The Sun is a giant, bright celestial object
of intense nuclear energy.
It unleashes billions of tons of electromagnetically
charged plasma hurtling into space every day.
These violent eruptions, called Coronal Mass
Ejections or CMEs, shoot off in all directions,
causing what we know as solar storms.
These highly charged plasma particles race
towards Earth at over a million kilometers
an hour, and one might think that with the
speed and intensity of these particles we
should all head for the bunkers when they
arrive.
However, the Earth has natural protections
in place to prevent most of these particles
from hitting us.
One such protection is the Earth's powerful
magnetic field, which pushes the particles
around the planet and to its poles.
Particles that do hit the atmosphere are absorbed
and provide the energy to drive the climate
on our planet.
In fact, the Sun is crucial to life on Earth.
For example, it provides just the right amount
of warmth and light so that plants can photosynthesize
the Sun's energy to usable carbohydrates.
This energy makes its way down the food chain
until it reaches us: humans.
We eat and convert food to give us energy
that our bodies can use.
Almost all food energy can be traced back
to the Sun, our life-giver, and the very beginning
of our food chain.
But could the solar system's giant also create
catastrophe?
How big can these CMEs get?
What if the largest solar storm of all time
was to hit Earth tomorrow?
Could the Sun actually damage or destroy humanity?
For a star, our Sun is relatively stable,
a type of star informally known as a yellow
dwarf.
It is middle aged and has not changed dramatically
for the last 4 billion years.
We can be glad our Sun is as stable as it
is, as unlike most other stars, the energy
it emits is fairly constant.
If you were to look at footage of the Sun
taken by the Solar Dynamics Observatory telescope
however, you would quickly realise that even
one of the most stable types of star has a
landscape of activity.
Sunspots, solar flares and coronal loops are
present every single day on the Sun's surface.
The surface almost appears to be fluid, but
the Sun is neither solid, liquid nor gas.
It is rather a giant, nearly perfect sphere
of plasma.
It is composed of mainly hydrogen and helium,
and at the centre of the Sun, due to its enormous
mass, nuclear fusion takes place.
The at Sun's core, hydrogen atoms are fused
together under immense pressure to become
helium.
The Sun itself, I mean, I tend to think of
it as an onion, consisting of different layers.
So, in the core the very centre of the Sun,
essentially that's where nuclear fusion happens.
You have to think, essentially the sun is
a huge ball of plasma, a soup of particles,
ions, atoms, electrons, sort of everything
mixed up together.
On average, it takes a photon to travel through
the radiative zone something like 170,000
years.
I mean, yeh, I mean it's basically that dense.
And from that, it then hits the convective
zone.
So everybody knows that hot air rises and
cold air falls.
So what then happens is that material is very
hot at the bottom near that radiative zone
and then it expands and it rises to the surface.
And that is the main transfer of heat from
that point onwards.
Obviously then glowing from the surface like
any hot material does.
Plasma is an extremely good conductor of electricity
and is also affected strongly by magnetic
fields.
So sunspots are actually the surface representation
of the magnetic fields of the Sun.
Magnetic fields actually get very tangled
below the surface, so between that radiative
zone and the convective zone, the magnetic
fields get tangled.
They tend to appear in pairs, in groups.
I mean, if you think of a magnet, it has positive
polarity and negative polarity.
I mean, that's normally what we see in sunspot
pairs, you know, one would be positive and
the other would be negative.
So normally the strongest magnetic fields
that we observe are in the sunspots.
The sunspots can be anywhere from 15km in
size to around 160,000km, so multiple times
the size of the Earth.
Sunspots can often be seen at the base of
various solar phenomena: coronal loops – large
rings in the Sun's atmosphere.
Prominences - large, bright, gaseous features
extending outward from the Sun's surface,
reaching into space for thousands of kilometers.
And solar flares – a sharp increase in the
Sun's brightness and temperature.
Solar flares tend to happen over active regions.
So an active region are essentially sunspot
groups.
So these are the locations where we definitely
see the strongest flares.
A reconnection event is essentially what produces
the energy that causes both flares and CMEs.
Because the convective zone is essentially
very turbulent, many of the current simulations
show that most of the magnetic field as it
rises through the convective zone is basically
being destroyed, or diffused around.
It's more complicated magnetic structures
like twisted magnetic fields that tend to
survive.
And so you can imagine, especially over a
large sunspot group, we do see very complex
magnetic field configurations.
Magnetic fields that are twisted, basically
creating this complicated geometrical and
epilogical structures.
And it's within these structures that magnetic
fields and magnetic energy is stored.
And what happens during a reconnection event:
I tend to describe it if you think of the
magnetic field as a rubber band.
So you twist it and you turn it and basically
at some point you pull it too strongly and
it breaks.
And that is essentially what we have in a
reconnection event.
And what happens during a reconnection event,
essentially as the name suggests, is that
the magnetic field lines reconnect.
And when that happens, you get a lot of energy
being released.
Of the order of millions of nuclear weapons,
nuclear bombs, all in one instant.
And that energy will produce both solar flares
where large amounts of large radiation is
released and also potentially lead to large
scale movement of the material suspended in
the prominences, both towards the Sun and
away from the Sun.
When that reconnection event happens, then
again, the material which is suspended in
those magnetic fields normally will move one
way or the other.
A lot of it will move back towards the Sun,
often following those magnetic field lines
and moving to the footprints, for instance
to the sunspots if that is where the footprints
are.
Equally, in the middle of those magnetic fields,
quite often a bubble of material is essentially
ejected away from the Sun.
So what you will end up having is millions
of tonnes of charged material flying out from
the Sun relatively fast.
Of the order of hundreds of kilometers per
second to thousands of kilometers per second.
And those are what we call CMEs or coronal
mass ejections.
These CMEs come in contact with the planets
all the time.
Venus, when faced with a CME, has its lighter
particles stripped away in the higher reaches
of its atmosphere by the force of the ejection.
This leaves the planet with just the heavier
molecules, a toxic smog that cannot - as far
as we know - sustain life.
Earth would face a similar fate, if it wasn't
for its relatively strong magnetic field.
Particles from a CME aimed at Earth are redirected
around the planet because of the Earth's magnetosphere.
Some particles get redirected to the Earth's
poles, where the charged particles hit the
Earth's ionosphere, causing beautiful aurorae.
Thanks to a combination of the Earth's magnetosphere
and atmosphere, we are totally protected from
all sorts of particles space likes to throw
around.
Or are we?
When the Earth is hit by a CME, this is called
a 'geomagnetic', or 'solar' storm.
When a solar storm hits us, Earth's magnetic
field gets somewhat compressed by the force
of the CME for the duration of storm.
Normally, this wouldn't and hasn't been be
a problem for people with their feet firmly
on land.
But what would happen if the most powerful
solar storm ever recorded was to hit Earth
today?
To find out what is believed to be the most
powerful CME in recorded history, we have
to go back to 1859, to a solar storm known
as the Carrington Event.
From the 28th August to 2nd September, 1859,
many sunspots appeared on the Sun in one place.
On the 29th August, southern auroras were
observed as far north as Queensland, Australia
which implies a solar storm was occurring.
Before midday on the 1st September, amateur
astronomers Richard Carrington (who the event
was named after) and Richard Hodgson separately
saw and recorded an extremely bright solar
flare.
Carrington and Hodgson wrote reports independently,
which were both later published in scientific
journals.
The flare was connected to a major coronal
mass ejection that travelled directly toward
Earth, taking 17.6 hours to make the 150-million-kilometer
journey, much faster than the speed of normal
CMEs.
Typically, CMEs take several days to reach
Earth.
It is thought that the high speed of this
CME was made possible by a prior CME, perhaps
the cause of the large aurora event on the
29th August, that cleared any ambient solar
wind plasma for the Carrington event, like
a giant slipstream.
With the slipstream in place, the way was
set for the biggest CME known to man.
On the 1st - 2nd September, 1859, the largest
recorded geomagnetic storm occurred.
Auroras were seen around the world, all across
the northern hemisphere to as far south as
the Caribbean.
The aurorae over the Rocky Mountains in the
U.S. were so bright that the green glow woke
local gold miners, who began making breakfast
as they believed it was morning.
It was reported that because the aurora was
so bright, people in the northeastern United
States could still read a newspaper.
The aurora was visible as far from the poles
as Sub-Saharan Africa, Monterrey and Tampico
in Mexico, Queensland, Cuba, Hawaii, and even
at lower latitudes very close to the equator,
such as in Colombia.
This is unprecedented as typically, aurorae
aren't visible at middle latitudes.
By the 3rd of September, the aurora in the
sky was said to be the brightest and most
brilliant it ever had been.
However, although beautiful, this storm also
brought unforeseen problems.
A consequence of the geomagnetic storm was
that the electrically charged particles from
the Sun surged telegraph systems all over
Europe and North America which caused them
to fail, even in some cases giving the people
that operated the telegraph equipment electric
shocks.
Telegraph pylons threw sparks from the charged
atmosphere.
Amazingly, some telegraph operators could
still continue to send and receive messages
even though they had disconnected their power
supplies.
The storm was comparable to a hemisphere wide
EMP bomb, fairly harmless to humans, but extremely
bad for electronics.
The force of the CME in
1859 was so strong that it compressed the
magnetic field of Earth all the way down into
its atmosphere.
Due to the fact that North America and Europe
were facing the Sun at the time, these areas
of the world were most affected from the initial
cannonball of the CME.
Looking back at geomagnetic storms since the
1850s, there have been a few which were big,
but not devastating.
For example, in March 1989, a CME hit Earth,
rendering satellites unusable for several
hours and jamming radio stations in Europe.
Power in Quebec was knocked out for about
a day.
Some people there incorrectly thought the
Soviets were attacking and the glow in the
sky was the result of nuclear bombs.
Thankfully though, this solar storm and many
like it, did no real permanent damage.
Today, if a CME of the size of the Carrington
Event or bigger was to hit Earth, the consequences
would be far more disastrous than they were
for mankind in the 1800s.
Technology was only just picking up back then,
whereas today we have satellites in space,
computers, telecommunications, powerplants
and more that would all be severely damaged
in such an event.
Due to the range of a solar storm, it would
greatly impact equipment over a large area,
the most susceptible technologies being the
electricity grid and telecommunications, which
have cables stretched out over a large distance.
Without proper safeguards in place, transformers
on the power grid could break, and millions
upon millions would be without power for a
lengthy period of time.
If transformers did get damaged, for example,
it would take years to replace as transformers
take years to manufacture.
Often these transformers are tailor made for
the specific requirement and are not mass
produced.
Without power, refrigerators would not be
able to stop food from spoiling, and as the
transport system would also be down as fuel
stations require electricity to pump, replacing
that food would be problematic.
Payment systems that rely on credit cards
would not work.
People would not have access to the internet
as computers would not have power and battery
powered devices would run out quickly.
Radio and TV stations would be disrupted.
Hospitals would struggle when the backup generators
run out of fuel.
We would be completely cut off from the outside
world.
The world is simply so dependent on technology
and especially on electricity, it is feared
we have lost the ability to function as a
society without it.
And worryingly, it is our power grid that
is most vulnerable to a super solar storm.
An independent thinktank recently put the
cost of damages to the U.S.A. alone at $2.6
trillion, ultimately destroying the economy.
Unfortunately, that does not cover the social
impact it could have.
As is often the case in natural disasters,
some people will undoubtedly resort to more
primeval instincts, with attitudes such as
'every man for himself'.
Chaos, looting and disregard for the law could
occur.
This would only get worse the longer the population
goes without hearing from their government
or organisation of authority.
Hopefully, in such a situation, the good of
mankind would prevail, but it is a possible
scenario.
The thinktank placed the estimated recovery
time to repair the damage of the CME at 4-10
years, and estimated that two-thirds of the
US population could die of starvation, disease
and chaos during this time.
We only need to look at a couple of examples
to understand the severity of the situation.
In 1989, Quebec experienced a large solar
storm that made the power grid fail in just
90 seconds.
This problem was exasperated by the fact it
was winter where the temperature can drop
well into the minuses, which left vulnerable
people in a potentially bad situation.
It took nine hours to restore power, and total
costs from the disruption was estimated to
be around C$2 billion.
From the social aspect, we only need to look
at Puerto Rico which is still without power
for 40% of its population from the time of
writing this script in early February.
That means it has been without power for 140
days, and it is estimated that it still needs
50,000 utility poles and 10,000km of electricity
cables.
If a solar storm hits, it wouldn't just be
an island that is rendered powerless, it would
be an entire hemisphere.
Earth has had some very near misses.
A Carrington size event could have been a
reality in 2012, where a huge CME was ejected
from the Sun.
This was the biggest CME that has been recorded
with modern technology, and it directly hit
one of the STEREO satellites that was observing
solar activity.
It is the charged particles that caused this
distortion effect shortly after the solar
flare.
Had this hit Earth, this hypothetical disaster
scenario could have become a reality.
Due to a lack of historical evidence, we have
no way to predict when the next big CME could
hit Earth.
As far as we know, a CME even bigger than
the Carrington event could hit us tomorrow,
or the next one could be in a few thousand
years.
But what mitigation plans does the world have
in the case of such an event?
Since 1995, NASA have placed a space telescope
in orbit which is constantly monitoring the
Sun for CMEs.
As light travels much faster than the speed
of a CME, it would roughly give us about 17
hours warning before the CME hit Earth.
If everyone was acting fast enough, this might
be enough time to turn off some power stations,
thus protecting the electricity grids.
This is called the 'solar shield' program,
and astonishingly, the US is currently the
only country to have such a program in place.
Countries are also working on temporary transformers
which are quicker to produce.
Additionally, countries throughout the western
world are currently in the process of proposing
upgrades to the power grids that would not
allow a surge of electricity caused by a geomagnetic
storm to destroy the network.
This process however is slow and bogged down
by bureaucracy.
It seems countries are in no rush to foot
the bill to upgrade the infrastructure.
These measures to protect the power grid are
NOT already in place worldwide.
It also seems that most people in the world
are not aware of CMEs, but they rather fear
less likely scenarios like asteroids hitting
the Earth or aliens invading.
Mankind as a whole is shockingly unprepared
for a natural disaster caused by a super solar
storm.
George H. Baker Professor Emeritus, James
Madison University spoke before the House
Committee on National Security in the United
States and gave this explanation for the reason
progress it not getting made: "To a major
extent, the lack of progress in protecting
our most critical infrastructure to [solar
storms] is that the responsibility is distributed.
There is no single point of responsibility
to develop and implement a national protection
plan.
Nobody is in charge.
When I asked the North American Electrical
Reliability Corporation about EMP protection,
they informed me, “we don’t do EMP, that’s
a Department of Defense problem.”
The Department of Defense tells me, “EMP
protection of the civilian infrastructure
is a DHS responsibility.”
DHS explained to me that the responsibility
for the electric power grid protection is
within DOE since they are the designated Sector
Specific Agency (SSA) for the energy infrastructure."
And this is sadly from one of the most progressive
countries on the subject.
And until mankind is prepared for a CME, we
really are at the mercy of our life-giver
star.
