by On September 1 and 2, 1859, telegraph systems around the world failed catastrophically. Telegraph operators reported receiving electric shocks, catching telegraph paper, and being able to operate equipment with batteries disconnected. At night, the northern lights, better known as the northern lights, could be seen as far south as Colombia. Normally, these lights are only visible at higher latitudes, in northern Canada, Scandinavia and Siberia.
What the world experienced that day, now known as the Carrington Event, was a massive geomagnetic storm. These storms occur when a large bubble of superheated gas called plasma is ejected from the surface of the sun and hits Earth. This bubble is known as a coronal mass ejection.
The plasma of a coronal mass ejection is made up of a cloud of protons and electrons, which are electrically charged particles. When these particles reach Earth, they interact with the magnetic field that surrounds the planet. This interaction causes the magnetic field to distort and weaken, which in turn leads to the strange behavior of the northern lights and other natural phenomena. As an electrical engineer specializing in power grids, I study how geomagnetic storms also threaten to cause power and internet outages and how to protect myself against that.
Geomagnetic storms
The Carrington event of 1859 is the largest recorded account of a geomagnetic storm, but it is not an isolated event.
Geomagnetic storms have been recorded since the early 19th century, and scientific data from Antarctic ice core samples has shown evidence of an even more massive geomagnetic storm that occurred around 774 AD, now known as the Miyake Event. That solar flare produced the largest and fastest increase in carbon-14 ever recorded. Geomagnetic storms unleash large amounts of cosmic rays into Earth’s upper atmosphere, which in turn produce carbon-14, a radioactive isotope of carbon.
A geomagnetic storm 60% smaller than the Miyake event occurred around 993 AD. Ice core samples have shown evidence that large-scale geomagnetic storms with intensities similar to those of the Miyake and Carrington events occur at an average rate of once every 500 years.
Today the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration uses the Geomagnetic Storms scale to measure the strength of these solar flares. The “G scale” is rated from 1 to 5, with G1 being minor and G5 being extreme. The Carrington Event would have been classified as G5.
It becomes even scarier when you compare the Carrington Event to the Miyake Event. Scientists were able to estimate the strength of the Carrington Event based on fluctuations in the Earth’s magnetic field recorded by observatories at the time. There was no way to measure the magnetic fluctuation of the Miyake event. Instead, the scientists measured the increase in carbon-14 in tree rings from that period. The Miyake Event produced a 12% increase in carbon-14. In comparison, the Carrington Event produced less than 1% increase in Carbon-14, so the Miyake Event likely eclipsed the Carrington G5 Event.
Eliminating power
Today, a geomagnetic storm of the same intensity as the Carrington event would affect much more than the telegraph cables and could be catastrophic. With increasing reliance on electricity and emerging technology, any disruption could result in trillions of dollars in monetary losses and risks to lives that depend on the systems. The storm would affect most of the electrical systems that people use every day.
Geomagnetic storms generate induced currents that flow through the power grid. Geomagnetically induced currents, which can exceed 100 amps, flow into grid-connected electrical components such as transformers, relays and sensors. One hundred amps is equivalent to the electrical service provided to many homes. Currents of this size can cause internal damage to components, causing large-scale power outages.
In March 1989, a geomagnetic storm three times smaller than the Carrington event occurred in Quebec, Canada. The storm caused Hydro-Québec’s power grid to collapse. During the storm, high magnetically induced currents damaged a transformer in New Jersey and tripped grid circuit breakers. In this case, the blackout caused five million people to be left without electricity for nine hours.
breaking connections
In addition to electrical failures, communications would be disrupted on a global scale. Internet service providers could go down, which in turn would eliminate the ability of different systems to communicate with each other. High-frequency communication systems, such as ground-to-air, shortwave, and ship-to-shore radio, would be affected. Satellites in orbit around Earth could be damaged by currents induced by the geomagnetic storm that burn out their circuit boards. This would cause disruptions to telephone, Internet, radio and satellite television.
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Additionally, when geomagnetic storms hit Earth, increased solar activity causes the atmosphere to expand outward. This expansion changes the density of the atmosphere where the satellites orbit. A higher density atmosphere creates drag on a satellite, which slows it down. And if it is not maneuvered to a higher orbit, it can fall back to Earth.
Another area of disruption that could potentially impact everyday life is navigation systems. Virtually all forms of transportation, from cars to airplanes, use GPS for navigation and tracking. Even wearable devices like cell phones, smart watches, and tracking tags rely on GPS signals sent from satellites. Military systems rely heavily on GPS for coordination. Other military detection systems, such as over-the-horizon radars and submarine detection systems, could be affected, hampering national defense.
In terms of the Internet, a geomagnetic storm on the scale of the Carrington Event could produce geomagnetically induced currents in the undersea and terrestrial cables that form the backbone of the Internet, as well as in the data centers that store and process everything from emails and text messages. to scientific data sets and artificial intelligence tools. This could potentially disrupt the entire network and prevent servers from connecting to each other.
It’s just a matter of time
It is only a matter of time before Earth is hit by another geomagnetic storm. A storm the size of the Carrington event would be extremely damaging to electrical and communication systems around the world, with outages lasting for weeks. If the storm is the size of the Miyake event, the results would be catastrophic for the world with possible outages lasting months, if not longer. Even with space weather warnings from NOAA’s Space Weather Prediction Center, the world would have only a few minutes to a few hours’ warning.
I think it is essential to continue researching ways to protect electrical systems against the effects of geomagnetic storms, for example by installing devices that can protect vulnerable equipment such as transformers and developing strategies to adjust grid loads when solar storms are about to occur. spank. In short, it is important to work now to minimize disruption to the upcoming Carrington event.
This article is republished from The Conversation, an independent, nonprofit news organization bringing you trusted data and analysis to help you understand our complex world. Do you like this article? Subscribe to our weekly newsletter.
It was written by: David Wallace, Mississippi State University.
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David Wallace does not work for, consult with, own shares in, or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond his academic appointment.
