THE WORD IF

http://worldif.economist.com/article/13522/numbers-game

The World If

If the universe was not “fine-tuned”

A numbers game

There are some things you just do not want to mess with. The constants of nature, it seems, are among them

A constant party going on

IF YOU give a balloon a modest electric charge—by rubbing it on your jumper, say—you can stick it to the ceiling, thereby both delighting small children and revealing a basic truth about the universe: electromagnetic forces are much stronger than gravitational ones. Despite the fact that there is a whole planet pulling down on that balloon with all the gravity that its six billion trillion tonnes can provide, your party trick is enough to thwart it. This disparity in the forces’ strengths, though, tells you little about why the absolute strengths are what they are. Nor, when it comes down to it, does the hard-won wisdom of the world’s physicists.

The way that the laws of nature, expressed in mathematics, describe the relationships between space, time and matter has a great formal coherence. But some aspects of this systematic and highly successful description stand alone. There are fundamental constants in physics that are apparently arbitrary—numbers that seem to exist entirely in their own right, without reference to the rest of the universe. No obvious reason seems to exist for them to be as they are; they are simply the way the world is.

One of these, called the fine-structure constant, says how strong electromagnetic forces are. Its value is 1/137. If it were larger, balloons would stick more strongly to ceilings. If it were smaller, their weight would more easily pull them down.

Such possibilities might seem to be of no particular importance. It is obvious that the universe would be fundamentally different if either force went away: no electromagnetism, no molecules; no gravity, no planets. That a small change in the strength of either might matter is harder to imagine. But it would.

In the 1950s Sir Fred Hoyle, a British astrophysicist, realised that the abundance of carbon in the universe was a bit of a conundrum. Carbon, like almost all other elements, is made in stars, where fusion creates heavier elements from the nuclei of lighter ones. Nuclei all have positive electric charges, and since like charges repel each other, this means that the nuclear banging together needs to be pretty forceful. If electromagnetism were only a little stronger, then even in the hearts of stars nuclei would not be banged together hard enough to bring forth carbon. That said, if it were just a little weaker, carbon would be simply one step on the way to nuclei that were heavier still, no sooner made than consumed.

In either case, the result would be a universe radically less amenable to life. The quality and number of the bonds that carbon atoms can form with each other and with atoms of other elements provide a unique versatility when it comes to the creation of large and complex molecules; no other element comes close. Without carbon there would be no polymers with which to make either wool or rubber, no muscles with which to rub the two together, no brains to conceive of doing so—or of explaining what happens afterwards. According to the most recent studies, which take into account far more subtleties than Hoyle knew about in the 1950s, if the fine-structure constant were 4% higher, or 4% smaller, the universe would be essentially rubber-, wool- and carbon-free, and there would be no chemical basis for life.

This is far from the only example of what is sometimes called “fine tuning” in the physical universe: that is, seemingly arbitrary arrangements which turn out to be necessary for life. The rate at which the universe expands, its ratio of matter to energy and various other apparently arbitrary factors can be seen as showing signs of such fine tuning.

Some, including some scientists, take this as evidence for the role of an intelligence in the creation of the universe, or the setting of its laws. Hoyle himself had a tendency to such views, though he did not hold them in a way that fitted into any religious tradition. Others see it as a selection effect: of all the universes that there could be, only those in which observers are possible get observed. There should be no surprise to carbon-based life forms in the discovery that their universe is well supplied with carbon; what other sort of universe could they expect?

This way of thinking has become particularly pertinent as physical theory has opened up the possibility of a “multiverse”—wherein that which is observed, or will ever be observable, from Earth is but the tiniest fraction of all there is, with other universes subject to other rules in an endless panoply beyond. Seen in this light, untuned, un-lived-in universes may not be mere counterfactuals, but real and profuse. Maybe there is something that can be learned by considering them not just as thought experiments, but in the context of the rules that govern what gets created in the whole great ensemble.

Curiouser and curiouser

Perhaps the most fruitful way of thinking about fine tuning is to appreciate it as a focus for curiosity. In the 1970s there was talk of fine tuning as an explanation of why, cosmologically speaking, the universe was both smooth and flat (unlike a billiard ball, smooth but not flat, or a shingle beach, flat but not smooth). In the 1980s physicists fascinated by this conundrum came up with a theory that explained both attributes in terms of a single process, known as cosmic inflation, a theoretical path which led, in time, to the interest in multiverses. Perhaps some things which currently appear to be fine-tuned—such as the rate at which the universe’s expansion accelerates—may similarly, with enough hard thought, come to be seen as consequences of a deeper necessity in the laws of nature.

It is not clear why things which seem fine-tuned should be more likely routes to deeper insights than other aspects of reality. But perhaps they do not need to be. Perhaps a seeming quirk or coincidence that captures the imagination is enough in and of itself to provide the spur to progress. Finding, or appreciating, a way in which the universe appears fine-tuned generates the same sensations as a balloon stuck out-of-reach on the ceiling: delight, curiosity and an exquisite frustration. That is often all the path to understanding needs.

https://www.economist.com/news/world-if/21724908-huge-potential-impact-r...

The World If

If an electromagnetic pulse took down America’s electricity grid

A flash in the sky

For rich countries, prolonged loss of electricity is a low-probability event. But the scale of the potential impact is mind-concentrating

ON MARCH 13th 1989 a surge of energy from the sun, from a “coronal mass ejection”, had a startling impact on Canada. Within 92 seconds, the resulting geomagnetic storm took down Quebec’s electricity grid for nine hours. It could have been worse. On July 23rd 2012 particles from a much larger solar ejection blew across the orbital path of Earth, missing it by days. Had it hit America, the resulting geomagnetic storm would have destroyed perhaps a quarter of high-voltage transformers, according to Storm Analysis Consultants in Duluth, Minnesota. Future geomagnetic storms are inevitable.

And that is not the only threat to the grid. A transformer-wrecking electromagnetic pulse (EMP) would be produced by a nuclear bomb, designed to maximise its yield of gamma rays, if detonated high up, be it tethered to a big cluster of weather balloons or carried on a satellite or missile. A midrange missile tested by North Korea on April 29th 2017 exploded 71 kilometres (44 miles) up, well above the 40km or so needed to generate an EMP.

Imagine a nuclear blast occurring somewhere above eastern Nebraska. Radiating outwards, the EMP fries electronics in southern Canada and almost all of the United States save Alaska and Hawaii, both safe below the horizon. It permanently damages the grid’s multimillion-dollar high-voltage transformers. Many are old (their average age is about 40). Some burst into flame, further damaging substations.

America runs on roughly 2,500 large transformers, most with unique designs. But only 500 or so can be built per year around the world. It typically takes a year or more to receive an ordered transformer, and that is when cranes work and lorries and locomotives can be fuelled up. Some transformers exceed 400 tonnes.

After the surge, telecom switches and internet routers are dead. Air-traffic control is down. Within a day, some shoppers in supermarkets turn to looting (many, unable to use credit and debit cards, cannot pay even if they wanted to). After two days, market shelves are bare. On the third day, backup diesel generators begin to sputter out. Though fuel cannot be pumped, siphoning from vehicles, authorised by martial law, keeps most prisons, police stations and hospitals running for another week.

With many troops overseas or tasked with deterring land grabs from opportunist foreign powers, there is only one American “peacekeeper” soldier for every 360 or so civilians. Pillaging accelerates. This leads many with needed skills to stay home to protect their families. Many of the rock climbers who help overwhelmed fire departments free tens of thousands from lifts begin to give up on day four despite the heart-wrenching banging that continues to echo through some elevator shafts.

Utilities can neither treat nor pump water or sewage. Raids on homes thought to have water become frequent and often bloody. Militias soon form to defend or seize control of swimming pools and other water sources. Streams and shovelled-out pits provide water in some areas, but sooner or later rain sweeps in faeces-ridden mud. Deaths from cholera and other diseases multiply.

As relief ships arrive, food, water filters and fuel are offloaded by hand amid chaos, but demand cannot be met even in port cities, much less inland. Where food can be grown without pumped irrigation, rural militias cluster into “aggie alliances” not keen to share with the hordes streaming out of cities. Some aggie alliances hole up in newly abandoned prisons, the better to defend scavenged crops and farm animals. The value of cash collapses along with faith in government.

The death rate picks up. Eventually, months later, about three quarters of the benighted area has power for at least ten hours a day. It would have been worse had 41 countries not dismantled transformers for reassembly in North America. (The most generous donors have to accept rolling blackouts.) Martial law ends six months after the original energy surge. Roughly 350,000 Canadians and 7m Americans have died.

A similar nightmare could happen in any rich country—grids outside America are vulnerable too. Such scenarios necessarily dip into “uncharted territory for an industrialised society”, as Thomas Popik, head of the Foundation for Resilient Societies, a think-tank in New Hampshire, puts it. But shorter blackouts suggest that things can get bad fast. Just three hours after Chile’s grid-collapsing earthquake on February 27th 2010, even relatively wealthy people began looting stuff they did not need. With electricity gone, normal rules had suddenly vanished and “out of control” emotions took over, says Roberto Machiavello, then rear-admiral and top martial-law official in Chile’s Concepción area.

Without soldiers at hospitals, Admiral Machiavello says, doctors would have stayed at home. Less than a week after Hurricane Katrina struck New Orleans in 2005, many police officers opted to protect their families rather than work. Chris Ipsen, spokesman for the Emergency Management Department of Los Angeles, estimates that, with the grid down, Angelenos would be foodless in less than ten days. In poor areas, he reckons, groups would quickly form and say, “Hey, let’s go over to the mansions in Bel Air.”

Insurance, anyone?

In the aftermath of Haiti’s earthquake in January 2010, cholera alone killed at least 10,000. Jacques Boncy, head of Haiti’s National Laboratory of Public Health, reckons that, in three months of blackout in America, faecal contamination of water would kill several million. That might be optimistic. The EMP Commission, an expert group set up by America’s Congress to study the threat, reckoned in 2008 that the first year of societal breakdown could finish off two-thirds of Americans.

A country’s electricity grid can be knocked out in other ways. One is cyber-attack. Hackers cut power to 230,000 Ukrainians in December 2015—but only for hours. Long-term damage from cyber-assaults is unlikely, says Kenneth Geers, a security expert who studied the attack.

What about terrorism? Shooting up transformers at just nine critical substations could bring down America’s grid for months, according to an analysis performed in 2013 by the Department of Energy’s Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC), says its then-chairman, Jon Wellinghoff. Others think more transformers would need to be taken out. At any rate, information on which substations are critical is secret. In 2013 gunmen knocked out 17 of 21 transformers at a substation in San Jose. It was not a critical one.

The sun probably poses a greater risk of a sustained outage than hackers or saboteurs. That is one reason the EMP Commission reconvened in January 2017. Kit that protects transformers from EMP also saves them from geomagnetic storms, though the reverse is not true. George Baker, a staffer on the commission and a former boss of EMP research at the Pentagon’s Defence Threat Reduction Agency, says that critical military systems have been EMP-proofed. But other agencies, he says, have done “precious little” to safeguard civilian infrastructure. The commission will issue an updated report in September. It will be as grim as the assessment in 2008, he says.

The expense of installing surge-blockers and other EMP-proofing kit on America’s big transformers is debated. The EMP Commission’s report in 2008 reckoned $3.95bn or less would do it. Others advance higher figures. But a complete collapse of the grid could probably be prevented by protecting several hundred critical transformers for perhaps $1m each.

Yet not much is being done. Barack Obama ordered EMP protection for White House systems, but FERC, the utilities regulator, has not required EMP-proofing. Nor has the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) pushed for a solution or even included EMP in official planning scenarios. (The Pentagon should handle that, DHS officials say; the Pentagon notes that civilian infrastructure is the DHS’s responsibility.) As for exactly what safeguards are or are not needed, the utilities themselves are best equipped to decide, says Brandon Wales, the DHS’s head of infrastructure analysis.

But the utilities’ industry group, the North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC), argues that, because EMP is a matter of national security, it is the government’s job. NERC may anyway be in no rush. It took a decade to devise a vegetation-management plan after, in 2003, an Ohio power line sagged into branches and cut power to 50m north-easterners at a cost of roughly $6bn. NERC has repeatedly and successfully lobbied Congress to prevent legislation that would require EMP-proofing. That is something America, and the world, could one day regret.

Thanks smoke stack