Should we be concerned about the possibility of a solar storm? According to a recent study published in the journal PNAS , a gigantic solar storm hit Earth about 2,679 years ago about 10 times stronger than any solar storm recorded today.
These findings suggest that such explosions recur regularly in Earth’s history, and could wreak havoc if they hit us right now, given the world’s dependence on electricity.
Proton solar event
The Sun can bombard Earth with an explosion of highly energetic particles known as a proton solar event. These “proton storms” can endanger both people and electronic devices, either in space or in the air.
Also, when a proton storm hits the Earth’s magnetosphere, the layer of electrically charged particles is trapped by Earth’s magnetic field. When the solar storm causes a disturbance in the magnetosphere of our planet, it is called a geomagnetic storm that can cause devastation in the electrical networks of the entire planet.
For example, in 1989 , a solar flare shut down the entire Canadian province of Quebec in seconds, damaged transformers to New Jersey, and nearly shut down America’s power grids from the mid-Atlantic to the Pacific Northwest.
Scientists have analyzed proton storms for less than a century. Since it’s not a long time, they may not have a good estimate of how often extreme solar flares occur or how powerful they can become.
” Today we have a lot of infrastructure that could be seriously damaged and we travel in air and space where we are much more exposed to high-energy radiation,” said Raimund Muscheler, environmental physicist at Lund University, Sweden. and co-author of the work.
A close threat
The so-called Carrington Event of 1859 may have released about 10 times more energy than that produced after the Quebec blackout in 1989, making it the most powerful geomagnetic storm known, according to a 2013 study by Lloyd’s of London. . But the world has become much more dependent on electricity since the s. XIX and if an equally powerful geomagnetic storm were to hit us now, power outages could last for weeks, months, or even years as utilities scramble to replace key parts of power grids.
Now, researchers have found radioactive atoms trapped in the ice in Greenland that suggest that a huge proton storm hit Earth in 660 BC. Approximately, one that could overshadow the Carrington event.
Previous research found that extreme proton storms can generate radioactive beryllium-10, chlorine-36, and carbon-14 atoms in the atmosphere. Evidence for such events is detectable in tree rings and ice cores, potentially giving scientists a way to investigate ancient solar activity.
The scientists examined the ice from two core samples taken from Greenland. They noticed a spike in radioactive beryllium-10 and chlorine-36 about 2,610 years ago, which is consistent with earlier research.
Previous studies detected two other ancient proton storms in a similar way: one happened around 993-994 BC and the other around 774-775 BC. The latter is the largest solar flare known to date.
As for the number of high-energy protons, 660 BC. and the events of AD 774-775 are about 10 times larger than the strongest proton storm seen today, which occurred in 1956, according to Muscheler.
According to experts, if these ancient solar storms “were connected to a geomagnetic storm, it would assume that they would overcome worst-case scenarios that are often based on Carrington-type events.”
Although more research is needed to see how much damage such eruptions could cause, this work suggests that ” these huge events are a recurring feature of the sun; we now count three major events over the past 3,000 years. There may be more that we haven’t discovered yet. Muscheler concludes.
Referencia: Multiradionuclide evidence for an extreme solar proton event around 2,610 B.P. (∼660 BC) Paschal O’Hare, Florian Mekhaldi, Florian Adolphi, Grant Raisbeck, Ala Aldahan, Emma Anderberg, Jürg Beer, Marcus Christl, Simon Fahrni, Hans-Arno Synal, Junghun Park, Göran Possnert, John Southon, Edouard Bard, ASTER Team, and Raimund Muscheler PNAS published ahead of print March 11, 2019 https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1815725116
