Study suggests we’ve been measuring solar storms wrong

Sometimes the sun Throws a tantrumAnd that tantrum hits the ground. For some people, this means an opportunity to be seen Beautiful aurora borealis Illuminate the night sky. But solar storms can cause damage to Earth and various people and objects orbiting in space. That’s because, according to a new study, the risks from solar storms may be worse than originally thought.

The study, conducted by Nithin Sivadas of NASA and Maria Wallach of Lancaster University, posits that science’s understanding of solar storms and electrical currents generated in Earth’s upper atmosphere may have been misunderstood, and that solar storms may be more dangerous, especially for satellites and astronauts in orbit.

To understand the problem, understand what science is Currently saying is the key. When the solar wind hits the upper atmosphere, it creates all kinds of interactions, leading to effects like auroras and electric currents. The current scientific consensus is that there is a maximum amount of electrical current that can exist in the upper atmosphere due to factors such as solar wind energy, atmospheric boundaries, and current saturation. Once this threshold is reached, the Earth’s magnetosphere naturally dissipates the excess.

But this new research suggests that this limit does not actually exist and that previous assumptions about it were based on “uncertainties in solar wind measurements.” These doubts likely arose because most measurements of the solar wind were taken by spacecraft a million miles closer to the Sun than Earth, at a location known as Lagrange Point 1.

Measurements taken by NASA spacecraft near the Earth’s surface show a direct relationship between the strength of the solar wind and electrical current in the atmosphere, and indicate that there is no upper limit as previously assumed. This means that the atmosphere can produce as much electricity as the solar wind.

How much risk are we talking about?

It is not well understood how dangerous solar storms are compared to what science already knows. Solar storms have caused a lot of damage in the past, with examples such as the Carrington Event of 1859 setting telegraph machines on fire or 12,350 BC Solar stormWhich the researchers said was “much stronger than anything directly observed.” More study is still needed to understand the potential risks.

“If there is no upper bound on our planet’s response to the solar wind, modeling of extremes must take this into account, and we must be vigilant about the effects of space weather,” Wallach said in a statement. “Fortunately, these extreme cases are rare, but that also means we have limited data to work with, and only time will tell what happens in these sort of extreme, once-in-a-thousand-year events.”

Current simulation Using the limits above actually paints a very bleak picture of our modern, electronics-laden existence. A solar storm the size of a Carrington event would flatten a large number of Earth’s satellites and cause untold damage to systems here on Earth as well. This would not be the first time: during the solar storms on Halloween in 2003, the Earth lost contact with 59% of its satellites at that time. While modern technology is better at resisting these risks, it is not immune.

But there is some good news. First, such a catastrophic solar storm would not mean the end of humanity. Wallach says that Earth’s magnetic field “does a really good job of protecting us from many of the effects of space weather,” and that most of the time humans will notice the occasional glitch or beautiful aurora. She says satellites would perform much worse in such extreme space weather conditions.

The other good news is that the sun is coming to an end Maximum solar power For its current 11-year cycle (assuming it hasn’t ended yet), so the odds of extreme space weather are much lower than they were in 2024, when Earth is hit by an extreme solar weather event that pushes the aurora into Texas. For a whole week.