The 'Perfect Space Storm' Of 1859

Polyploid Pimp writes "Bruce Tsurutani of JPL recently published a paper on the 'perfect space storm' of 1859. Apparently, this solar superstorm was so massive that it knocked out telegraphs across the Northern Hemisphere, and the aurora borealis could be seen as far south as Hawaii, Havana, and Rome. Among other interesting notes, the amount of sunlight produced in the region of this solar flare actually doubled! Although the article does not discuss in detail the effects of a solar storm of this size on our current technologies, we can all imagine (maybe something like Escape from L.A.?)"

Comments

Re:Should be interesting

[LiquidCoooled]

They are already planning for it, as it happens, there is a storm occuring at the moment (Classed as a Level 3 out of a scale upto 5).
The interested parties (ie utility/communications companies) all know about this and are monitoring the situation. They also estimate Aurora to reach very far south in the next couple of weeks. The article is here.

I've read a book about this!

[arvindn]

National academies press (nap.edu) has thousands of free (public domain) books online, in pdf format. Many of them are reports of some government committees etc., but if you are prepared to dig around for a while you can find some real gems. I've read about a dozen of the books on the site, and they're really good. Check out Storms from the sun. Its an excellent book, both highly informative and very readable. Chapter 3 in particular ("A sudden conflagration") is about the 1859 storm in question. Enjoy.

Re:Should be interesting

[twiddlingbits]

I suspect there will be a few problems with some older birds and some of the newer ones too that are not well shielded. Less shield = less weight = lower cost to launch, but also shorter lifetime due to increased radiation exposure for the electronics. Some birds are just turned off until the solar event is below critical levels. SEUs (Single Event Upsets, or bit flips) due to EM levels are handled by special circuitry to minimize the loss of data. The excess energy charge on the spacecraft due to the radiation is dumped in many different ways. Purely mechanical systems are not affected by this storm. Most folks don't know but many LEO sattelites go thru a place called the South Atlantic Anomoly where the Earths own Radiation Fields are very intense and systems have to be turned off for several minutes each orbit. But it can be worse, when the earth gets hit with huge amounts of ultraviolet radiation from geomagnetic storms, the upper atmosphere heats up. This heated air rises, and the density of lower satellite orbits (about 1,000 kilometers) increases significantly. This causes drag to increase on satellites; they slow down and gravity pulls them in towards earth. Unless these satellites are boosted into higher orbits, they'll fall and eventually burn up in earth's atmosphere. Remember Skylab? It was a victim of premature entry just because of higher than expected solar activity. This effect can last for several weeks as the earths electrical field is still expanded from the flare. Systems on the ground are also well shielded, since the incident in Quebec in the 1980s where an intense solar storm knocked out the electrical grid! This is NOT to say NOTHING will happen it's just to say it won't be back to the stone ages. Now if we all lived on Mars we'd be hiding in some DEEP hole. Solar flares and how to handle them will be something that needs intense study prior to a Mars mission.

Telegraph and flux

[goombah99]

When I first read of the telegraphs carching fire I thought BullShit. Afterall the telegraphs were all magneticly driven, low impedance devices--there were no small gaps to arc across or high-impedance low-voltage elements to explode. Moreover the usual situation is that a large loop is relatively hard to induce a lot of current in (transformers try to concentrate flux not spread it out, hence they are made as small as the materials allow).

but then I started thinking about it more carefully. If one had a magnetic event from the sun then what hit the earth would be an earth-wide, coherent magnetic pulse. In this case the larger the loop of wire the greater the current induced. And telegraphs had miles and miles of wires with macroscopically separated loops. thus the induced current must have been enormormous, hence the fires at the low impedance inductors at the ends.

On the other hand, the magnetic flux per area might not have been very large. hence modern electronics which are small, and generally have ground or back planes closs to the wires wont receive much induced current.

in other words the telegraphs were the optimal energy absorbers but modern devices should receive much lower energy coupling.

Re:Telegraph and flux

[Donwulff]

Terrestrial electronics are at practically no risk from solar flares; that's thanks to our atmosphere and magnetosphere. However, yes planetary fluctuations of the planetary magentic field (geomagnetic storms) caused by the proton flux from such an event can and are known to induce huge currents into any large-scale conducts. There's a nice pic near the end of http://www.spacew.com/gic/index.html about what one 1989 geomagnetic storm did to some transformers.

An interesting overview of the threat to power networks in particular is preseted at http://www.agu.org/sci_soc/eiskappenman.html with the lead-on that "Only a few amps are needed to disrupt transformer operation, but over 100 amps have been measured in the grounding connections of transformers in affected areas."

Ofcourse, the problem isn't limited to telegraph and powegrids; all large spans of conducts are affected, such as pipelines, land phoneline systems and even railways. http://sumppu.fmi.fi/MAGN/GIC/ provides realtime data on Geomagnetically Induced Currents (GIC) at some power grids and pipeline operators in the Nordic countries as well as more information on this aspect.

Re:Solar Activity and Humans

[ShadowBlasko]

Not only does solar activity follow an 11 year cycle, it also *appears* to follow an annual cycle, with solar activity (CME's, sunspots) appearing to peak in late October, early November.

Why is this so odd?

Because a year on the Sun obviously is not the same as a year on the Earth, and scientist (as of yet) have not been able to pin down why solar activity seems to peak this time of year. At the moment (at least, last time I read up on it, which was during the big Auroral display in November of 2001) scientist were at a loss to explain a 12 month cycle in solar activity.

For more information, and very up to date info on the current situation with the storms, current solar wind patterns, and a gallery of GREAT pictures, try spaceweather or also
Spaceweather Now (NOAA)

Okay, typing that out made me feel stupid, so I went and re-read the article on seasonal variations, and found out I was somewhat wrong, there is a terrestrial reason dealing with OUR magnetic field that makes solar activity seem to affect us more. If you would like to read the article, it can be found Here

Anyways, keep looking up this week, (unless you live in Cincinnati like I do, and it will be cloudy most of the beginning of the week) and you might be suprised at what you see.