 03 '16 at 07:53
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    @RobJeffries: Comparing a coronal mass ejection with an EMP is not reasonable by any means. Damage to spacecraft is a problem for spacecraft designers who didn't care to read the instructions for the electromagnetic and radiation environment they have to cope with. As for losing power... that's not dangerous and used to happen in my neck of the woods quite a few times in summer (AC use) until they upgraded the transformers. Smart people learn from their mistakes. – CuriousOne Jul 03 '16 at 08:04
  • @CuriousOne As I said, perhaps you could produce an answer instead of just dismissing it? Losing power is of course dangerous for all sorts of reasons, as are GPS malfunctions, as is sitting in the ISS when a CME hits the Earth. The following government report does not dismiss the dangers https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/449593/BIS-15-457-space-weather-preparedness-strategy.pdf I take the point about EMP nomenclature though. – ProfRob Jul 03 '16 at 08:22
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    @RobJeffries: Please note that I didn't say that coronal mass ejections can't do harm. They can do harm. Yes, we will lose power, yes, some transformers and generators will have to be replaced, but that's about it. My point is entirely that the fears that have been caused in the public are based on a poor understanding of the phenomenon, especially when the Carrington Event is being mentioned, the phenomenology of which was based on infrastructure of a different kind than what exists, today. Why everybody is opposed to getting facts straight instead of causing fear is a mystery to me. – CuriousOne Jul 03 '16 at 18:30
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    Comments are not answers. Get the facts straight in an answer. – ProfRob Jul 03 '16 at 21:04
  • You can see http://physics.stackexchange.com/a/149199/59023, http://physics.stackexchange.com/a/214509/59023, and/or http://physics.stackexchange.com/a/258093/59023. – honeste_vivere Jul 05 '16 at 01:24
  • @RobJeffries - There is now some controversy over whether the Quebec outage in 1989 was actually due to ground induced currents. There was a major transformer failure on the east coast of the US in the early 1970's that was more probably due to ground induced currents from a geomagnetic storm initiated by a coronal mass ejection. – honeste_vivere Jul 05 '16 at 01:32

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You are probably referring to a Carrington Event where a large coronal mass ejection from the sun hits the Earth and creates massive disturbances in the magnetic field, with the result that things like the power grid are damaged by the induced currents.

On July 23, 2012 a "Carrington-class" Solar Superstorm (Solar flare, Coronal mass ejection, Solar EMP) was observed; its trajectory missed Earth in orbit.

It missed the Earth by about 9 days. Current estimates are that there is a 12% chance of being hit by such an event, per decade. Unless there was an orderly shut down of power grids worldwide before the event damage could cost trillions and take years to repair.

Community
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    The damage caused by the Carrington Event doesn't transfer to modern infrastructure the way it's often portrayed. Part of the problem with the naive comprehension is caused by the fact that telecommunications lines were not based on twisted pairs back then, but on free hanging wires with "ground" (as in dirt) return path. We have long abandoned that technology and power transmission equipment can handle thousands and in extreme case millions of times as much energy as the bit of sparking that was observed back then contained. – CuriousOne Jul 03 '16 at 01:22
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    @CuriousOne Not true. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/March_1989_geomagnetic_storm "Because of serious concerns that utilities have failed to set protection standards and are unprepared for a severe solar storm such as a Carrington Event, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) is now (as of 2013) in the process of a proposed ruling that may require utilities to create a standard that would require power grids to be protected from severe solar storms." –  Jul 03 '16 at 14:07
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    That's what regulators are for, but such a sentence says absolutely nothing about the potential severity of a possible event or about its associated cost. All it says is that a regulating authority is doing its job, as it should. – CuriousOne Jul 03 '16 at 18:13
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    @CuriousOne http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2014/23jul_superstorm/ "According to a study by the National Academy of Sciences, the total economic impact could exceed $2 trillion or 20 times greater than the costs of a Hurricane Katrina. Multi-ton transformers damaged by such a storm might take years to repair." –  Jul 03 '16 at 19:47
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    @CuriousOne http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2009/21jan_severespaceweather/ –  Jul 03 '16 at 19:48
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    Yawn. NASA also keeps telling me about those killer asteroids that they will lasso and put in a zoo where it will perform next to a killer whale show. You really don't have to believe every press release they put out, you know. – CuriousOne Jul 03 '16 at 20:05
  • @DirkBruere - The "trillions in damage" was an estimate assuming a single storm knocks out at least 150 transfer station transformers (i.e., the ones the size of small houses). Fortunately, our power grid has the tendency to trip/fail when only one of these goes down rather than staying up so all of them can be destroyed. I elaborate more at http://physics.stackexchange.com/a/149199/59023. – honeste_vivere Jul 05 '16 at 01:26
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    The damage done to transformers comes from the power of the power plant. What happens is that the solar storm causes a very slowly varying current in the system, which is practically a DC current. This causes the core of transformers to get magnetized which makes the power transmission through the transformer slightly less efficient. But note that a 1 GW power plant requires an extremely efficient transformer, if it were to suddenly become a bit less efficient then that would cause a massive temperature increase, efficiency drops more and the whole thing explodes. – Count Iblis Jul 05 '16 at 02:21