Solar Storm: A Brief Summary
Recently, information about the solar storm has increased, especially after news about the Internet Apocalypse emerged. According to the article “Solar Superstorms: Planning for an Internet Apocalypse,” a solar superstorm has a great chance of causing internet outages on the Earth for several months. If it happens, the planet stops, and the chaos sets. Nowadays, most of the people rely on the internet for almost everything. So, news that comes with this subject without a plausible explanation, as the article, causes a little despair. In addition, few will stop to read the full article. That’s why, before the affliction sets in, let’s understand the sun and its cycle and stay calm.
The Sun is an enormous ball of gases that continually forms a powerful magnetic field during a cycle called the solar cycle, which happens roughly every eleven years. Its fields are like several rubber strips joining the north and south poles. As the sun spins, these strips stay more tensioned and can break. This disorder in the magnetic field builds pores, and if they grow and join with other pores, they can form big pores or famous sunspots. When we have an active region, it is identified as a group of sunspots. These are cold and dark because their intense magnetic field makes difficult transference of energy to the surface. Besides, they can be planet-size, which can be scary and necessary for monitoring.
The sunspots often change position during the cycle, expected behavior. Depending on the number of sunspots existing on the surface, it’s possible to know whether the solar cycle is in the beginning or ending. There is no rule for sunspot quantity, there will have cycles with many sunspots and others with few sunspots.
During the solar cycle, the emission of solar flares and coronal mass ejections (CME) rises, sending giant bursts of energy and material to space from sunspots. This phenomenon is known as space weather. Depending on the solar flare intensity, it can be classified as A, B, C, M, and X-class, being A-class weaker and X-class stronger. There is a new classification on the table, Y, but it isn’t used and in its place is used the X with a number greater than 10. Thus, if a solar storm comes toward Earth with flares of kind X-class, satellites, radio communications, Global Positioning Systems (GPS), and power grids may suffer interruptions and become inoperable for some time. In addition, we can’t forget the astronauts in space, as they can also suffer from high radiation exposure.
Nevertheless, the storm’s solar can cause beautiful shows in the sky. The material emitted from sunspots are gases that contain particles charged with electricity. When they are in contact with particles in Earth’s atmosphere are energized, generating the glow that we know as the auroras borealis. Based on contact among these particles, it’s possible to see different colors of glimmer in the sky. For example, oxygen shines green and yellow. Nitrogen shines blue or red, and sometimes pink, although neon changes them to orange. If you want to see this spectacle, you can spend your Holidays in some country at Northen.
Throughout the centuries, we have had big solar storms, among them are:
- The Carrington Event in 1859 gravely affected global telegraph communications.
- The New York Railroad Storm, in 1921, interrupted telegraph and radio communications.
- The Solar Flare of 1972 blocked long-distance phone communication from AT&T.
- The Blackout in Quebec of 1989 left millions of people without electricity for nine hours.
- The Bastille Day event in 2000 was caused by a giant X5 solar flare, occasioning a short-circuit in some satellites and radio blackouts.
- The Haunting Halloween Storms in 2003 affected satellite and navigation systems and caused power outages in Sweden.
- The Solar flare of 2006 registered as X9. Based on 24, “disrupted satellite-to-ground communications and Global Positioning System (GPS) navigation signals for about 10 minutes”.
- In 2022, storm Solar destroyed around 40 Starlink satellites worth over $50 million.
At present, scientists have been working to improve the forecast of these solar states. NASA scientists have been using satellites to monitor the sun and identify solar flares and artificial intelligence(AI) to analyze the data and predict solar storms. According to “NASA-enabled AI Predictions May Give Time to Prepare for Solar Storms”, an international team of researchers developed a computer model called DAGGER(Deep Learning Geomagnetic Perturbation) to predict space weather 30 minutes before it occurs. This model was tested before, in 2011 and 2015, and it had a good answer in the forecast of the storm’s impacts. So, this duo composed of satellites and AI can help us to minimize the consequences of a solar storm on Earth.
If you want to follow changes in space weather, there are some websites and apps that show and indicate where you can see the Northern Lights and the intensity of solar flares. Here are some options that I use:
- Space Weather Prediction Center: this site shows everything about the space weather. In addition, they make available images and graphics with old and new values, allowing them to compare more efficiently. As a suggestion, in option DASHBOARDS you can see recent news about storm solar and its effects around the Earth.
-Space: it’s an excellent site to know all that is happening in the space.
-Aurora Now: is an app that shows the location of the Northern Lights, x-ray flux, graphics about the aurora forecast, and warns about the aurora if you pay for the service.
So, I hope this summary helps you understand a little about the solar cycle and why these solar flares must happen. I advise you to search more about this subject and pay attention to the news from trusted sources.
God bless you.
References
4-Sunspots: What are they, and why do they occur?
6- What does the sun’s X-ray flux tell us?
7- Aurora.
8- Why are there different Northern Lights colours?
9-The worst solar storms in history.
10- NASA-enabled AI Predictions May Give Time to Prepare for Solar Storms.
