Recently there was an unusual solar storm on the Sun, which formed a
giant fire canyon. NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory showed a vivid animation of
this huge ejection of charged plasma. The solar wind reached Earth in April 2022.
And on August 9, after a solar flare, charged particles bombarded our planet again. At 600
kilometers per second [372 miles per second], they collided into Earth's magnetosphere,
causing auroras. The northern lights were visible in U.S. states from Maine to New York.
But scientists say this time we were just lucky - if a more powerful solar storm hit the Earth,
instead of a brilliant celestial show, it could have ended in a disaster.
Solar storms have already shown their destructive power at least twice in
the past. Now our Sun is once again nearing its maximum activity and the
likelihood of another powerful burst of plasma is increasing.
How did these solar flares affect our planet in the past? And does the
peak of our star’s activity in 2023 threaten the Earth’s destruction?
[LOGO]
Solar wind is created when a stream of high-energy particles can no longer
be held back by the Sun's gravity. Scientists think these solar winds
blast from large dark spots on the star called coronal holes.
The Sun is a huge distance from Earth, and yet, coronal mass ejections can reach us in
between two to six days. But the highest energy particles can overcome the same
distance in just 2 minutes! Most of them are redirected to the poles by
the planet’s magnetic field. And only a small number of particles penetrate the atmosphere,
emitting rays as they collide with gas molecules, causing the atoms to give off light.
But sometimes the Sun starts having extremely powerful flares with the energy of about 1025
Joules. That's roughly equal to millions of 100-megaton hydrogen bombs! During such a solar
storm, plasma rushes through space twice as fast as usual. It bombards the magnetic field of planet
Earth with such force that charged particles either pierce or significantly deform it. The
result is the formations of geomagnetic storms, the strongest of which can lead to many disasters.
On September 2, 1859, British astronomer Richard Carrington observed a giant solar
flare. Eighteen hours later, one of the strongest geomagnetic storms we know of
struck Earth. On that day, telegraphs in all of Europe and North America stopped working,
and many telegraph poles were burned. People could see the northern lights almost all over
the planet. Mankind recovered from the accident relatively quickly,
but our civilization wasn’t as dependent on electricity as it is now.
When another major solar storm struck Earth in March 1989, the entire Canadian province of
Quebec plunged into darkness, leaving millions of people without electricity for 12 hours.
The solar outburst that caused this wasn’t that powerful.
If the next explosion on the Sun reaches the power of the Carrington event,
the most intense geomagnetic storm in recorded history, it would be a catastrophe. In the past,
scientists thought that the solar storms of this magnitude don’t occur more often than
once a century. But then scientists from the University of Warwick and
the British Antarctic Survey analyzed the patterns of solar flares. They discovered
that powerful magnetic storms are much more frequent than previously thought.
Solar activity has approximately an 11-year cycle. And at its peak, the Sun develops a particularly
violent activity and charged particles are directed toward the Earth one after another.
Researchers have analyzed the complete catalog of changes of a magnetic field of the Earth.
The results confirmed that the most significant bursts of geomagnetic activity coincide with the
most powerful explosions on the Sun. The team of scientists identified two types of the most
dangerous events for the Earth: strong magnetic superstorms and the strongest,
destructive mega-storms. The former occur on average every three years. They affect the
health of weather-dependent people, often causing headaches, blood pressure spikes,
exacerbation of chronic diseases. But they don’t lead to significant technical failures.
Mega-strong storms are much rarer. Over 150 years, researchers have counted only six such
events. So solar storms rage on our planet about every 25 years, and over the past two decades,
there have been no mega-storms. Scientists expect the next one to happen in the near
future. A huge, potentially dangerous outburst occurred on the Sun in 2012,
but the solar wind at that time blew the other way and hardly touched our
planet. During the next giant solar flare, we may be less fortunate.
The exact consequences in such a scenario cannot yet be predicted. What we know for sure is that
colorful auroras will be visible all over the planet. It’s also possible that among them,
there will be a special kind of a northern light called a strong thermal emission velocity
enhancement or STEVE. Appearing as purple and less often white glowing ribbons during the August 2022
geomagnetic storm these auroras were observed even in southern Pennsylvania. Scientists don't know
the exact nature of this optical phenomenon. But it’s usually seen during solar storms.
Researchers are confident that STEVE isn’t just about the glowing show in
the sky. It could be accompanied by the mega-storm that will cause
major disruptions to electronic and aviation equipment, communications,
power grid disruptions and issues with satellites. It could even reach the depths of the ocean,
destroying underwater online communications cables. This would lead to a worldwide
Internet apocalypse that would last several months or more. According to some estimates,
the damage could well amount to billions or even trillions of dollars. If solar winds of this power
hit our planet in 2012, some countries probably wouldn’t have fully recovered up to this date.
Still, the absence of lights, computers and televisions seems like a trifle compared to
a majority of other possible effects, like droughts, floods, earthquakes,
and tsunamis. These natural disasters are often attributed to solar storms. Observations show the
maximum frequency of earthquakes is observed in periods of high and fluctuating solar activity.
It could have been one of the reasons for a magnitude 9.1 earthquake that happened
in 2004. It also caused a huge tsunami in Indonesia. India, Thailand, Bangladesh,
the Maldive Islands, Sri Lanka and Somalia also suffered from this natural disaster. Over 283,000
people perished. Another 14,000 people are missing and more than a million are homeless.
To mitigate the disastrous consequences of solar storms,
scientists need to have a warning system. Several spacecraft, including the Solar and
Heliospheric Observatory [SOHO] and the Solar Dynamics Observatory [SDO], are studying the
Sun. Their data will help alert us about extreme events on the star in time. Now,
as the Sun nears its 11-year peak of activity, this is especially important. And only once
the stormy activity of the Sun goes down in 2024, we can breathe a sigh of relief.
Or can we?
Recently scientists found out that a powerful geomagnetic storm is able to ignore the 11- year
solar activity cycle, and suddenly strike the Earth during the Sun's calm period. Scientists
have again found a similar example in our past. A new study of ancient ice samples
under Greenland and Antarctica has shown that 9,200 years ago, a solar storm of unprecedented
strength hit our planet. So destructive solar storms can happen when we least expect them.
To avoid being caught off guard, many governments have declared space weather
forecasts to be a priority in the development of science. High hopes are pinned on NASA's
Parker Solar Probe. The probe now travels closer to the sun than any spacecraft
did before. This means it can spot coronal emissions faster than any other spacecraft.
Data from the Parker Solar Probe will help scientists more accurately track
the region of a storm’s formation on the Sun and possibly determine its direction.
NASA and the European Space Agency also launched the Solar Orbiter probe in 2020.
It is now traveling in an elliptical orbit, with a closest point at 42 million kilometers
[26 million miles] from the Sun’s surface. The probe has already sent incredible images of the
star back to Earth. Some of them show many small bright spots and strange dark objects, which are
moving and vibrating. These are miniature plasma eruptions that scientists called "campfires”.
Such phenomena probably raise the temperature of the star's corona and cause solar winds.
Meanwhile, other researchers are looking for ways to protect Earth from space. Recently,
Japanese inventors from the National Institute for Fusion Science developed an artificial geomagnetic
field project. According to geophysicists, the planet's own field has become about 10%
thinner over the past 150 years. One day it may not be able to withstand the outbursts
of highly accelerated charged solar particles. Scientists suggest launching 12 superconducting
rings around the Earth to protect it. Such a structure is thought to be able to enhance
the geomagnetic field of the planet, but it can only compensate for the 10% that it has lost.
But maybe we won’t need to build any protective structures around the Earth
as they are already there. NASA's space probes discovered a kind of artificial
energy barrier around the planet. And it was formed by humans due to
the interaction of very low frequency radio waves with cosmic particles.
The human-made barrier was found using Van Allen probes,
which are designed to study electrons and ions in space around the Earth. Normally,
very low-frequency signals from radio telescopes are transmitted from Earth and used to communicate
with submarines deep in the ocean. According to NASA scientists, these signals formed what
looks like a huge bubble of energy enveloping the Earth. Its outer layer extends almost exactly to
the inner edge of the Van Allen radiation belts. These belts collect charged solar wind particles
that later attack the planet's magnetosphere. Researchers say that in the absence of bubbles,
the radiation belt boundary would be much closer to Earth than it is now.
In the 1960s, when low-frequency communications were less common, the inner boundary of
the Van Allen radiation belt was at a much smaller distance from the planet's surface.
Do you think this type of “shield” can protect us from the consequences of the
most frightening solar storms? Or should we consider other,
more reliable ways to defend ourselves? Tell us in the comments. And thanks for watching!