Solar Storm

Solar Storm

Subject – Science and Tech

Context – The paper presented at the ACM SIGCOMM 2021 Conference last month noted that a powerful solar storm can cause a disruption of the internet, damage submarine cables and communication satellites.

Concept –

• A solar storm or a Coronal Mass Ejection as astronomers call it, is an ejection of highly magnetised particles from the sun.
• These particles can travel several million km per hour and can take about 13 hours to five days to reach Earth.
• Earth’s atmosphere protects us humans from these particles. But the particles can interact with our Earth’s magnetic field, induce strong electric currents on the surface and affect man-made structures.
• The first recorded solar storm occurred in 1859 and it reached Earth in about 17 hours. It affected the telegraph network and many operators experienced electric shocks. A solar storm that occurred in 1921 impacted New York telegraph and railroad systems and another small-scale storm collapsed the power grid in Quebec, Canada in 1989.
• A 2013 report noted that if a solar storm similar to the 1859 one hit the US today, about 20-40 million people could be without power for 1-2 years, and the total economic cost will be $0.6-2.6 trillion.
• The Sun goes through an 11-year cycle – cycles of high and low activity. It also has a longer 100-year cycle. During the last three decades, when the internet infrastructure was booming, it was a low period. And very soon, either in this cycle or the next cycle, we are going towards the peaks of the 100-year cycle. So it is highly likely that we might see one powerful solar storm during our lifetime.
• Independent solar observations show that solar superstorms capable of such large-scale damage may occur only a few times in a century.