Solar Storms

Posted on April 22, 2009
Filed Under Science | 8 Comments

We were talking about the relative quiet of the sun today. It’s frankly amazingly quiet right now. However a friend pointed me to a solar storm back in 1859 that was so bad that it actually disrupted telegraph stations around the country. Sparks reportedly flew from the wires causing fires in some cases. (See, for example, this article or this more popular account) Think about how thick telegraph wires were back then. This would be like the EMP pulse from hell. With todays electronics such a storm would be devastating. Most computers would be destroyed (and nearly everything has a computer in now). Wires today tend to use thin wires so most cars would have their wiring damaged. Satellites would be shut down (this happens now with far more minor storms)

We’re really not ready for such an event, but as the quiet cycle ends we should expect disruptions. Hopefully not at 1859 levels. But it would be scary if we did get something like that. It would make the current recession seem minor. Apparently Oak Ridge did an analysis of just such an event. Sounds scary. Roughly the entire electrical grid goes down as does water, sewage, commerce, industry, communication, winter heating, and summer air conditioning. The paper suggests the time to repair the damage would take years. Beyond the effects on electrical systems which society is dependent upon there would actually be a doubling of the death rate due to the effect of the storm on heart attacks, strokes and the like. And probably hospitals would be severely damaged making care for critical patients difficult if not impossible.

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Comments

8 Responses to “Solar Storms”

Definitely would not be a time to get a pacemaker put in….

It will be interesting to see how the current quietness of the Sun affects global climate. Will storms increase or decrease? Will it possibly lead to some cooling of the planet.

If it did zap all electronics, I guess we’d just all have to go back to communicating the old fashioned way: pony express.

How would society survive without Twitter???

I’m too lazy to look it up but I vaguely recall that the post-Katrina relative quiet of hurricanes may be related to the solar cycle. That said in terms of global warming I think they’ve pretty well nailed down that the sun’s effect is relatively minor.

A intresting thing to think about, is that with such a solar storm, the usual trend with disasters would be reversed. As it stands when there’s a earth quake or hurricane or some such other calamity happens, the higher the technological level of a nation, the less people die and typicaly the faster the damage is repaired.

In this case though, the high technological level would be a deteriment, causing more devesastion then it would if we had a lower level of advancement.

There is a correlation between solar activity and climate (though curiously, not solar luminosity). During periods when the sun has been in a prolonged sunspot minimum, the earth has gone through cooling periods, such as the so called, ‘mini-Ice Age’. The sun has just come off of a particularly active solar cycle (cycle 23) (and we have seen some global warming) and is getting ready to start the next cycle. Oddly, this cycle is taking a long time to start,which corresponds with the claim of cooling the last few years. You can keep tabs on it here:
http://www.solarcycle24.com/

I spoke with a solar physicist friend of mine, and according to the current model, they expect it to start up soon, and with a vengeance.

The prediction is around 2020 and yes, some think it will be a bad cycle.

Correction. My dad just mentioned that New Scientist has a story up on this last month. (Yes, I’m behind in my reading) They are saying the cycle returns to activity starting in 2012 and not 2020. It seems like there is some variation as the prior NS article I linked to said between 95 and 116 years for a cycle and gave the 2020 figure. So I think the 2012 is the lower limit. But it’s all pretty hypothetical. No one really knows.

2012? Wow, will that Mayan calendar not stop bringing in the end of the world?

LOL. That’s what I immediately thought too!

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