Space Weather...

Photo: NASA
Huge solar coronal mass ejections hurl plasma into space. These cause space storms that can wreak havoc on Earth.

Topics: Heliophysics, International Space Station, NASA, Space, Space Exploration

Auroras lit the skies as far south as Cuba on September 1, 1859. Telegraph systems across the globe malfunctioned, sparking and shocking their operators, and making transmission impossible. The cause was a massive geomagnetic storm, known as the Carrington Event after astronomer Richard Carrington, who observed an enormous solar flare preceding the events on Earth.

If a storm of equal strength occurred in today’s technology-addicted world, it would have catastrophic impacts, said a panel of space weather experts at the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) Meeting in Washington, DC on February 15.

“This was by all measures a huge storm,” said Daniel Baker of the University of Colorado. “If an event of that size were to occur today, the effects by most estimates would be devastating.” Large regions of the globe could be plunged into darkness and hobbled with technology failures, from widespread power outages, to loss of communication systems, to GPS navigation failures, and damage to satellites.

APS News: Scientists Discuss the Dangers of Space Weather, Emily Conover