The sun is a nuclear reactor
It was vacation this month for me and during my time off I had a chance to catch up on my reading. And of course it was all about science, with my favourites, American Scientist and Scientific American, under the wettest July skies Ontario has recorded.
One of articles that caught my interest was that about the super sunstorms that rise up every 500 years or so. The sun is what keeps us warm and toasty and so what happens to this orb should of great interest to all of us, not just the science types. It seems that back in the mid 1800s we had a doozy of a storm on the sun that wreaked havoc on the Earth. How do we know? It was recorded in the local papers and in the climate record. Compasses went haywire, telegraphs were off line and the ozone layer was zapped. And the northern lights were seen all around the world. In the north, the lights were so bright people thought the sun had risen.
So why do I mention this other than my personal predisposition for all things science? Well, it’s my preoccupation with under estimated catastrophic occurrences, that makes me wonder whether here again is something that will catch us with our collective knickers down.
Here is what we can expect when the next solar superstorm erupts. The cascade of photons and protons will light up the sky through the northern lights like something out of Hollywood. Not just in the north, but all around the world. Then the fun starts. First the satellites will be zapped and I mean zapped. Many will be outright obliterated and in the remainder life expectancies dramatically shortened.The The powergrid will suffer huge black outs and brown outs. It is estimated that the surges will fry many of the circuits that could be out for weeks. Then there are the computers and the internet. The ones that are switched off will be protected, but those that are on could have their insides scrambled or discombobulated to the point of non function.
The off shoot of all this is that it could affect billions and in North America and Europe, where computers and power systems are not only conveniences, but necessary for life and limb, deaths in the thousands are not only possible but likely.
During the past 50 years or we have had a few solar storms that have played havoc with our power and communications systems, but nothing we have experienced begins to detail the magnitude of what will happen. A super storm will deliver a wallop 100 times greater and do as much damage from solar flares in 10 minutes as we have experienced in the past 50 years. Trillions of dollars wasted.
The good news is that we are in a downturn of the 11-year solar cycle and we have time to think about how to protect our nascent and frail global communications and power systems from the solar onslaught. But when it happens, and it will, it will be with a fury that reminds us that the sun is after all just another nuclear reactor … a huge and necessary one, but a reactor nonetheless.