cheebee Posted February 14 Share Posted February 14 is it possible to protect my musical equipment if we get hit by a severe solar event? would a faraday cage insulate my stuff? if not, is there anything that can be done to shield our equipment? please advise, i still want to be able to make music after an event if possible Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cheebee Posted February 14 Author Share Posted February 14 1 hour ago, Kayla Bisson said: What exactly do you want to shield them from that could hurt them? a full on earth affecting carrington class event the kind that made the telegraph wires arc and caught fire to alot of north america Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cheebee Posted February 14 Author Share Posted February 14 (edited) id like a second opinion thankyou simply... would a faraday cage have a chance of securing my stuff. and respectfully i believe you are so... so wrong about things being able to withstand what our sun can potentially have to offer. also just to note... not every power grid is the same, not every fuse box is the same.. not every location is the same.. Edited February 14 by cheebee just to note Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Popular Post tniickck Posted February 14 Popular Post Share Posted February 14 2 hours ago, cheebee said: is it possible to protect my musical equipment if we get hit by a severe solar event? would a faraday cage insulate my stuff? if not, is there anything that can be done to shield our equipment? please advise, i still want to be able to make music after an event if possible i have an amplifier for electric guitar and it hasn't burned yet😁 if seriously, it is impossible. if your equipment will turn off it means you are probably dying due to magnetosphere collapse 4 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cheebee Posted February 14 Author Share Posted February 14 (edited) i feel like im missing something here in the carrington event the telegraph machines all got powered up from the charged atmosphere. they were operating without being plugged in or switched on, so why couldnt that kind of thing happen again? if i understand correctly, your and my amps would power up and little transistors inside might not be able to handle the whole board being charged 'wirelessly' and some of them might pop. thats what im on about. edit... imagine all the little circuits getting powered up by a highly charged atmosphere at once! it might be loud for a mo before they pop no? 36 minutes ago, tniickck said: i have an amplifier for electric guitar and it hasn't burned yet😁 if seriously, it is impossible. if your equipment will turn off it means you are probably dying due to magnetosphere collapse i think i misunderstood you to begin with i apologise, tho i wasnt being cheeky at all i think its possible our equipment would power up and pop. even without catastrophic magnetosphere collapse. i just wanted to add, even if the grid was damaged, many of us could put together rudimentary electricity generators, so we could still have music Edited February 14 by cheebee 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Solution Philalethes Posted February 14 Solution Share Posted February 14 (edited) 2 hours ago, cheebee said: they were operating without being plugged in or switched on, so why couldnt that kind of thing happen again? That's a misconception about what happened. The telegraph equipment was still plugged into the transmission lines, otherwise transmitting signals would of course not be possible; the point in those stories is rather that they had unplugged their power supplies (batteries), and yet could still transmit due to the currents being induced in the transmission lines themselves. If you were to unplug your equipment completely from the grid, it would not power up. It bears remembering that the geomagnetically induced currents (GICs) only get induced over long distances, which is why telegraph wires would catch fire, but not local electrical equipment, unless connected directly to those wires. Even if your equipment were connected directly to the grid, simply disconnecting it would make it perfectly safe (electrically speaking of course, not if your house were to burn down, hypothetically). The entire early telegraph system, at least to my knowledge, relied on direct current (DC), and did thus not have equipment like transformers. Today virtually all households with electrical power, even in less developed places, are fed by alternating current (AC), with a transformer near the household to take high-voltage current from the grid down to lower voltages. This means that if the wires were to get overloaded due to GICs, the transformers would blow and no longer provide any connection between the grid and the home. Perhaps the worst scenario would be a sudden surge in the household electrical system before the transformer went belly-up, but even in that case many homes today have surge protection; if you are really worried about that specific scenario, installing a surge protector could be an idea, if you don't have one already. But I would also simply unplug sensitive equipment just to be sure anyway, like I would in a thunderstorm. Also, keep in mind that this is all just looking at the difference between the early DC network and an AC network with transformers. Current grids, especially in more developed places, also have implemented a wide variety of other regulatory mechanisms with constant feedback that simply didn't exist "back in the day". It would be far easier today for power grid operators to detect anomalous parts of the grids and disconnect them completely in order to prevent damage to equipment in the first place. Edited February 14 by Philalethes clarity 3 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Popular Post helios Posted February 14 Popular Post Share Posted February 14 Telegraph lines were sparking, because fluctuations in the magnetic field induced currents in conductors, which were over 1000 km long. If your guitar isn't 1000 km long, you're completely fine. Solar storms do not affect small devices or low voltage (110/230V) power grids. 9 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
hamateur 1953 Posted February 14 Share Posted February 14 (edited) Power companies are also MUCH more aware these days of our magnetic field lines and have taken steps to mitigate bad stuff. Nice to see common sense prevail here. 1000km long….. love it! Haha An afterthought. If laying magnetic mines in troubled waters please deactivate them on seeing a Carrington class event on our sun. ( aug 4 1972 event). Haha Edited February 14 by hamateur 1953 Looooong cords for your teslas might be an issue also. 1 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Drax Spacex Posted February 14 Share Posted February 14 My 10-string lyre will be just fine. 1 3 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sam Warfel Posted February 14 Share Posted February 14 13 hours ago, cheebee said: is it possible to protect my musical equipment if we get hit by a severe solar event? would a faraday cage insulate my stuff? if not, is there anything that can be done to shield our equipment? please advise, i still want to be able to make music after an event if possible 1: unplug them from the power mains if a Carrington-class flare/CME was to be observed, and they’ll be totally fine. 2: Any event strong enough to have an impact on unplugged musical instruments would have an impact on people, and virtually everything else. So it’s the least of your concerns. It’s like asking “what can I do to protect my musical instruments if a jet airliner crashes into my house?”, and just about as unlikely. 2 1 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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