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I've always been hearing that solar flares and the resulting geomagnetic storms pose danger to hard drives and electronics. Is there any truth to it? Recently

by kaivi 3y ago

I've always been hearing that solar flares and the resulting geomagnetic storms pose danger to hard drives and electronics. Is there any truth to it? Recently I've been building a server room, and naturally a question of EM insulation came up. If I were to protect my servers from this, I needed to wrap the room in a grounded mesh with holes of λ in diameter. What wavelengths am I protecting against? I couldn't find an answer online, perhaps because there isn't a mechanism which could flip bits or otherwise cause potential difference across my electronics, after a coronal ejecta reaches Earth. I can imagine how charged solar wind can interact with our atmosphere and cause voltage on long stretches of cable like telegraph or electricity lines, and consumers have surge protectors for this in multiple parts of the grid. Is there something that I've missed?

dallyo 3y ago
Maybe look at material about EMP weapon effects, I imagine it's probably the same kind of risks. I think solar flare risk is overblown though.
- crashingintoyou 3y ago
  > I think solar flare risk is overblown though. What you'll find on the insurance side of thing is this sort of claim from Lloyds of London (https://assets.lloyds.com/assets/pdf-solar-storm-risk-to-the-north-american-electric-grid/1/pdf-Solar-Storm-Risk-to-the-North-American-Electric-Grid.pdf https://assets.lloyds.com/assets/pdf-solar-storm-risk-to-the...): > A Carrington-level, extreme geomagnetic storm is almost inevitable in the future. While the probability of an extreme storm occurring is relatively low at any given time, it is almost inevitable that one will occur eventually. Historical auroral records suggest a return period of 50 years for Quebec-level storms and 150 years for very extreme storms, such as the Carrington Event that occurred 154 years ago. If anything I think the solar flare risk is understated.
  - captainbland 3y ago
    > 150 years for very extreme storms, such as the Carrington Event that occurred 154 years ago. Wow. I knew this was a possibility but I didn't know we were overdue. Echoes of COVID a bit as a "once in a hundred years pandemic". Looking forward to the space mandated holiday to be honest.
    - __MatrixMan__ 3y ago
      We have a lot more wires lying around than they did in 1859, so that's a lot more induced current than they had to deal with. They probably had all of the fires out within a day or two--I'm not sure we'd be so lucky. I wonder if we have enough replacement parts on hand to recover after an event like that. Given our labyrinthine supply chains, if it becomes a manufacturing bottleneck it could take years to retool. In a morbid way though, I'm also looking forward to the holiday. I'm really curious to see what changes we make while the lights and cameras and payment systems are offline.
      - dylan604 3y ago
        If the power was out in large swaths of urban areas, then a lot more people would suddenly be able to see the night sky. A similar thing happened in parts of the LA area after the '91 Northridge earthquake.
        bobwaycott 3y ago
        I believe you mean ‘94. That was a fun one. ;)
        dylan604 3y ago
        I knew I should have confirmed that year before posting =) I couldn't remember the epicenter, I just knew it was up in the Valley, so I did look that up on a map. I only knew of it from stories, as I was nowhere near California at the time. I had a co-worker that had just moved to that area the day before the quake. He said he debated about putting off the unpacking and checking out the new area or busting ass to unpack and just be "moved in" and done with it. He chose the unpacking, and then that night the quake where he lost a lot of stuff. Had he left everything in the boxes, things would have been just fine. I bet he's now a firm believer in procrastinating!
  - dallyo 3y ago
    Well it's a very hypothetical black swan type situation. I don't think it's a sensible use of resources to prepare for a badly understood phenomenon with uncertain probability. If and when it happens things will get fixed, and we will learn from the experience. That document is a very interesting read though, thank you. I don't fully trust insurers though - it's in their interest to create a feeling of risk.
    - toss1 3y ago
      >>If and when it happens things will get fixed Yes, but the timing of those fixes could be an enormous problem From what I've read, a large part of the problem will be burnt-out transformers all over the grid, from the major stations down to the street-level. Replacing any one of those is only a job of a few hours, when you have one available. The problem is that fabricating them takes a long time, and there is nowhere near enough inventory to replace the numbers that would fry in a Carrington-like event (or an EMP attack). It could take YEARS to replace them, during which time the economy is pretty much back to the 1800s, but with 2000s-level population to feed. The estimates to create a stockpile of transformers so that they could be replaced in weeks-to months range around $500 million. It would give the nation a huge strategic economic advantage to be able to fully recover on a timescale of double-digit weeks instead of years. But, since the problem is so un-sexy that it is never brought up (the last infrastructure bill would have been a good time to do so). Even if we could individually have power with rooftop solar+battery (also sufficiently protected), it'd be hard to thrive with the entire transport web broken (no grid electricity to pump gasoline/diesel, etc.). Still, I want to know how vulnerable is rooftop solar, and what it would take to protect it (and prevent an event from burning down the house). Any experts have some pointers?
      - kwhitefoot 3y ago
        > create a stockpile of transformers At least one electricity network on the west coast of Norway already does this to cope with the inevitable damage caused by seasonal thunderstorms.
      - CamperBob2 3y ago
- TheAceOfHearts 3y ago
  Solar flare risk is underestimated since it's not something we've previously experienced in full force. Based on conversations I've had with electrical engineers that work for a national power company, they don't have any measures in place to protect us from solar flares bringing down the full power grid. A sufficiently powerful solar flare event would probably lead to millions of deaths, as I understand it.
  - codethief 3y ago
    > […] bringing down the full power grid. A sufficiently powerful solar flare event would probably lead to millions of deaths Wait, how did we go from "bringing down the full power grid" to "millions of deaths" so quickly?
    - dallyo 3y ago
      Yeah I think that's a stretch. Likely there would be deaths from hospitals not having power etc. but I can't imagine it being at that scale. Secondary effects from the economic fallout might be worse. This kind of reminds me of the y2k non-event though.
      - hanselot 3y ago
        Well, I'm not a mathematician, but I will hazard that since we have a global population of somewhere around 8 billion we can ask ChatGPT (the cheap one to draw up an estimate for us). Sadly it doesn't wanna be more specific, however I am willing to entertain the number could reach millions. Just the impact on air traffic would be catastrophic, nevermind whatever happens to all the satellites that didn't exist for the last one. ```It's difficult to give an accurate estimate of the number of lives that could be lost in the event of a global-scale transformer destruction due to a Carrington-level solar storm, as there are many variables that could affect the outcome. However, I can provide some information that may be helpful in making an estimate. A report by the U.S. Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) suggests that a large-scale transformer failure due to a geomagnetic disturbance (GMD) could result in widespread and prolonged power outages, affecting multiple states or even the entire country. The report estimates that the total economic impact of such an event in the United States could range from $1 trillion to $2 trillion, and that recovery could take years. If we assume that the impact of a GMD-induced transformer failure would be proportionate to the global population, then it's reasonable to assume that the number of lives lost could be in the hundreds of thousands or even millions. This is because prolonged power outages could lead to a wide range of consequences, including shortages of food and water, breakdowns in transportation systems, and disruptions to medical care. However, it's important to note that the actual number of lives lost would depend on many factors, including the severity and duration of the power outages, the availability of resources and emergency services, and the ability of individuals and governments to respond effectively to the crisis.```
- ianburrell 3y ago
  With EMP, it is important to distinguish between short-range and long-range. Short-range EMP can damage electronics but is primarily caused by nearby nuclear blast which tends to be bigger problem than the EMP. It can also be caused by conventional explosive devices but those cover small area. Long-range EMP is caused by nuclear blast at high altitude. It induces currents is long conductors but doesn't touch electronics. The main effect is knocking out power over large areas. It has very similar effects to large solar flare.
joshspankit 3y ago
You can mitigate most of it by using ECC memory, a good line-filtering UPS, and some type of error-checking for reads/writes/at-rest. The last of the risk can be functionally eliminated by your off-site backup.
- egeozcan 3y ago
  > off-site backup Underground or at the other side of the planet or both?
  - shagie 3y ago
    Not powered, but the next room over is acceptable for a solar flare. The issue would be that wires start getting induced current in them ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geomagnetically_induced_current https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geomagnetically_induced_curren... ) that arcs and shorts out the device. However, if you've got a backup tape there's nothing from the current that will flip the bits on the tape itself. There are good reasons to have the backup be off site (other physical calamities) - but the aurora isn't going to flip any bits on a backup. At worst, it will destroy the machinery from a surge from the grid and an extremely powerful one may destroy the machinery from arcing in the device itself (this would be extremely powerful)... but the media itself is fine.
  - joshspankit 3y ago
    I suspect you’re trying to be sarcastic and/or facetious, but: Both ideally sure. The more backups and more locations the better. Diminishing returns pretty quickly but why not if the data is important. Electromagnetic energy from the sun only has a chance of damaging equipment and only some of the bits of that equipment will be affected. You could have two servers in the same datacenter where one gets hit and the other does not. Or even two drives in the same chassis. And even then, it might not be all the data on that drive. Of course no security is absolute (learned that early from my uncle that owned a convenience store at a lake: He spent extra on doors, locks, windows, etc and someone drove a truck through the brick wall to rob the place). Same here: if a solar event happens that would wipe out all of your onsite and offsite servers “on the surface” then there is a much bigger problem.
ceejayoz 3y ago
Day-to-day ones aren't really worth worrying about. Something like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carrington_Event https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carrington_Event would probably make quite a mess, of the nature where individual server rooms are probably a secondary consideration.
- Lapalux 3y ago
  Wow! Telegraphs Because of the geomagnetically induced current from the electromagnetic field, telegraph systems all over Europe and North America failed, in some cases giving their operators electric shocks.[22] Telegraph pylons threw sparks.[23] Some operators were able to continue to send and receive messages despite having disconnected their power supplies.[24][25] The following conversation occurred between two operators of the American telegraph line between Boston, Massachusetts, and Portland, Maine, on the night of 2 September 1859 and reported in the Boston Evening Traveler: Boston operator (to Portland operator): "Please cut off your battery [power source] entirely for fifteen minutes." Portland operator: "Will do so. It is now disconnected." Boston: "Mine is disconnected, and we are working with the auroral current. How do you receive my writing?" Portland: "Better than with our batteries on. – Current comes and goes gradually." Boston: "My current is very strong at times, and we can work better without the batteries, as the aurora seems to neutralize and augment our batteries alternately, making current too strong at times for our relay magnets. Suppose we work without batteries while we are affected by this trouble." Portland: "Very well. Shall I go ahead with business?" Boston: "Yes. Go ahead." The conversation was carried on for around two hours using no battery power at all and working solely with the current induced by the aurora, the first time on record that more than a word or two was transmitted in such manner.[26]
  - post-it 3y ago
    It's neat that both telegraph operators seemed to immediately know what was going on and why. Professionals with good debugging skills.
    - mensetmanusman 3y ago
f5ve 3y ago
I can't answer your question directly. But a while back I did study up on the 100-year solar flare (i.e. the equivalent of the 100-year flood). I was curious exactly how bad this would be for society. As I recall it would be bad and do a lot of damage in the short term. Lots of things, especially in communications, would obviously be damaged and very expensive to fix. But hard drives would mostly be ok and therefore the most crucial pillars of society would emerge intact.
- cout 3y ago
  What about SSDs?
mannykannot 3y ago
I'm nowhere near an expert, but the only mechanism that I have heard of for them causing damage is through inducing large currents in long power transmission lines (and, formerly, long telegraph and telephone lines.) I would guess that the risk to electronic devices themselves is less than from a nearby thunderstorm, and that measures to protect from damage via lightning's effects on your external power supply would also be adequate protection from geomagnetic storms.
- bob1029 3y ago
  This is my understanding as well. The length/scale of the conductive element is directly proportional to how much danger is involved. The modern power grid has lots of places where it can trip nearly instantaneously upon adverse conditions. Assuming we can automatically trip any segments of transmission, I think most of the damage could be isolated. Long conductors that aren't connected to anything can't cause any damage beyond the lines themselves. I don't think transformers and generators sitting in storage are going to feel much of anything.
rrock 3y ago
Bit flips from cosmic rays. Earth’s magnetic field helps to shield us, but is disrupted now. I work with a CCD camera in a sub basement lab. On a normal day we see a stray cosmic ray every couple of minutes (as a hot pixel). On a day like today, might be every couple of seconds.
- tudorw 3y ago
  annoying, but kind of awesome :)
- cshimmin 3y ago
  True, but the hot pixels you see in the CCD isn't from bit flips. Rather the CCD is properly doing its job of collecting electrons. It's just that spurious electrons are being produced by the cosmic rays' ionization trail (as opposed to photoelectron in normal operation).
  - anamexis 3y ago
    What's the difference? Aren't bit flips also just spurious electrons being produced by the cosmic rays' ionization trail?
    - akiselev 3y ago
      It’s an excitation of the sensor. It may be interpreted somewhat like a bit flip when converted to an image, but it’s normal for image sensors to experience a lot of noise, going back to the days of film. It may just be eliminated by the denoising algorithm like most spurious electrons/photons.
    - godelski 3y ago
      Bitflip is when a high energy particle changes the state of a memory address or signal in a wire. Hot pixels are when the CCD (camera sensor) achieves its max level and becomes bright. Pixel overloaded (should also result in spillover). Difference is really just what part of the system receives the energy. For example, you can overload a pixel with a laser, but you also should get spillover. Bit flips tend to be more localized, affecting only one part. In reality, the difference doesn't matter too much, as long as we're keeping our discussion to cosmic events. But also note that images experience a lot of (non-gaussian) noise and plenty of this is from cosmic excitation as well as from other natural and man made sources. Just the levels are a lot lower and unlikely to result in a bitflip (which is a pretty high energy event).
AuthorizedCust 3y ago
I’m concerned that the repetitive, sensationalized news coverage will encourage apathy. Again and again, headlines blare doom narratives about flares, but I am unaware of major impacts recently.
korse 3y ago
You haven't missed too much. The cosmic ray bit-flip guys have a point, but that is very hard to shield against and probably won't kill your servers. See this paper for a deeper dive. https://digitalcommons.usu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1562&context=spacegrant https://digitalcommons.usu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1... In regards to the Faraday cage (grounded mesh), assuming you have a very good path to ground and a sufficiently robust mesh material, you are shielding against any emissions with a wavelength larger than λ. You will have better results versus wavelengths that are much larger however. If you want a deeper dive on that, you can actually read Faraday, or Wikipedia or just ask your search engine about a basic dipole antennae and work up from there. Many computer components are somewhat shielded/tolerant of standard levels of RF interference in the environment so you might not even need to bother (depending on application). Normally (in my experience) you see problems arise with sensors, digital control lines and some human interface devices in very noisy environments (industrial facilities with a lot of high power variable speed electric motors). Regarding aperture size λ, figure out what source of RF you're most concerned about, determine the range of wavelengths emitted, concentrate on the most powerful bands and then make your aperture smaller than that. Examples are 'the sun', cosmic rays, north korean nukes, the welding robots on the other side of the wall etc. Finally, if you're going to shield, don't half ass it or you waste money. Gaps around doors, or anywhere you poke cable through a wall can cause problems if not handled correctly.
evgeniysharapov 3y ago
Here's famous story about bit-flip changing/affecting results of election in Belgium https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_voting_in_Belgium https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_voting_in_Belgium
marcosdumay 3y ago
> What wavelengths am I protecting against? Something around hundreds of meters. It's large enough that people don't treat it like a wave. Also, it's often semi-stationary, so you have to care to make your protection long-lived, and not only surge-based. Coronal ejecta is formed by charged particles. The ones that can move only a few meters into the atmosphere. You don't have to catch those. There is also no high-frequency EM radiation.
godelski 3y ago
> Recently I've been building a server room, and naturally a question of EM insulation came up. If I were to protect my servers from this, I needed to wrap the room in a grounded mesh with holes of λ in diameter. What wavelengths am I protecting against? I used to build space radiation shields. I'll give you three answers. What you should do: Throw up a few sheets of metalized mylar or some aluminum foil. Make sure everything (including the foil) is electrically isolated and grounded. Be more worried about the grid more than the air. Don't let the grid kill your components, because it WILL be overloaded. You want to be very secure: Do the above, but be in a concrete building. Better if under ground. Idk, add some chicken-wire or other mesh? Don't ground to the grid, ground to the ground (use a grounding rod and bury it deep). The overkill (an explanation): Ground based radiation shields tend to be different than space based as you don't care about weight on earth. How to stop radiation? Mass. Even still, the two follow a pattern: layers of differing material. Plastics (sometimes doped with boron, titanium, or other materials) are good insulation and protect well against neutrons (not much of a worry for you unless we're talking nuclear weapons), but you'll still want some because these are layered with conductors (copper or aluminum). Conductors pick up charged particles (the majority of radiation). There is a lot of confusion about radiation and it took me awhile to actually learn this. People will talk about attenuation distances and {alpha,beta,neutron}-cross-sections, but if we're talking about high energy particles, then a lot of this doesn't actually matter. Mass does. So don't worry about optimizing materials or any of that, just put mass in the way. Reading told me one thing but testing and simulation told me another thing. These cross-sections and attenuation depths are mostly for lower energy particles (like you'd find in a reactor). Your mass doesn't have to include any metal, but that will help because the biggest component is that you'll want some grounding. Also, use ECC memory and other such server grade components.

by kaivi 3y ago

dallyo 3y ago

Maybe look at material about EMP weapon effects, I imagine it's probably the same kind of risks. I think solar flare risk is overblown though.

crashingintoyou 3y ago
> I think solar flare risk is overblown though. What you'll find on the insurance side of thing is this sort of claim from Lloyds of London (https://assets.lloyds.com/assets/pdf-solar-storm-risk-to-the-north-american-electric-grid/1/pdf-Solar-Storm-Risk-to-the-North-American-Electric-Grid.pdf https://assets.lloyds.com/assets/pdf-solar-storm-risk-to-the...): > A Carrington-level, extreme geomagnetic storm is almost inevitable in the future. While the probability of an extreme storm occurring is relatively low at any given time, it is almost inevitable that one will occur eventually. Historical auroral records suggest a return period of 50 years for Quebec-level storms and 150 years for very extreme storms, such as the Carrington Event that occurred 154 years ago. If anything I think the solar flare risk is understated.
- captainbland 3y ago
  > 150 years for very extreme storms, such as the Carrington Event that occurred 154 years ago. Wow. I knew this was a possibility but I didn't know we were overdue. Echoes of COVID a bit as a "once in a hundred years pandemic". Looking forward to the space mandated holiday to be honest.
  - __MatrixMan__ 3y ago
    We have a lot more wires lying around than they did in 1859, so that's a lot more induced current than they had to deal with. They probably had all of the fires out within a day or two--I'm not sure we'd be so lucky. I wonder if we have enough replacement parts on hand to recover after an event like that. Given our labyrinthine supply chains, if it becomes a manufacturing bottleneck it could take years to retool. In a morbid way though, I'm also looking forward to the holiday. I'm really curious to see what changes we make while the lights and cameras and payment systems are offline.
    - dylan604 3y ago
      If the power was out in large swaths of urban areas, then a lot more people would suddenly be able to see the night sky. A similar thing happened in parts of the LA area after the '91 Northridge earthquake.
      - bobwaycott 3y ago
        I believe you mean ‘94. That was a fun one. ;)
        dylan604 3y ago
        I knew I should have confirmed that year before posting =) I couldn't remember the epicenter, I just knew it was up in the Valley, so I did look that up on a map. I only knew of it from stories, as I was nowhere near California at the time. I had a co-worker that had just moved to that area the day before the quake. He said he debated about putting off the unpacking and checking out the new area or busting ass to unpack and just be "moved in" and done with it. He chose the unpacking, and then that night the quake where he lost a lot of stuff. Had he left everything in the boxes, things would have been just fine. I bet he's now a firm believer in procrastinating!
- dallyo 3y ago
  Well it's a very hypothetical black swan type situation. I don't think it's a sensible use of resources to prepare for a badly understood phenomenon with uncertain probability. If and when it happens things will get fixed, and we will learn from the experience. That document is a very interesting read though, thank you. I don't fully trust insurers though - it's in their interest to create a feeling of risk.
  - toss1 3y ago
    >>If and when it happens things will get fixed Yes, but the timing of those fixes could be an enormous problem From what I've read, a large part of the problem will be burnt-out transformers all over the grid, from the major stations down to the street-level. Replacing any one of those is only a job of a few hours, when you have one available. The problem is that fabricating them takes a long time, and there is nowhere near enough inventory to replace the numbers that would fry in a Carrington-like event (or an EMP attack). It could take YEARS to replace them, during which time the economy is pretty much back to the 1800s, but with 2000s-level population to feed. The estimates to create a stockpile of transformers so that they could be replaced in weeks-to months range around $500 million. It would give the nation a huge strategic economic advantage to be able to fully recover on a timescale of double-digit weeks instead of years. But, since the problem is so un-sexy that it is never brought up (the last infrastructure bill would have been a good time to do so). Even if we could individually have power with rooftop solar+battery (also sufficiently protected), it'd be hard to thrive with the entire transport web broken (no grid electricity to pump gasoline/diesel, etc.). Still, I want to know how vulnerable is rooftop solar, and what it would take to protect it (and prevent an event from burning down the house). Any experts have some pointers?
    - kwhitefoot 3y ago
      > create a stockpile of transformers At least one electricity network on the west coast of Norway already does this to cope with the inevitable damage caused by seasonal thunderstorms.
    - CamperBob2 3y ago
TheAceOfHearts 3y ago
Solar flare risk is underestimated since it's not something we've previously experienced in full force. Based on conversations I've had with electrical engineers that work for a national power company, they don't have any measures in place to protect us from solar flares bringing down the full power grid. A sufficiently powerful solar flare event would probably lead to millions of deaths, as I understand it.
- codethief 3y ago
  > […] bringing down the full power grid. A sufficiently powerful solar flare event would probably lead to millions of deaths Wait, how did we go from "bringing down the full power grid" to "millions of deaths" so quickly?
  - dallyo 3y ago
    Yeah I think that's a stretch. Likely there would be deaths from hospitals not having power etc. but I can't imagine it being at that scale. Secondary effects from the economic fallout might be worse. This kind of reminds me of the y2k non-event though.
    - hanselot 3y ago
      Well, I'm not a mathematician, but I will hazard that since we have a global population of somewhere around 8 billion we can ask ChatGPT (the cheap one to draw up an estimate for us). Sadly it doesn't wanna be more specific, however I am willing to entertain the number could reach millions. Just the impact on air traffic would be catastrophic, nevermind whatever happens to all the satellites that didn't exist for the last one. ```It's difficult to give an accurate estimate of the number of lives that could be lost in the event of a global-scale transformer destruction due to a Carrington-level solar storm, as there are many variables that could affect the outcome. However, I can provide some information that may be helpful in making an estimate. A report by the U.S. Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) suggests that a large-scale transformer failure due to a geomagnetic disturbance (GMD) could result in widespread and prolonged power outages, affecting multiple states or even the entire country. The report estimates that the total economic impact of such an event in the United States could range from $1 trillion to $2 trillion, and that recovery could take years. If we assume that the impact of a GMD-induced transformer failure would be proportionate to the global population, then it's reasonable to assume that the number of lives lost could be in the hundreds of thousands or even millions. This is because prolonged power outages could lead to a wide range of consequences, including shortages of food and water, breakdowns in transportation systems, and disruptions to medical care. However, it's important to note that the actual number of lives lost would depend on many factors, including the severity and duration of the power outages, the availability of resources and emergency services, and the ability of individuals and governments to respond effectively to the crisis.```
ianburrell 3y ago
With EMP, it is important to distinguish between short-range and long-range. Short-range EMP can damage electronics but is primarily caused by nearby nuclear blast which tends to be bigger problem than the EMP. It can also be caused by conventional explosive devices but those cover small area. Long-range EMP is caused by nuclear blast at high altitude. It induces currents is long conductors but doesn't touch electronics. The main effect is knocking out power over large areas. It has very similar effects to large solar flare.

joshspankit 3y ago

You can mitigate most of it by using ECC memory, a good line-filtering UPS, and some type of error-checking for reads/writes/at-rest. The last of the risk can be functionally eliminated by your off-site backup.

egeozcan 3y ago
> off-site backup Underground or at the other side of the planet or both?
- shagie 3y ago
  Not powered, but the next room over is acceptable for a solar flare. The issue would be that wires start getting induced current in them ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geomagnetically_induced_current https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geomagnetically_induced_curren... ) that arcs and shorts out the device. However, if you've got a backup tape there's nothing from the current that will flip the bits on the tape itself. There are good reasons to have the backup be off site (other physical calamities) - but the aurora isn't going to flip any bits on a backup. At worst, it will destroy the machinery from a surge from the grid and an extremely powerful one may destroy the machinery from arcing in the device itself (this would be extremely powerful)... but the media itself is fine.
- joshspankit 3y ago
  I suspect you’re trying to be sarcastic and/or facetious, but: Both ideally sure. The more backups and more locations the better. Diminishing returns pretty quickly but why not if the data is important. Electromagnetic energy from the sun only has a chance of damaging equipment and only some of the bits of that equipment will be affected. You could have two servers in the same datacenter where one gets hit and the other does not. Or even two drives in the same chassis. And even then, it might not be all the data on that drive. Of course no security is absolute (learned that early from my uncle that owned a convenience store at a lake: He spent extra on doors, locks, windows, etc and someone drove a truck through the brick wall to rob the place). Same here: if a solar event happens that would wipe out all of your onsite and offsite servers “on the surface” then there is a much bigger problem.

ceejayoz 3y ago

Day-to-day ones aren't really worth worrying about. Something like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carrington_Event https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carrington_Event would probably make quite a mess, of the nature where individual server rooms are probably a secondary consideration.

Lapalux 3y ago
Wow! Telegraphs Because of the geomagnetically induced current from the electromagnetic field, telegraph systems all over Europe and North America failed, in some cases giving their operators electric shocks.[22] Telegraph pylons threw sparks.[23] Some operators were able to continue to send and receive messages despite having disconnected their power supplies.[24][25] The following conversation occurred between two operators of the American telegraph line between Boston, Massachusetts, and Portland, Maine, on the night of 2 September 1859 and reported in the Boston Evening Traveler: Boston operator (to Portland operator): "Please cut off your battery [power source] entirely for fifteen minutes." Portland operator: "Will do so. It is now disconnected." Boston: "Mine is disconnected, and we are working with the auroral current. How do you receive my writing?" Portland: "Better than with our batteries on. – Current comes and goes gradually." Boston: "My current is very strong at times, and we can work better without the batteries, as the aurora seems to neutralize and augment our batteries alternately, making current too strong at times for our relay magnets. Suppose we work without batteries while we are affected by this trouble." Portland: "Very well. Shall I go ahead with business?" Boston: "Yes. Go ahead." The conversation was carried on for around two hours using no battery power at all and working solely with the current induced by the aurora, the first time on record that more than a word or two was transmitted in such manner.[26]
- post-it 3y ago
  It's neat that both telegraph operators seemed to immediately know what was going on and why. Professionals with good debugging skills.
  - mensetmanusman 3y ago

f5ve 3y ago

I can't answer your question directly. But a while back I did study up on the 100-year solar flare (i.e. the equivalent of the 100-year flood). I was curious exactly how bad this would be for society. As I recall it would be bad and do a lot of damage in the short term. Lots of things, especially in communications, would obviously be damaged and very expensive to fix. But hard drives would mostly be ok and therefore the most crucial pillars of society would emerge intact.

cout 3y ago
What about SSDs?

mannykannot 3y ago

I'm nowhere near an expert, but the only mechanism that I have heard of for them causing damage is through inducing large currents in long power transmission lines (and, formerly, long telegraph and telephone lines.) I would guess that the risk to electronic devices themselves is less than from a nearby thunderstorm, and that measures to protect from damage via lightning's effects on your external power supply would also be adequate protection from geomagnetic storms.

bob1029 3y ago
This is my understanding as well. The length/scale of the conductive element is directly proportional to how much danger is involved. The modern power grid has lots of places where it can trip nearly instantaneously upon adverse conditions. Assuming we can automatically trip any segments of transmission, I think most of the damage could be isolated. Long conductors that aren't connected to anything can't cause any damage beyond the lines themselves. I don't think transformers and generators sitting in storage are going to feel much of anything.

rrock 3y ago

Bit flips from cosmic rays. Earth’s magnetic field helps to shield us, but is disrupted now. I work with a CCD camera in a sub basement lab. On a normal day we see a stray cosmic ray every couple of minutes (as a hot pixel). On a day like today, might be every couple of seconds.

tudorw 3y ago
annoying, but kind of awesome :)
cshimmin 3y ago
True, but the hot pixels you see in the CCD isn't from bit flips. Rather the CCD is properly doing its job of collecting electrons. It's just that spurious electrons are being produced by the cosmic rays' ionization trail (as opposed to photoelectron in normal operation).
- anamexis 3y ago
  What's the difference? Aren't bit flips also just spurious electrons being produced by the cosmic rays' ionization trail?
  - akiselev 3y ago
    It’s an excitation of the sensor. It may be interpreted somewhat like a bit flip when converted to an image, but it’s normal for image sensors to experience a lot of noise, going back to the days of film. It may just be eliminated by the denoising algorithm like most spurious electrons/photons.
  - godelski 3y ago
    Bitflip is when a high energy particle changes the state of a memory address or signal in a wire. Hot pixels are when the CCD (camera sensor) achieves its max level and becomes bright. Pixel overloaded (should also result in spillover). Difference is really just what part of the system receives the energy. For example, you can overload a pixel with a laser, but you also should get spillover. Bit flips tend to be more localized, affecting only one part. In reality, the difference doesn't matter too much, as long as we're keeping our discussion to cosmic events. But also note that images experience a lot of (non-gaussian) noise and plenty of this is from cosmic excitation as well as from other natural and man made sources. Just the levels are a lot lower and unlikely to result in a bitflip (which is a pretty high energy event).

AuthorizedCust 3y ago

I’m concerned that the repetitive, sensationalized news coverage will encourage apathy. Again and again, headlines blare doom narratives about flares, but I am unaware of major impacts recently.

korse 3y ago

You haven't missed too much. The cosmic ray bit-flip guys have a point, but that is very hard to shield against and probably won't kill your servers. See this paper for a deeper dive. https://digitalcommons.usu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1562&context=spacegrant https://digitalcommons.usu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1... In regards to the Faraday cage (grounded mesh), assuming you have a very good path to ground and a sufficiently robust mesh material, you are shielding against any emissions with a wavelength larger than λ. You will have better results versus wavelengths that are much larger however. If you want a deeper dive on that, you can actually read Faraday, or Wikipedia or just ask your search engine about a basic dipole antennae and work up from there. Many computer components are somewhat shielded/tolerant of standard levels of RF interference in the environment so you might not even need to bother (depending on application). Normally (in my experience) you see problems arise with sensors, digital control lines and some human interface devices in very noisy environments (industrial facilities with a lot of high power variable speed electric motors). Regarding aperture size λ, figure out what source of RF you're most concerned about, determine the range of wavelengths emitted, concentrate on the most powerful bands and then make your aperture smaller than that. Examples are 'the sun', cosmic rays, north korean nukes, the welding robots on the other side of the wall etc. Finally, if you're going to shield, don't half ass it or you waste money. Gaps around doors, or anywhere you poke cable through a wall can cause problems if not handled correctly.

evgeniysharapov 3y ago

Here's famous story about bit-flip changing/affecting results of election in Belgium https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_voting_in_Belgium https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_voting_in_Belgium

marcosdumay 3y ago

> What wavelengths am I protecting against? Something around hundreds of meters. It's large enough that people don't treat it like a wave. Also, it's often semi-stationary, so you have to care to make your protection long-lived, and not only surge-based. Coronal ejecta is formed by charged particles. The ones that can move only a few meters into the atmosphere. You don't have to catch those. There is also no high-frequency EM radiation.

godelski 3y ago

> Recently I've been building a server room, and naturally a question of EM insulation came up. If I were to protect my servers from this, I needed to wrap the room in a grounded mesh with holes of λ in diameter. What wavelengths am I protecting against? I used to build space radiation shields. I'll give you three answers. What you should do: Throw up a few sheets of metalized mylar or some aluminum foil. Make sure everything (including the foil) is electrically isolated and grounded. Be more worried about the grid more than the air. Don't let the grid kill your components, because it WILL be overloaded. You want to be very secure: Do the above, but be in a concrete building. Better if under ground. Idk, add some chicken-wire or other mesh? Don't ground to the grid, ground to the ground (use a grounding rod and bury it deep). The overkill (an explanation): Ground based radiation shields tend to be different than space based as you don't care about weight on earth. How to stop radiation? Mass. Even still, the two follow a pattern: layers of differing material. Plastics (sometimes doped with boron, titanium, or other materials) are good insulation and protect well against neutrons (not much of a worry for you unless we're talking nuclear weapons), but you'll still want some because these are layered with conductors (copper or aluminum). Conductors pick up charged particles (the majority of radiation). There is a lot of confusion about radiation and it took me awhile to actually learn this. People will talk about attenuation distances and {alpha,beta,neutron}-cross-sections, but if we're talking about high energy particles, then a lot of this doesn't actually matter. Mass does. So don't worry about optimizing materials or any of that, just put mass in the way. Reading told me one thing but testing and simulation told me another thing. These cross-sections and attenuation depths are mostly for lower energy particles (like you'd find in a reactor). Your mass doesn't have to include any metal, but that will help because the biggest component is that you'll want some grounding. Also, use ECC memory and other such server grade components.