Important Takeaways:
- At least five streams of plasma, known as coronal mass ejections (CMEs), are heading toward Earth, prompting the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) to issue a severe geomagnetic storm watch for Friday into the weekend
- It follows a series of solar flares that began on Wednesday, tipping officials off
- The prospective storm could cause disruptions to GPS, the internet and power
- This is the first such alert aired since 2005 when Earth was hit with the highest dose of radiation in a half-century.
- The ‘unusual event’ may also drape a huge portion of the country, as far south as Alabama, in colorful natural lights.
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Important Takeaways:
- Solar superstorm could ‘wipe out the internet’ for weeks or months, scientist says
- The power grid, satellites, underground fiber optic cable with copper sheaths, navigation and GPS systems, radio transmitters and communications equipment are all vulnerable.
- It has happened before. Becker points to the Carrington Event in 1859. That was the last time a CME reached Earth.
- The heavy-duty wires of the telegraph were robust compared to the fragile electronics of today, he said.
- “So you lay that on top of the internet with its very delicate electronics, you’re talking about something that could really fry the system for a period of several weeks to months in terms of the time it would take to repair all the infrastructure – all of the electronic switches, all of these closets of electronics in all these office buildings,” Becker said. “That could all be fried. So we’re talking pretty major. And it’s not just communications. It’s economic disruption, too, obviously.”
- An economic disruption to the tune of $10-$20 billion per day to the U.S. economy alone, Becker estimated.
- The solar cycle is peaking making solar storms more plentiful
- Becker said predicting solar storms is like predicting earthquakes – we just don’t have control over the situation. He said that the odds are about 10% that over the next decade, “something really large is going to happen that could potentially wipe out the internet.”
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