Unsettling May Have Occurred: Occasionally Uncomfortable Obscure True Stories from Human History

by Damn Interesting Editors, The

  Two days later, the British astronomer Richard Carrington was observing the interesting sunspot group through his telescope when he saw what he described as "two patches of intensely bright and white light" over the sunspots. He jotted a note in his painstaking record. That night there was scarcely a square inch of earth that was not illuminated by aurora. As far south as the Rocky Mountains the sky became so bright that birds began chirping and campers awoke and began cooking breakfast. Blood-red auroral light hovered over Cuba and Hawaii. The already-rattled telegraph operators at the American Telegraph Company found their equipment sputtering high-voltage nonsense messages most of the next morning, and some offices reported injuries and property damage due to electrocutions and fire.

  This second coronal mass ejection, now known as the Carrington Super Flare, had sent the energy equivalent of a few billion atomic bombs towards the Earth. Moreover, the flare from two days prior had swept aside most of the ambient solar wind plasma, allowing the X-class Carrington flare to arrive with much greater speed and energy than usual. It reached the Earth in a mere 17 hours rather than the typical 3-4 days, and it triggered the most spectacular geomagnetic storm in recorded history.

  Since 1859 the quaint cabling of the Victorian electrical and telegraph networks have multiplied into millions of miles of power and telecommunication conductors worldwide, all interconnected via fragile electrical transformers. These days power line voltages are much higher to improve transmission efficiency, which has the side effect of making the lines more sensitive to induced currents. Moreover, many high-voltage transformers are directly connected to the ground to offset lightning strikes and other power surges, but this also provides a back door for strong geomagnetic currents.

  If the sun were to fling another such super flare towards the Earth today, solar observatories operated by the US Air Force and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) would detect the telltale X-ray burst of a solar flare just minutes after the eruption, but with insufficient data to assess whether it would be a threat. Space-based instrumentation between the Earth and Sol would record and relay information regarding the trajectory, intensity, and orientation of the plasma wave, but not until the CME was well on its way. An official assessment of the incoming CME risk would become available just a few hours before impact.

  If the wave were to strike the Earth's magnetic field aligned positive-to-negative the resulting geomagnetic storm would render most electrical, telephone, and Internet landlines temporarily inoperable due to induced currents, with intensity proportional to proximity to the poles. Widespread radio, cellphone, and GPS disruption would occur. Oxygen and nitrogen atoms in the upper atmosphere would absorb electrons and emit photons resulting in flashy planet-wide aurora. This influx of energy would cause the upper atmosphere to warm and expand, increasing drag on low-orbiting satellites, knocking some off course and others out of the sky entirely. X-rays from plasma interactions with the atmosphere would also damage some satellites' electronics. A troubling amount of the ozone layer would be dismantled by reactions with ionized gas, increasing UV radiation on the ground.

  Many electrical transformers--particularly the high-voltage variety--would be destroyed due to overheating, resulting in large-scale grid failures within a few seconds. Some sections of power lines could heat sufficiently to melt the wire. Apart from damage caused by power surges, small electronic devices would not be harmed by such a slow, large-scale magnetic event; however they would become essentially useless if there is no electrical grid to recharge their batteries and no communications grid to tickle their antennae. Automobiles and airplanes would likewise be spared, but fuel may become difficult to obtain.

  In the aftermath of a sufficiently intense storm, sizable populations could be left without electricity for an extended period of time. For example, a flare about 15% as energetic as Carrington struck in 1989 and left the Canadian province of Quebec without power for nine hours due to severe transformer damage. The most vulnerable Extra High Voltage (EHV) transformers are costly and time-consuming to custom-build, and in this hypothetical geomagnetic apocalypse the factories that construct them could also be without power, exacerbating the outages into months or years. During the widespread blackouts it may become difficult or impossible to obtain clean water, food, fuel, medicine, and emergency services in many areas. A 2008 National Academy of Sciences report estimated that a Carrington-level event would could cause "extensive social and economic disruptions" in the United States, requiring $1-2 trillion and 10 years to fully recover. This is not taking into account the economic losses from lack of transportation, electrification, communication, and refrigeration, nor the attendant health costs. The ozone layer would take about four years to recover to current levels.

  Most solar scientists today agree that a Carrington-level super flare is improbable anytime in the near future. By measuring deposits of beryllium-10 in ice core samples researchers have found that Carrington-level flares strike the Earth once every 500 years or so on average, so the next one is probably not due for another few centuries--"probably" being the operative adverb. In the meantime organizations such as NOAA are attempting to persuade governments to plan for these low-frequency/high-consequence events. Among other measures, this could include the installation of resistor arrays to protect critical transformers, or an action plan to deploy workers to physically disconnect sections of the power grid on very short notice. Either measure would be effective but expensive. Equally concerning is the fact that some of the critical space-based monitoring instruments are approaching their life expectancy, with no obvious replacement at the ready, jeopardizing our ability to assess incoming CME threats.

  As for solar minima such as the Maunder Minimum that caused the Great Frost of 1709, although the correlation between low sunspot activity and low temperatures is strong, the reason for this is poorly understood. Scientists note that lulls in sunspot activity correspond to an uptick in cosmic rays on Earth, which may in turn increase the proportion of reflective clouds and therefore reduce the solar energy absorbed by the atmosphere. Recent observations have also suggested that the sun's UV output may be related to its progress in its solar cycle, which could affect the Earth's weather in as-yet-unexplained ways. Minima aren't necessarily altogether negative phenomena; some scientists cheerfully point out that future severe minima may help to offset global warming for brief periods. Additionally, researchers have hypothesized that the "perfect sound" of Stradivarius's violins may have been due to a higher-density wood that grew during the Maunder Minimum. Still other researchers hypothesize that those researchers are just being silly, pointing to double-blind experiments demonstrating that modern musicians cannot hear a significant difference between a Stradivarius violin and an inexpensive modern one. Debate continues.

  In any case, another Maunder-level minimum is inevitable eventually, as is a future encounter with a Carrington-level super flare. Both are normal, healthy functions of a giant, 4.57-billion-year-old, naturally-occurring nuclear fusion furnace that is indifferent to the skim of life that has developed on a puny sphere of rock 93 million miles away. Let us just hope that humanity is ready when the sun sneezes a billion or so tons of charged plasma at our planet sometime in the next 350 orbits. Perhaps we'll luck out and the Yellowstone supervolcano will erupt first, smothering half the planet in warm ash and saving at least some of us from experiencing the horror of an Internetless Earth.

  Originally published 07 August 2012

  http://dam.mn/better-call-sol/

  Eugenics and You (1865 AD)

  When Charles Darwin published his groundbreaking theory of Natural Selection in 1859, it was received by the public with considerable vexation. Although the esteemed naturalist had been kind enough to explain his theory using mounds of logic and evidence, he lacked the good manners to incorporate the readers' preconceived notions of the universe. Nevertheless, many men of science were drawn to the elegant hypothesis, and they found it pr
egnant with intriguing corollaries. One of these was a phenomenon Darwin referred to as artificial selection: the centuries-old process of selectively breeding domestic animals to magnify desirable traits. This, he explained, was the same mechanism as natural selection, merely accelerated by human influence.

  In 1865, Darwin's half-cousin Sir Francis Galton pried the lid from yet another worm-can with the publication of his article entitled "Hereditary Talent and Character." In this essay, the gentleman-scientist suggested that one could apply the principle of artificial selection to humans just as one could in domestic animals, thereby exaggerating desirable human traits over several generations. This scientific philosophy would come to be known as eugenics, and over the subsequent years its seemingly sensible insights gained approval worldwide. In an effort to curtail the genetic pollution created by "inferior" genes, some governments even enacted laws authorizing the forcible sterilization of the "insane, idiotic, imbecile, feebleminded or epileptic," as well as individuals with criminal or promiscuous inclinations. Ultimately hundreds of thousands of people were forced or coerced into sterilization worldwide, over 65,000 of them in the country which pioneered the eugenic effort: The United States of America.

  From the beginning, Sir Francis Galton and his league of extraordinary eugenicists were concerned that the human race was facing an inevitable decline. They worried that advances in medicine were too successful in improving the survival and reproduction of weak individuals, thereby working at odds with natural evolution. Darwin himself expressed some concern regarding such negative selection:

  "[We] do our utmost to check the process of elimination. We build asylums for the imbecile, the maimed and the sick; we institute poor-laws; and our medical men exert their utmost skill to save the life of every one to the last moment. [...] Thus the weak members of civilized societies propagate their kind. No one who has attended to the breeding of domestic animals will doubt that this must be highly injurious to the race of man. [...] Nor could we check our sympathy, even at the urging of hard reason, without deterioration in the noblest part of our nature."

  The early proponents of eugenics were also distressed over the observation that the poor segments of an industrialized society tend to have more children than the well-off, an effect now known as the demographic-economic paradox. It was feared that this lopsided fertility would dilute the quality of the human gene pool, leading to the deterioration of socially valuable traits such as intelligence. Indeed, this "reversion towards mediocrity" was suspected by some historians to be a major contributor to the fall of the Roman Empire. The gloomy prediction of mankind's decline was dubbed dysgenics, and it was considered to be the antithesis of the eugenics movement; but it was not considered inevitable. It was believed that a society could reverse its own genetic decay by reducing breeding among the feebleminded and increasing fertility of the affluent.

  The cornerstone of eugenics was that everyone has the right to be "well-born," without any predisposition to avoidable genetic flaws. The 1911 edition of The Encyclopædia Britannica looked fondly upon the philosophy, defining it as "the organic betterment of the race through wise application of the laws of heredity." Prominent people gravitated towards the idea and engaged in vigorous intellectual intercourse, including such characters as Alexander Graham Bell, Nikola Tesla, H.G. Wells, Winston Churchill, George Bernard Shaw, and US presidents Woodrow Wilson and Calvin Coolidge. Supporters popularized eugenics as an opportunity to create a better world by using natural processes to elevate the human condition, both mentally and physically.

  The eugenicists' concerns regarding a falloff in average intelligence were not entirely unreasonable. It had long been observed that intelligence is inheritable to a large degree, and history had illustrated that science and culture owe much of their advancement to the contributions of a few gifted people. Ingenious composers such as Beethoven and Bach advanced the art of music, thinkers such as such as Pascal and Newton improved the power of mathematics, and insights from scientists such as Einstein and Hawking have furthered the field of physics. Deprived of any one of those men, today's world would be a measurably poorer place. Even before modern IQ tests existed, it was evident that a population's intelligence adheres to a Gaussian distribution, or "bell curve." Consequently, even a small decline in average IQ causes a sharp reduction in the number of geniuses. For instance, if the average intelligence of a community were to decline by five IQ points, the number of individuals in the 130+ "Gifted" category would drop by 56%. A ten-point decline would result in an 83% drop. Although IQ testing is far from perfect, it is clear that even modest erosion of average IQ could severely compromise the long-term progress of a society.

  As a cautionary measure, many US states enacted laws as early as 1896 prohibiting marriage to anyone who was "epileptic, imbecile or feeble-minded". But in 1907, eugenics truly passed the threshold from hypothesis into practice when the state of Indiana erected legislation based upon the notion that socially undesirable traits are hereditary:

  "...it shall be compulsory for each and every institution in the state, entrusted with the care of confirmed criminals, idiots, rapists and imbeciles, to appoint upon its staff, in addition to the regular institutional physician, two (2) skilled surgeons of recognized ability, whose duty it shall be, in conjunction with the chief physician of the institution, to examine the mental and physical condition of such inmates as are recommended by the institutional physician and board of managers. If, in the judgment of this committee of experts and the board of managers, procreation is inadvisable and there is no probability of improvement of the mental condition of the inmate, it shall be lawful for the surgeons to perform such operation for the prevention of procreation as shall be decided safest and most effective."

  Although this particular law was later overturned, it is widely considered to be the world's first eugenic legislation. The sterilization of imbeciles was put into practice, often without informing the patient of the nature of the procedure. Similar laws were soon passed elsewhere in the US, many of which withstood the legal gauntlet and remained in force for decades.

  Meanwhile the founders of the newly-formed Eugenics Record Office in New York began to amass hundreds of thousands of family pedigrees for genetic research. The organization publicly endorsed eugenic practices, and lobbied for state sterilization acts and immigration restrictions. The group also spread their vision of genetic superiority by sponsoring a series of "Fitter Families" contests which were held at state fairs throughout the US. Alongside the state's portliest pigs, swiftest horses, and most majestic vegetables, American families were judged for their quality of breeding. Entrants' pedigrees were reviewed, their bodies examined, and their mental capacity measured. The families found to be most genetically fit were awarded a silver trophy, and any contestant scoring a B+ or higher was awarded a bronze medal bearing the inscription, "Yea, I have a goodly heritage."

  The eugenics movement took another swerve for the sinister in 1924 when the state of Virginia enacted a matched set of eugenics laws: The Sterilization Act, a variation of the same sterilization legislation being passed throughout the US; and the Racial Integrity Act, a law which felonized marriage between white persons and non-whites. In September of the same year, this shiny new legislation was challenged by a patient at the Virginia State Colony for Epileptics and Feebleminded. Eighteen-year-old Carrie Buck-- child to a promiscuous mother, and mother to an illegitimate child-- refused her mandatory sterilization and a legal challenge was arranged on her behalf. A series of appeals ultimately brought the Buck v. Bell case before the Supreme Court of the United States. The Supreme Court's ruling was delivered by Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.:

  "It is better for all the world, if instead of waiting to execute degenerate offspring for crime, or to let them starve for their imbecility, society can prevent those who are manifestly unfit from continuing their kind. The principle that sustains compulsory vaccination is broad enough to cover cutting the Fallopian tubes..
.Three generations of imbeciles are enough."

  With the apparent vindication of these myopic eugenics laws, sterilization procedures were ordered by the thousands. Carrie Buck and her daughter Vivian were among them. It was later discovered that Carrie had been become pregnant with Vivian after being raped by her foster parents' nephew, and that her commitment into the Colony had been a gambit to preserve the family's reputation. It seems that Carrie was neither feebleminded nor promiscuous, she was merely inconvenient.

  These sorts of negative eugenics policies enjoyed widespread adoption in the US and Canada throughout the 1920s and 30s, with some lawmakers contemplating plans to make welfare and unemployment relief contingent upon sterilization. In the years leading up to the Second World War, however, the eugenic philosophy received the endorsement of the Nazis, and their "racial hygiene" atrocities rapidly dragged the eugenic philosophy from public favor. When Nazi leaders were put on trial for war crimes, they cited the United States as the inspiration for the 450,000 forced sterilizations they conducted. The eugenic laws in the US remained in force, however, and sterilization programs continued quietly for many years thereafter. One by one the state laws were repealed, and by 1963 virtually all US states had dismantled their sterilization legislation-- but not before 65,000 or so imbeciles, criminals, and fornicators were surgically expelled from the gene pool. As for the legal precedent of Buck v. Bell, it has yet to be officially overruled.