!Solar Burps!
It was the last week of August 2017, the start of Fall semester; I was rushing in my bike towards Hutcheson Hall, Virginia Tech, to attend my graduate-level probability class.
I received an email alert on my phone from NOAA stating there was a strong chance in Solar Storm that might impact Earth by next week. Being a noob in the field at that time (although I do not consider myself a connoisseur yet…) it felt incredibly impossible to observe a scenario like that during the last solar cycle (defined by the solar magnetic phases). Eventually, they were right about the prediction, and there was the biggest solar storm of that solar cycle that hits the Earth. NASA calls these solar storms Solar Burps.
The Sun, in the visible spectrum, light that the human eye is sensitive to, looks remarkably consistent. It nonchalantly powers our solar system with its light and heat without any expectation from us or any other planet of the solar system, for that matter. So, how come a Sun-like quiescent star can create a storm and we can never see that coming? One can unveil the truth if he/she observes the Sun in the X-ray spectrum. To be specific, the Sun in the X-ray spectrum is the most hostile place for life in our solar system that Burps every now and then and creates a problem for us.
Don’t worry the Sun has no digestive system, it does not eat humans, and has no digestive issues!
I wanted to debunk a few less-known facts:
- Should we worry about the solar storms that are heading towards us?
- Should we hunker down inside and disconnect our Kitchen appliances, TV, phone, and internet?
- OR, is this just hype about a non-event made by the media?
Just like most of the other things in life, the reality is somewhere between ‘yes’ and ‘no’. The subjective nature comes from the shape and structure of these storms. Solar storms can create very real damage to electrical equipment. A solar storm on March 1989, one of the strongest solar storm in recent recorded history, caused several nights of darkness over Quebec and Canada. That’s not it, approximately, five years later two of the Anik communication satellites were taken out of commission, one for hours, another for months, due to a solar storm. Moreover, these storms can destroy satellites by deorbiting them from their trajectories. For example, a 2022 solar storm resulted in the Starlink transmitters drifting back into Earth’s atmosphere, where they will burn up, potentially costing the company about $100 million. The extraordinary solar storm that occurred in 1859 is the strongest solar storm of recorded human history, also known as the ‘Carrington Event’.
But how do solar storms create havoc in electrical equipment and satellites and spare us? What are these solar storms actually anyway?
Let’s start targeting the second question first. As mentioned earlier the Sun is anything but calm, but that is in X-ray and EUV spectrum. Infect the Sun’s atmosphere is highly active. When the Sun “Burps!”, it spews stellar material and magnetic fields from the surface of the Sun towards the solar system sometimes towards the Earth. These burps are often associated with other solar events, such as X-rays, charged particles, and magnetized plasma across the solar system.
The Sun, being the powerhouse of the solar system, releases enormous amounts of power every second, roughly ‘25 trillion’ (i.e. 25,000,000,000,000!) times that required by the inhabitants of the Earth. Let us digest the fact. What I mean is, the Sun produces 25 x 10¹² times of all mankind’s needs each second! For analogy, a typical household needs ‘1000 watts’ (kilowatts) per second, while its supplier power plant generates power in ‘Million’ (mega, 10⁶) Watts. So, as per this analogy there are ‘1,000,000’ power plants with each having a capacity of ‘25 megawatts’ supplying power to only ‘one house’.
This huge amount of power in the Sun is generated by ‘nuclear fusion’ reaction and ‘solar magnetic fields’, creating it a ‘plasma blob’ in space. These complex thermonuclear processes make the Sun’s surface bubble like a cauldron. We can see structures on scales from thousands of kilometers down to just a few (see this incredible image for an example) and probably smaller. However, some of the structures may be in the order of Earth or sometimes 100s of Earth (check the previous image on top). Additionally, we can see ‘extremely bright and dark spots’ on top of the Sun’s surface.
These extremely bright and dark spots are referred to as ‘solar active regions’ and ‘Sunspots’. All these structures stem from intense magnetic field activity and plasma processes. They act like energy storage units and possess enormous amounts of energy within them. Magnetic and plasma activities deposit energy into these regions semi-periodically. Suppose regions are unable to store the energy. In that case, they release it to outer space by producing huge flares/eruptions, which send billions of tons of hot ‘plasma’ (the energetic charged particles) into space traveling at two million kilometers per hour, commonly known as ‘Coronal Mass Ejection (CME)’ or ‘Solar Burps’.
Now, let’s deal with the first question: Why the solar storms spare us, humans, or any other living organisms, and impact the electrical equipment. The answer to this question is two-fold. First, unlike tropical storms (which stem from atmospheric temperature or pressure difference), solar storms are ‘magnetic storms’. What do I mean by that? In short, these storms stem from electric and magnetic potential differences. I will discuss that in detail in a separate post.
Why ‘magnetic storm’ is a problem for electrical equipment?
Well, over 200 years ago ‘Michael Faraday’ demonstrated that if you hold a bar magnet and move it rapidly near a wire, it will produce an electric current through the wire. It is the same principle that is used by turbine-dynamo in power plants to create electrical power. It’s a straightforward but remarkably profound idea, scientists called it electromagnetic induction. These solar magnetic storms can change magnetic fields around the Earth that are hundreds of thousands of kilometers long, leading to a strong induction on the surface of the Earth. Now the wires around us, some of them are tens and hundreds of kilometers across (e.g., high voltage transmission lines carrying power from power grids to local distribution stations or our houses), start getting some serious induced electrical currents. One example was, the March 1989 storm, that caused enough electrical surge to shut down the Quebec power grid. Hence, the electrical equipments and power grids are prone to large-scale magnetic storms, unlike humans.
While we are not susceptible to magnetic induction, ‘high-energy plasma’ can cause severe damage to any living organism. But the good news is magnetic fields and the atmosphere around the Earth protect us from the worst of these high-energy particles and solar radiation.
Are we often right in the firing line?
The short answer to this question is ‘yes’. While billions of tons of plasma (and X-rays) are traveling at ‘relativistic speed’ (a speed that reaches the speed of light) like it would wipe out everything in its path, by the time it reaches the Earth it’s spread out over a vast area. This space near the Earth, where there is no atmosphere, or we are protected by Earth’s magnetic field is called near-Earth space or ‘Geo-space’. The density of plasma is so low here that if you could imagine standing up in the wind of particles traveling at millions of kilometers an hour, you wouldn’t feel a thing, but your body cells will. While one short dose of these high-energy plasma particles might not kill you, but a prolonged and constant bombardment of DNA leads to cancer. That’s one of the reasons why sending astronauts to Mars is so tough. But don’t worry if you are not traveling to Mars soon, and I guess Elon is building some protective shielding for us in his space shuttle to Mars (a topic for a separate story!).
Imagination aside, these have a severe impact on our modern civilization. Losing satellites and power grids can cost billions of dollars. Most of them can cause irreplaceable damage, not to mention public safety issues. So, it should come as no surprise that predicting these events and building safety measures for both satellites and power distribution systems is one of the primary goals of national security. Early warning systems are well in place now — we get anywhere between two-to-five days’ notice. Check NOAA websites if you want to get more details on this.
Can we observe a remanence of a ‘magnetic storm’?
Every storm comes with a ‘Rainbow’. Just like any tropical storm, a magnetic storm creates its own Rainbow (kind of); we refer to it as ‘Aurora’. It is an out-of-the-world scene one can experience. Earth’s magnetic fields divert the energetic plasma particles, trap a part of those energetic particles and stream them around the Earth’s magnetic pole causing Aurora. More about Aurora and their formation mechanism in a later post…
In summary, we have not seen a truly large solar storm and associated magnetic storm in over 100 years. Neither of these two events in March 1989 or September 2017 compares to the great solar storm of 1859 (‘Carrington Event’), which is known to be the largest known ‘solar storm’. With the insurgence of modern numerical techniques and AI tools, we think we have the capability of predicting the scale of a large solar storm. The reality might be much grave than what we expect, the reason of our reliance of electrical equipment and satellites increasing day-by-day, and we are unaware of the fact how much a large solar storm may cost us!
While Sun may give us life, one extra big ‘Burp’ could produce some grave problems. I would like to ‘think’ myself as a non-believer but may be this is the reason ancient civilizations treated the Sun as a God!
