The article was originally published at The Conversation.
David Wallace is an electrical engineering professor at Mississippi State University.
The world's telegraph systems failed catastrophically on Sept. 1 and 2, 1859. The operators of the telegraphs said they received electrical shocks, telegraph paper caught fire, and were able to operate equipment with batteries disconnected. The northern lights, also known as the northern lights, could be seen as far south as the country. These lights are only visible at higher latitudes in northern Canada.
The world was 800-273-3217 800-273-3217 800-273-3217 800-273-3217 800-273-3217 800-273-3217 800-273-3217 800-273-3217 800-273-3217 800-273-3217 800-273-3217 800-273-3217 800-273-3217 800-273-3217 800-273-3217 800-273-3217 800-273-3217 800-273-3217 800-273-3217 800-273-3217 800-273-3217 800-273-3217 800-273-3217 800-273-3217 800-273-3217 800-273-3217 800-273-3217 800-273-3217 800-273-3217 800-273-3217 800-273-3217 800-273-3217 800-273-3217 800-273-3217 800-273-3217 800-273-3217 800-273-3217 800-273-3217 800-273-3217 800-273-3217 800-273-3217 800-273-3217 800-273-3217 800-273-3217 800-273-3217 800-273-3217 800-273-3217 800-273-3217 800-273-3217 800-273-3217 800-273-3217 800-273-3217 800-273-3217 800-273-3217 800-273-3217 These storms occur when a large bubble of superheated gas is ejected from the surface of the sun and hits the Earth. A bubble is called a coronal mass ejection.
The cloud of protons and electrons are charged by the sun. The particles interact with the magnetic field on the planet. This interaction causes the magnetic field to weaken and distort, which in turn leads to strange behavior of the Aurora borealis and other natural phenomena. 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 of 1859.
The Miyake event is a massive geomagnetic storm that occurred around A.D. 776 and has been recorded since the early 19th century. The largest and fastest rise in carbon-14 was recorded by that solar flare. Carbon-14 is a radioactive isotope of carbon, which is produced by high amounts of Cosmic rays in Earth's upper atmosphere.
Around A.D. 993, there was a storm that was 60% smaller than the Miyake event. Ice core samples show that large-scale storms with similar intensities as the Miyake and Carrington events occur at an average rate of once every 500 years.
The strength of the solar eruptions is measured by using the Geomagnetic Storms scale. The G scale has a rating from 1 to 5 with G1 being minor and G5 being extreme. The event would have been rated G5.
When you compare the two events, it gets even worse. The strength of the event was determined by the fluctuations of the Earth's magnetic field. There was no way to measure the magnetic fluctuations of the Miyake event. Scientists measured the increase in carbon-14 in the tree rings. A 12% increase in carbon-14 was produced by the Miyake event. 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 and could be catastrophic. Any disruption to the systems could lead to trillions of dollars of monetary loss and risk to life dependent on them. Most of the electrical systems that people use every day would be affected by the storm.
The currents that flow through the electrical grid are generated by magnetic storms. The electrical components connected to the grid, such as transformers, relays and sensors, can be affected by the geomagnetically generated currents. The electrical service provided to many households is equivalent to one hundred amperes. Large scale power outages can be caused by currents this size.
In March 1989 there was a small geomagnetic storm in Quebec. The Hydro-Quebec electrical grid collapsed due to the storm. A transformer in New Jersey was damaged during the storm. 5 million people were without power for nine hours.
Communications would be disrupted on a worldwide scale. The ability of different systems to communicate with each other would be lost if internet service providers went down. Ground-to-air, shortwave and ship-to-shore radio would be disrupted. Satellites in space could be damaged by currents from the storm. Satellite-based telephone, internet, radio and television would be disrupted.
The increase in solar activity causes the atmosphere to expand. The density of the atmosphere is changed by this expansion. A higher density atmosphere slows down a satellite. It can fall back to Earth if it is not maneuvered to a higher altitude.
One area of disruption that could affect daily life is navigation systems. Virtually 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. Over-the-horizon radar and submarine detection systems could be disrupted, which would hamper national defense.
The internet could be affected by a storm on the scale of the Carrington event, which could cause currents in the submarine and the data centers that store and process everything from email to be disrupted. The entire network could be disrupted and the server could not connect to each other.
It is only a matter of time before the Earth is hit by another storm. The electrical and communication systems worldwide would be extremely damaged by a Carrington event-size storm. If the storm is the size of the Miyake event, the results would be catastrophic for the world, with potential outages lasting months if not longer. The world would only have a few minutes to a few hours notice if there were space weather warnings.
I believe it is important to continue researching ways to protect electrical systems against the effects of geomagnetic storms, by installing devices that can shield vulnerable equipment, and by developing strategies for adjusting grid loads when solar storms are about to hit. It is important to work now to minimize disruptions from the next event.
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