The whole Broom thing

[Guest waldtiere]

I am sorry to post a question that is likely beneath everyone here, but I am embroiled in a debate in the internet which is suffering from varying degrees of oversimplification from both sides. 

 

Brooms.  Can solar activity make them stand on end? 

 

The general concensus is no.  And most who debunk the trick attribute the ease with which a broom can stand in general to a combination of a general balancing act as the bristles spread out, and attractions caused by static electricity that keep the bristles more in place.  But in 1989, a CME ipact is said to have caused the largescale power grid failure in Quebec due to increased static electricity in the ground.  If that is the case, would it stand to reason that increased static electricity caused by solar storms could possible make it easier to stand a broom on end?

 

I only ask this becuase I have noted (via a trick my wife got from her brother) that during solar storms, we can totally stand our broom up on end, and when we try the same thing during a period of no solar activity, it is completley impossible. 

 

Again, this is a completely silly quesiton for such a forum, but in trying to research the topic, I find no information from a credible scientific source on either side of the issue and there are only answers that only address one extreme opinion or another. 

 

I promise that if you do no remove my account from this forum as spam, I will refrain from such silly questions in the future. 

 

Thanks in advance. 

 

 

[Marcel de Bont]

I actually have no idea on this, never heard of this before. Maybe someone else can chime in? I am not an expert on geomagneticly induced currents.

[Guest Cassandra]

I suspect it's just a different spin on the same story.  http://news.discovery.com/earth/broom-balancing-at-equinox-120309.htm

[Guest waldtiere]

Cassandra.

 

This debunking story is a puff piece on discover resembling quite a few I have seen online where they answer a simple question that is not really the issue.  In this case, they are talking about people who claim that brooms will just stand up by themselves on the equqanox, specifically because of gravitational forces (they even insinuate that for this to be true, brooms should just start  popping up by themselves).  I also don't buy that brooms would stand up by themselves strictly due to solar activity.  The question being asked is much more nuanced.  I have not seen any credible opinion by a scientist, or objective apporach by a jounralist, that specifically addresses the impact of electro-magnetism in whether you can get a broom to stand on end.  Not whether it totally MAKES it happen or not, but whether or not it is a factor in the ease of getting it to work. 

 

Likely an issue too insignificant to bother say, a Carl Sagan or Niel Degrass Tyson with, but I still find the subleties of it intriguing and would be interested to see what someone with scientific credentials would say about it. 

[Guest Harry Twinotter]

CMEs do not cause a build up of static electricity on the ground.

[Guest waldtiere]

I guess though, that pretty much any article addressing this issue would be a puff piece, right??  : )

[Guest waldtiere]

CMEs do not cause a build up of static electricity on the ground.

 

Thanks for this clarification.  There is quite a bit of information regarding different historical effects of CME impact including the Carrington Flare:

 

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2011/03/110302-solar-flares-sun-storms-earth-danger-carrington-event-science/

 

and the 1989 flare that caused the outage of the entire power grid in Quebec: 

 

http://www.nasa.gov/topics/earth/features/sun_darkness.html

 

The Nasa article does indicate that "It actually created electrical currents in the ground beneath much of North America. Just after 2:44 a.m. on March 13, the currents found a weakness in the electrical power grid of Quebec. In less than 2 minutes, the entire Quebec power grid lost power." 

 

I had read another article previously indicating that these currents increased static electricity but this article (and I am more inclined to use an article on the NASA website as a source than wherever else it was I was previously reading) refers to it as strictly an electrical current.