The world's telegraph systems failed catastrophically on Sept. 1 and 2. telegraph paper catching fire, and being able to operate equipment with batteries disconnected were reported by the operators of the telegraphs. The northern lights, also known as the northern lights, can be seen as far south as Colombia during the evening. The lights are only visible at higher latitudes.
When a large bubble of superheated gas is ejected from the surface of the sun, these storms occur. A bubble is called a mass ejection.
A cloud of electrons and protons are charged by the sun. The particles interact with the magnetic field around the planet. The magnetic field can be distorted and weakened by this interaction, which in turn leads to strange behavior. I am an electrical engineer who specializes in the power grid and I study how storms can cause power and internet outages.
The largest recorded account of a storm is the Carrington event.
The Miyake event was a massive geomagnetic storm that occurred around A.D. 776 and has been documented since the early 19th century. The biggest and fastest rise in carbon-14 was recorded by that solar flare. Carbon-14 is a radioactive isotope of carbon and is produced by high amounts of Cosmic rays in the upper atmosphere.
The Miyake event was larger than the geomagnetic storm. Large-scale storms with similar intensities as the Miyake and Carrington events occur at an average rate of once every 500 years, according to ice core samples.
The strength of the solar eruptions is measured by using the Geomagnetic Storms scale. The G scale has ratings from 1 to 5 with 1 being minor and 5 being extreme. The event would have been given a rating of G5.
When you compare the two events, it gets even worse. The strength of the event was estimated by using the fluctuations of Earth's magnetic field as a reference. The magnetic fluctuations of the Miyake event were not measured. Scientists measured the increase in carbon 14 in the tree rings. The Miyake event increased carbon 14 by 12%. The Miyake event likelydwarfed the G5 Carrington event because it produced less than 1% increase in Carbon-14.
A storm of the same intensity as the Carrington event would affect more than telegraph wires. Billions of dollars of monetary loss and risk to life depend on the systems if there is a disruption. Most of the electrical systems are affected by the storm.
The electrical grid is affected by magnetic storms. The currents can be in excess of 100 amperes and flow into the electrical components that connect to the grid. It takes one hundred amperes to provide the electrical service to many households. Large scale power failures can be caused by currents this size.
There was a geomagnetic storm three times smaller than the Carrington event. The grid collapsed due to the storm. A transformer in New Jersey was damaged during the storm. Five million people were without electricity for nine hours.
Communications would be disrupted on a global scale. The ability to communicate with each other would be lost if internet service providers went down. Ground-to-air, short wave and ship-to-shore radio would be disrupted. Satellites can be damaged by currents from the storm. Satellite-based telephone, internet, radio and television could be disrupted.
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As the solar activity increases, the atmosphere expands outward. The density of the atmosphere is changed. Satellites are slowed down by higher density atmosphere. It can fall back to Earth if it isn't flown to a higher altitude.
navigation systems are one of the areas that could potentially be disrupted. Every mode of transportation uses gps for navigation. Cell phones, smart watches, and tracking tags all rely on the signals from satellites. The military systems rely on the gps system for coordination. National defense could be hampered by disrupted military detection systems.
The internet and the data centers that store and process everything from email and text messages to scientific data sets and artificial intelligence could be affected by a storm like the Carrington event. The entire network could be disrupted and the server could not connect to each other.
There is a chance that the Earth will be hit by another storm. The electrical and communication systems around the world would be badly damaged by a Carrington event. If the storm is the size of the Miyake event, the results would be catastrophic for the world and could take months to repair. The world would only have a few minutes to a few hours notice if there was a space weather warning from the space weather prediction center.
I believe it is important to continue researching ways to protect electrical systems against the effects of geomagnetic storms, for example by installing devices that can shield vulnerable equipment, and by developing strategies for adjusting grid loads when solar storms are about to hit. Work now to minimize the disruptions from the next event.
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David Wallace was the author.
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