subject: You think the Ash Cloud in 2010 was bad? A Solar Super Storm is expected soon and will have far worse consequenses! [print this page] You think the Ash Cloud in 2010 was bad? A Solar Super Storm is expected soon and will have far worse consequenses!
A Super Storm on the surface of the sun can have catastrophic consequences.
Large areas on Earth may be blacked out. Electronics, GPS and mobile networks may collapse, warns NASA.
A super powerful Sun storm, of a size scientists believe occurs once a century, may be part of the power network in the world to collapse within the next few years, warns NASA. The GPS system, satellites, aerospace, mobile communications - short virtually everything electronic we have become addicted in the modern world - can suffer in periods when the sun expected to go into another activity maximum in 2013.
The sun wakes up now from a deep snooze, and we expect to see a much higher level of activity over the next few years. At the same time, our technological society developed a very high sensitivity to sun storm, says the head of NASA's sun physics divison, Richard Fisher.
Every 11 years, the sun is in the so-called solar maximum, where the number of sunspots and violent explosions, called flares, increases. They release energy equivalent to several billion tons of TNT pr seconds.
Blasts emit intense radiation and massive amounts of high energy particles, which can damage the electronics and get the satellites to lose altitude.
The most powerful sun storm ever recorded took place in 1859, and led to so powerful northern lights that people thought cities were on fire.
At that time, only compasses and telegraphs were disturbed, however, had the super storm occurred today, it could have had far more destructive consequences. Scientists take the threat of a repeat very seriously.
It is not unlikely that it happens again. The consequences can be that much of the power supply breaks down, which is serious. It may take a year before everything is up and running again.
So how can society function with reduced power? For example, hospitals and sewage treatment plants cannot run on diesel for a long time.
Dr. Fisher in NASA believes months without electricity in many parts of the world is unlikely, but that the hours and days is a credible scenario. This applies especially to northern Europe which has a fragile power grid, he told The Daily Telegraph.
Scientists, politicians and law makers met in June 2010 at a conference in Washington DC to discuss and prepare for the threat, given that our society is becoming more and more dependent on fragile high technology.
It is impossible to say whether we will experience a super storm a la 1859 next year or in several hundred years from now. There are on a regular basis sun storms that are powerful enough to cause extensive damage and consequences on the earth.
We will for sure get hit by powerful sun storm in the near future. They have always been there, but we have never been so dependent on electronics, and so vulnerable as now.
As recently as April 2010 a sun damaged zombie satellite went high-wire and threatened to destroy the television signals. A sun storm in 1989 knocked out power in Quebec in Canada, and led to the Northern Lights as far south as Florida.
In 1998, 80 percent of all pagers in the U.S. lost the net when Galaxy IV satellite was hit, and one sun storm in 28 October 2003 affected over 20 satellites, giving a power failure in Sweden, disrupted air traffic communications and led to a warning of an increased radiation hazard to airplane passengers.
Did you think the ash cloud from Iceland this year was bad? The magnetic storm may prove to be much, much more disruptive to air traffic.
While humans on Earth are shielded by the atmosphere and the magnetosphere by the eats' invisible shield against particles - thousands of satellites are living dangerous.
In particular, satellites in low orbit are vulnerable, and therefore often said that they do not survive a solar maximum. Moreover, satellites are made of increasingly smaller components, and therefore only one particle that hits creates more damage than a decade ago.
Sun storm threatens not only the electronics on board, but also leads to the satellites fall up to five kilometers in orbit. Here, they meet more atmosphere particulate matter, resulting in increased friction and additional height fall.
I think we stand at the threshold of a new era where space weather can have as much impact on daily life as usual the weather on Earth. We take this very seriously, says Dr. Fisher at NASA.
The researchers said that preparations for a sun storm is just like the other natural disasters. We know they are coming, but not how hard they will strike. The economy will get a hard blow. A powerful sun storm can cost 20 times more than Hurricane Katrina, according to a report published in 2008. Katrina, the most expensive natural disaster in the U.S, caused damage of around 100 billion dollars.
Some of the injuries can be avoided with good warning of the so-called space weather so vulnerable services can take precautions. Instruments on board satellites can be turned off and the power companies can reduce the load on the network and reduce the chances of failure.
But the problem is that space weather forecast services are notoriously difficult and uncertain. It is based on a probability that a storm breaks out, but in many cases we do not know with certainty before the radiation and proton showers hit us. Then it is too late.
We do not understand many of the processes in the sun that leads to this event.
A number of satellites are sent up to monitor and improve the understanding of the sun. The latest addition, Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO), opened his eyes and sent back the first images in April 2010. SDO will change our understanding of the sun and the processes that affect our lives. The mission will have an enormous impact on research, on par with the Hubble has been for modern astrophysics, said NASA's Richard Fisher.
A recently released NASA report warns that the U.S. has forgotten the power of the sun, creating a technological society susceptible like never before to massive infrastructure damage from solar storms.
The study, carried out for NASA by the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, doesn't predict some new solar or environmental disaster.
Instead, it studies the effects of the sun's normal, cyclical behavior upon modern technology.
Professor Daniel Baker is director of the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics at the University of Colorado and chaired the panel that prepared the report.
"Whether it is terrestrial catastrophes or extreme space weather incidents," writes Baker in a statement released with the report, "the results can be devastating to modern societies that depend in a myriad of ways on advanced technological systems."
According the report, the U.S. has grown so dependent on modern technologies without respect of what the sun can and has done, that it's risking major communications, finance, transportation, government and even emergency services meltdowns.
And if one of the sun's periodic, catastrophic storms hits the earth the way Hurricane Katrina hit the U.S. coastline, the report estimates that damages from the "space weather Katrina" could top $1 or $2 trillion.
Written by
Stig-Arne Kristoffersen has a background as civil engineer and geoscientist. He has worked mainly within the oil and gas industry from the mid 1980s. He has written a few fictional novels as well as being the author of some professional litterature within oil and gas sector, he act as a writer to various web sites.
