Tonight’s solar storm could wreak havoc on public transportation, cause disruptions for commercial airlines and destroy satellites.
Officials fear the event will be similar to a geostorm that struck in 1859, causing sparks and fires in telegraph stations that took weeks to repair.
In today’s more technically advanced society, researchers from Lancaster University in Britain warned that a repeat could cause signaling failures by switching railway lights from red to green, leading to a possible collision.
The storm could also make the connection between GPS and satellites ineffective and block radio transmissions needed by aircraft and ship navigation systems that were affected during the blackout of 1859 when ships lost access to their navigation systems, leaving some lost at sea.
GPS systems become disrupted because when radiation from the solar flare hits the magnetic sphere surrounding the Earth, it causes fluctuations in the ionosphere.
The ionosphere is a layer in the upper atmosphere that absorbs and reflects signals during a geomagnetic storm, creating static electricity and distortions in the signals received by GPS systems.
Outages can also cause traffic lights to stop working and railway signals to change from red to green, which in the worst case can lead to collisions
Without electricity, supermarkets and pharmacies would be forced to close because the payment systems would no longer work
Rob Steenburgh, space scientist for NOAA’s Space Weather Prediction Center (SWPC), said Friday, “Depending on how (the CME) interacts with Earth’s magnetic field, that magnetic field can fluctuate.”
The fluctuations can affect conductors, such as pipelines, railroads and power lines, by adding more electrical current that such systems can handle – and ultimately ceasing their operation.
Geomagnetic storms form when high-energy particles released from solar flares emitted by the Sun reach Earth.
The sun is constantly erupting and throwing particles into space, but since it is 93 million miles from Earth, it rarely reaches us, and when it does, it produces only a small G1 or G2 storm.
When the solar flares reach Earth’s atmosphere, they emit radiation that hits the magnetic field, causing problems with the power grid and high-frequency radio communications.
A solar flare of this magnitude would destroy the electrical grid and impact food supply chains, which would fall apart without working computers to tell where produce should be, while air conditioning, heating systems, gas boilers and gas stations would no longer work.
Traffic lights and train systems could all fail, bringing public transport to a screeching halt, while satellites could be destroyed.
The storm is currently rated as level G4 on a scale of one to five, but experts warn it could reach a G5 ranking.
If the geomagnetic storm reaches a level five, satellites could collide with other objects in space or the atmosphere and suffer physical damage from supercharged ‘killer electrons’ hitting key parts of the hardware, rendering it useless.
The last major geomagnetic storm occurred in 2022, destroying up to forty Starlink satellites worth more than $50 million, sending them back to Earth, but luckily they burned up in the atmosphere.
People reported Friday that their Starlink internet went down after the first explosion from space that hit Earth around 1:45 PM ET.
It remains unlikely that wireless connectivity will be directly affected by the storm, as these networks rely on radio frequencies other than GPS systems.
Even if GPS functions are affected, people will likely still be able to maintain a map showing their rough location.
The power grid is better prepared than for similar geomagnetic storms of the past because they now have backup power generators and cell towers that can be activated if the cell towers lose power.
Flight patterns can also be affected during these storms, as commercial airlines are warned to stay away from the Earth’s poles as they risk losing communications and navigation systems.
These worst-case scenario possibilities are based on the geomagnetic storm of 1859, which caused a major power outage that lasted several hours and caused sparks and fires in telegraph stations that took weeks to repair.
In 1859, a massive solar flare with the energy of 10 billion atomic bombs sent electrified gas and subatomic particles towards Earth, causing many to panic that the world was coming to an end.
Compasses on ships at sea stopped working, causing some ships to be lost and the current to spread through telegraph wires that threatened to melt as ‘fire streams’ flowed from the circuits.
Fires broke out at several telegraph stations, leading to a loss of communications worldwide.
The eruption was twice as large as any other storm that has occurred in the past 500 years, but a study published in February suggested another storm may be coming.
Global communications systems would be immediately affected by home medical equipment that requires electricity to function
Supply chains would fall apart without working computers to tell them where products should be, while air conditioning, heating systems, gas boilers and gas stations would stop working
Researchers from the British Geological Survey in Great Britain looked at magnetic field recordings of the Carrington event and determined that, although they did not know the exact levels, a similar event is likely to occur once every 100 to 1000 years.
During the blackout of 1859, people depended on manpower and animals for their daily tasks and needs, but because today’s infrastructure relies primarily on electricity for its work, a similar event would have disastrous consequences.
Global communications systems would be immediately affected, while home medical equipment, which requires electricity to function, would be unable to function. That means that without access to cell phones, there would be no way to call 911 in the event of an emergency.
Without electricity, supermarkets and pharmacies would be forced to close as payment systems would no longer work, posing a serious problem for people who have little food or do not have enough life-saving prescriptions.
Drug production could be directly affected as pharmaceutical companies use electricity to speed up development, and even drugs that were ready before the outage need to be kept at specific temperatures, which, you guessed it, requires electricity to produce them to maintain.
Scientists warn that the anxiety people would experience from intense blackouts could increase stress levels, triggering a heart or asthma attack, and without access to health care, deaths could skyrocket.
By comparison, New York’s August 2003 power outage, which lasted about a day, resulted in the deaths of nearly 100 people, a 28 percent increase over the state average.
The fatalities were linked to accidents caused by lack of power from traffic lights and carbon monoxide poisoning from generators, while the state saw a rise in chronic health problems such as cardiovascular and respiratory problems.
Thomas Popik, the president of the Foundation for Resilient Societies, spoke before the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission in 2016 about the possible implications of a Carrington-style solar flare.
“If a densely populated area like Washington, DC were to lose all electricity, and no outside help was available, and people could not evacuate by car because gas station pumps would stop working due to a lack of power, and the municipal water and sanitation facilities would stop working, what percentage of the population would still be alive after a month?’ he asked according NBC News.
In 1989, an explosive solar flare left six million people in Canada without electricity for nine hours, disrupted electricity transmission from the Hydro Quebec power plant and melted several power transformers in New Jersey.
Speaking about the negative impacts caused by a major solar flare at a time when businesses are heavily dependent on electricity to function: Francis O’Sullivan, MIT’s Energy Initiative, shared this CNET in 2018: ‘It’s not just the lights that are going out now.
‘These are bank accounts that are disappearing… If you think about what would happen if the stock exchange were taken offline for a week or a month, or if communication were to fail for a week or a month, you quickly reach a point where this could be one. of the most important threats facing the nation, bar none.”
A large superflare could result in a blackout that could last from just a few days to several years. Reports estimate that a catastrophic solar storm could cost more than $2 trillion in its first year and take more than a decade to recover. possible cost of $20 trillion.