Mac Slavo: Space watchers have warned that the sun may
soon be waking up – as early as today – and
it has the potential to direct high powered X-Class solar flares directly at
earth.
So far today, solar activity is low. However, that could be the calm before the storm.
The magnetic field of big sunspot AR1654 has grown more complex. It is
now classified as a ‘beta-gamma-delta’ magnetic field, which means it harbors energy for X-class
eruptions.
If there is a flare today, the blast would be
Earth-directed.
This sunrise shot, taken at dawn on Jan. 16th by Jan Koeman on the bank of the Westerschelde River in
the Netherlands, shows how AR1654 (circled) is almost directly facing our
planet.
AR1654 Photo via Space Weather:
Though some ‘C’ and ‘M’ class flares have hit earth recently,
none were strong enough to cause any serious, long-lasting damage, save some
minor effects on satellites and radio stations.
X-Class flares, however, have
the potential to wreak havoc across the globe. Similar to the earthquake
Richter scale, going up from one class to the next means that the flare is at
least 10 times as powerful as the level below it, so an ‘X-1 Class’ flare would
be 10 times as powerful as the strongest ‘M’ class flare.
The effects of such a flare
hitting earth could be disastrous, wiping out essential infrastructure
components like power grids and utilities, satellite communications, cell
phones, transportation systems, and the internet. It’s been theorized that
a strong enough solar flare similar to the one that struck earth in 1859, known
as the Carrington Event, could potentially wipe out modern day electronic
systems and send human civilization back to the 19th century.
In 1989, it took only seconds
for Hydro-Quebec, the company that supplies power to the Canadian region, to
fail when an intense geo-magnetic storm struck earth and caused a cascading
breakdown in the electric grid. It is believed that the solar flare
which caused the outage was rated at a class of X-15, and luckily only struck a
small portion of the northern hemisphere.
In July of 2012 an X-1 flare narrowly missed earth.
Scientists have rated solar
flares into different “divisions,” identified by a number following the letter
class. In general, solar flare classes are rated from 1-9, but scientists have,
as recently as 2003, measured flares that were literally
off the charts:
Then come the X-class flares.
Although X is the last letter, there are flares more than 10 times the power of
an X1, so X-class flares can go higher than 9.
The most powerful flare measured
with modern methods was in 2003, during the last solar maximum, and it was so
powerful that it overloaded the sensors measuring it. The sensors cut out at
X28.
The biggest X-class flares are, by
far, the largest explosions in the solar system and
are awesome to watch. Loops tens of times the size of Earth leap up off the
Sun’s surface when the Sun’s magnetic fields cross over each other and
reconnect. In the biggest events, this reconnection processcan produce as much
energy as a billion hydrogen bombs.
Should one of these off the chart flares be directed at
earth, we could be looking at an Armageddon-like event in its aftermath.
According to Frank
Gaffney, president of the Center for Security Policy, if electronic systems in
the United States were wiped out, the consequences would be lead to a complete
breakdown in society. Though Gaffney bases his assessment on the threat of an electro-magnetic pulse
weapon, a powerful enough solar flare could cause similar
destruction:
“Within a year of that attack, nine
out of 10 Americans would be dead, because we can’t support a population of the
present size in urban centers and the like without electricity.”
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