On January 6th, a powerful solar flare occurred from the surface of the Sun. It was the first X-class flare — the strongest type on the flare intensity scale —in about 2 monthsTwo more X-class flares occurred within the next few days, indicating a clear increase in solar activity. A British tabloid raised the possibility of a “massive continental blackout.” “Horrible Solar Storm Coming To Earth,” read another outlet’s headline.
Solar physicists and other scientists who study “space weather” believe that flares and related solar explosions not only damage power grids, but also radiation exposure of space dwellers and residents of high-altitude aircraft. It warns that by increasing But the risk of damage from severe space weather remains much lower than many media reports often suggest, according to those experts. Does that mean we don’t have to worry whenever our stars decide to burp in our general direction? Not exactly. However, knowing what and when to worry requires the right context and perspective.
Solar flares occur in the Sun’s swirling soup of plasma, where charged particles collide with each other to form strong magnetic field lines that entangle and entangle. When these magnetic fields suddenly shift or realign, as often happens in sunspot-dotted ‘active regions’ on the surface of the Sun, enormous amounts of energy are released.
There is no doubt that these solar eruptions, especially X-class flares, are mind-bogglingly powerful. His 1859 Carrington event, one of his most powerful solar flares in history, may have released an energy comparable to the explosion of 10 billion megatons of TNT. Imagine the infamous Tsar Bomba, the most powerful thermonuclear weapon ever detonated.
Most solar eruptions are far from this energy. But it can propel giant planet-engulfing clouds of plasma, called coronal mass ejections (CMEs), toward Earth and other parts of the solar system. Direct hits to our world by CME can and will happen, and each event has enough power to apparently disrupt some modern electronics. It’s packed. However, these disruptions are often unnoticeable and have little or no impact on most people’s daily lives.
Another day, another flare
Overall, the spate of space weather scare is easy to predict. Because they are usually associated with solar activity itself, which follows a cycle of about 11 years. In each round of the cycle our star oscillates once between her two principal states. Solar minimum, when flare activity tends to be lowest, and solar maximum, when flare activity tends to be strongest. The Sun is now a little over two years away from its maximum, so we expect increased activity (and media attention) now and in the years to come.
“At this point, we don’t have to convince ourselves that we’re facing an apocalypse,” says Erica Palmerio, a solar physicist at solar research firm Predictive Science. “The point is that solar activity is currently rising, because that’s what you’d expect in a solar cycle.” It is often seen during periods of high activity. According to Palmerio, a typical solar cycle produces about 200 of them, most occurring towards a maximum. Statistically speaking, this means that her X-class flares are expected to erupt more than a dozen times this year alone.
When the following event occurs, it is important to remember an important caveat that is often overlooked in subsequent media coverage: X-class events account for the highest tier of flare strength, but this tier has an upper limit. is not. So even though all X-class flares are in the “strongest” category, they can vary greatly in intensity. The Carrington event, for example, had him registered as an X40 Flair by some estimates, but all Flair earlier this month was ranked at a much more modest level between X1 and X2.
real threat
Simply put, even the most severe solar eruptions in living memory had relatively muted effects.
That’s because space weather tends not to affect phones, laptops, and other everyday electronics at all, despite the alarming, though unlikely, widespread power outages. . Sean Elbidge, Head of Space Environment Research at the University of Birmingham, UK, said: By interacting with the Earth’s magnetic field and inducing excessive currents along or through the planet’s surface, CMEs can threaten power grids, sometimes lasting for hours. You may. Given sufficiently strong currents from powerful solar storms, unprotected transformers along power grids can be severely damaged and taken offline. This reduces the capacity of the power grid, requiring time-consuming and costly repair and replacement work.
“But in practice this can only happen with very long cables or pipelines,” adds Elvidge. “So you don’t see it in your house. Your house has no problem with that sort of thing.”
There is one way electronic devices are much less likely to be affected by solar storms, says Palmerio. That’s when a single, very strongly charged solar particle hits an electronic device. Scientists call such incidents chaos of a single event. “So, when you’re in front of a computer, this guy has one very powerful particle hit the computer and burn it down,” he says Palmerio. “But clearly the probability is very low. There’s no such thing as “all cell phones in this country are dead”. It won’t happen. “
Swarms of charged particles in solar storms tend to accumulate around the Earth’s poles, where the planet’s magnetic field is strongest, so such events are more likely to occur at higher latitudes. It is also more likely to occur at higher altitudes. There, the atmosphere is thinner and less protected against incoming particles. Such reduced protection is also why jet travel increases total human radiation exposure, and why transcontinental flights are sometimes routed away from the poles during intense solar storms.[A single event upset is] It’s like where did the idea of planes falling out of the sky come from,” Elwidge says. “It may be exaggerated to the point of appearing comical and silly, and therefore never realized. , nothing breaks. [the aircraft], but it would be quite stressful. “
A broader and more real concern for electronic systems is damage to the power grid. Space weather forecasting is therefore key.
Future prospects
A key to space weather forecasting is the distinction between solar flares and CMEs. If a flare is the muzzle flash of a gunshot, a CME is a bullet. X-rays and extreme ultraviolet radiation from flares reach Earth at near the speed of light, and by the time we observe them, effects such as high-frequency radio signals and disrupting satellite navigation systems are already being felt. .
“You can’t predict when a flare will occur,” says Palmerio, but careful monitoring of sunspots and other inhabitants of solar active regions will allow us to make educated guesses. “There’s a lot of research going on. For example, are there small features on the Sun that could be precursors to flare activity?”
CMEs are relatively easy to predict because they almost always start with a particularly strong flare and move much more slowly. A flare can take as little as eight minutes to reach Earth, while the longest CME can take him three days. Additionally, certain space weather satellites can act as early warning systems, sending back data on the strength of incoming CMEs before they begin to ripple into the Earth’s power grid.
An example is the Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite (GOES) operated by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Rob Steenburgh, director of NOAA’s Space Weather Service, said: “So if I think I know what’s coming, I’ll let them know.” can take steps to mitigate
This is not to say there are no threats. The main unknown in space weather forecasting is when the next “big thing” will occur. The next Carrington level storm, or even a storm 100 times that energy. According to Elvidge, estimates vary from once-in-100 years for Carrington-level events to he-in-1,000 years for much more powerful events. A 2022 study of tree rings that can record the growth of prehistoric solar storms found evidence that giant radiation spikes, called Miyake events, occurred several times over thousands of years. If caused by giant solar flares, such events would be enough to cause significant disruption to today’s power grids and satellites. Their true origins remain a mystery, as they were invisible and appeared to last for more than a year, much longer than any known flares.
“Working with this every day, I am far more afraid of ‘doomsdays’ caused by terrestrial weather such as wildfires, hurricanes, and extreme weather events,” concludes Palmerio. “Each solar cycle seems to forget what happened in the previous solar cycle. [the cycle that stretched from 1996 to 2008], saw a really strong event. And I’m sure most of you didn’t even know those events happened….we have to watch and be prepared. You don’t have to be “
