Cataclysmic solar storm that triggers blackouts and shuts down bank accounts is ‘inevitable’, scientists warn
A DEVASTATING storm of solar radiation that wreaks havoc on our planet is inevitable, space scientists have warned.
The disaster-inducing event could hit us at any moment and threatens to cause widespread blackouts and knock out phone networks.
Our Sun regularly pumps out bursts of highly charged particles, also known as coronal mass ejections (CMEs), though few are powerful enough to disrupt life on Earth.
However, every 100 years or so, a series of extremely powerful CMEs known as a solar storm is released in Earth's direction.
If one were to hit our planet, it would take out satellites and electrical grids, shut down computers and even wipe people's bank accounts, according to scientists.
Some researchers have even suggested Earth is due a catastrophic solar storm within the next 100 years.
In a new report, researchers at the US Geological Survey warn one of the storms could hit us at any moment – and there's no guarantee we'll spot it coming.
They examined an event now known as the New York Railroad Storm, which plunged large parts of the northeastern United States into darkness in 1921.
The team said a repeat of its devastating effects is an inevitability in the near future, likely causing blackouts and widespread fires triggered by exploding powerlines.
"The severe space weather event of 13‐16 May 1921 produced some spectacular technological impacts, in some cases causing destructive fires," weather experts wrote in the report.
"It was characterised by extreme solar and geomagnetic variations, and spectacular aurora, recorded at many locations around the world."
According to the report, several gigantic CMEs bombarded Earth at once in May 1921.
They juiced up Earth's magnetic field, which interacts with all the electronics on our planet, causing widespread destruction.
Looking into how the New York Railroad Storm played out could help us prepare for a future extreme solar storm, scientists concluded.
"The timeline of the 1921 event, including the confusion caused by prosaic faults, can be used to construct scenarios for use today," researchers wrote.
Such information would be helpful to "emergency managers planning how to reduce the adverse impacts of future space weather events," they added.
The research was published in the journal Space Weather.
Scientists are falling over themselves to warn of the dangers of a potential solar storm.
In 2012, a huge coronal mass ejection which could have decimated electronics missed the Earth by just nine days.
The event was comparable to the 1859 Carrington Event, in which telegraph operators suffered electric shocks and sparks exploded from pylons.
Solar flare facts
Here's everything you need to know...
- Earth is often struck by solar eruptions which are made up of particles hurled from the Sun into space.
- Larger amounts of hot plasma create potentially dangerous flares.
- Monster flares can break down radio communication and power supplies.
- Largest observed eruption took place in September 1859 — a phenomenon known as the "Carrington Event".
- If the same solar storm had hit Earth today, humanity would experience widespread electrical disruptions, blackouts and damage due to huge outages of the electrical grid.
- Evidence from geological archives has shown that the Sun might have produced a small superflare in AD 775.
- A superflare is an incredibly powerful solar flare that could knock out electrical grids for months or even years on end.
"An event of [Carrington] scale could be catastrophic if it happened tomorrow," MIT researcher Dr Francis O'Sullivan .
"It's not just the lights going off now. It's bank accounts disappearing… If you think what would happen if the stock exchange was taken offline for a week or month or if communications were down for a week or a month, you very quickly get to a point where this might be one of the most important threats the nation faces, bar none."
Potentially causing trillions in damage, the effects could last for up to two years and send the planet into anarchic chaos.
"Back [at the time of the Carrington], there was not very much technology so the damage was not very significant," Harvard University researcher Professor Avi Loeb told in 2017.
"But if it happened in the modern world, the damage could be trillions of dollars.
"A flare like that today could shut down all the power grids, all the computers, all the cooling systems on nuclear reactors. A lot of things could go bad."
While we can't do much to stop solar storms, we can try to predict when they'll hit, one expert told The Sun.
"We can't stop solar storms but we can, and do, forecast their arrival using data from spacecraft and a network of ground-based observatories," University of Reading space physicist Professor Chris Scott told The Sun.
"When an eruption is detected, sophisticated computer models are used to predict the speed of the storm and its arrival time at Earth.
"Armed with this information, spacecraft operators can ensure their spacecraft are not undertaking critical manoeuvres or software updates, power companies can open every available line to spread the load and aircraft operators can alter flight paths to avoid the polar regions.
"In the UK, the Met Office is responsible for monitoring space weather and issuing alerts on any impending solar storms.
"While this system is in its infancy compared with forecasting weather on Earth, we are gradually learning how we can live with a star and still enjoy all our modern technological comforts."
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