Tonight’s solar storm could wreak havoc on public transport, cause disruptions for commercial airlines and destroy satellites.
Officials fear the event will be on par with a geo-storm that hit in 1859 which caused sparking and fires in telegraph stations that took weeks to repair.
In today’s more tech advanced society, researchers at Lancaster University in the UK warned a repeat could cause signal malfunctions by switching railway lights from red to green that could lead to a potential collision.
The storm could also render the connection between GPS and satellites ineffective and block radio transmissions that are necessary for airplanes and ships’ navigation systems that was impacted during the 1859 blackout when ships lost access to their navigation systems, leading some to become lost at sea.
GPS systems become disrupted because when the radiation from the solar flare hits the magnetic sphere surrounding Earth, it causes fluctuations in the ionosphere.
The ionosphere is a layer in the upper atmosphere that will absorb and reflect signals during a geomagnetic storm, causing static and disruptions in the signals received by GPS systems.
Outages could also cause stop lights to cease working and railway signals to turn from red to green which could lead to collisions in a worst-case scenario
Without electricity, grocery stores and pharmacies would be forced to close because payment systems would no longer work
Rob Steenburgh, Space Scientist for NOAA’s Space Weather Prediction Center (SWPC), said Friday: ‘Depending on how [the CME] interacts with Earth’s magnetic field, that magnetic field can fluctuate.’
The fluctuate could impact conductors, like pipelines, railroad tracks and powerlines by adding more electrical current that such systems can handle – and ultimately cease operations.
Geomagnetic storms form when high-energy particles released from solar flares ejected by the sun reach Earth.
The sun is continuously erupting and hurling particles into space, but given that its 93 million miles from Earth, it rarely reaches us, and if it does it only causes a minor G1 or G2 storm.
As the solar flares reach the earth’s atmosphere, they emit radiation that hits the magnetic field triggering issues with the power grid and high-frequency radio communications.
A solar flare of this magnitude would destroy the electrical grid, affecting food supply chains that would fall apart without working computers to tell them where produce needs to be while air conditioning, heating systems, gas boilers and fuel stations would stop working.
Traffic lights and train systems could all go dead – bringing public transportation to a screeching halt – while satellites could be destroyed.
The storm is currently rated as a level G4 on a scale of one to five, but experts warn it could reach a G5 ranking.
If the geomagnetic storm reaches a level five, satellites could crash into other objects in space or the atmosphere and suffer physical damage from supercharged ‘killer electrons’ which would hurtle into important sections of hardware, rendering it useless.
The last severe geomagnetic storm occurred in 2022, which destroyed up to 40 Starlink satellites worth more than $50 million, sending them back toward Earth but fortunately they burned up in the atmosphere.
People have reported Friday that their Starlink internet has gone down following the first blast from space hitting Earth around 1:45pm ET.
It remains unlikely that wireless connectivity will be directly affected by the storm because these networks rely on different radio frequencies that GPS systems.
Even if GPS features are affected, people will likely still be able to maintain a map showing their rough location.
The electrical grid is more prepared than it was in similar past geomagnetic storms because they now have backup power generators and mobile cell towers that can be put into action if cell towers lose power.
Flight patterns can also be affected during these storms because commercial airlines are warned to stay away from the Earth’s poles as they risk losing communication and navigation systems.
These worst-case scenario possibilities are based on the geomagnetic storm of 1859 which caused a major blackout extending several hours which caused sparking and fires in telegraph stations that took weeks to repair.
In 1859, a massive solar flare with the energy of 10 billion atomic bombs sent electrified gas and subatomic particles to Earth – leading many to panic that the world was ending.
Compasses on ships at sea stopped working, causing some vessels to get lost and currents spread through telegraph wires that were in danger of melting as ‘streams of fire’ poured from the circuits.
Fires sparked at several telegraph stations, which resulted in communication loss worldwide.
The flare was twice as big as any other storm to have occurred in the last 500 years, but a study released in February revealed we could be due for another.
Global communication systems would be immediately impacted while home medical equipment that requires electricity to function
Supply chains would fall apart without working computers to tell them where produce needs to be while air conditioning, heating systems, gas boilers and fuel stations would stop working
Researchers at the British Geological Survey in the UK looked at magnetic field recordings of the Carrington Event and determined that although they didn’t know the exact levels, a similar event is likely to occur once every 100 to 1,000 years.
In the 1859 blackout, people relied on manpower and animals to conduct every day tasks and needs, but because today’s infrastructure primarily relies on electricity to work, a similar event would have disastrous consequences.
Global communication systems would be immediately impacted while home medical equipment that requires electricity to function, couldn’t operate – meaning without access to cell phones, there would be no way to call 911 in the event of an emergency.
Without electricity, grocery stores and pharmacies would be forced to close because payment systems would no longer work, posing a serious problem for people low on food or those who don’t have enough life-saving prescriptions.
Medication production could be directly affected because drug companies use electricity to amp up development and even those that were already completed prior to the blackout need to be kept at specific temperatures which requires, you guessed it, electricity to maintain.
Scientists warn that the fear people would experience by intense blackouts could increase stress levels that could trigger a heart or asthma attack and without access to healthcare, deaths could skyrocket.
In comparison, New York’s blackout in August 2003, which lasted about a day, led to the deaths of nearly 100 people, a 28 percent increase from the state’s average.
The fatalities were linked to accidents caused by lack of power from traffic lights and carbon monoxide poisoning from generators while the state saw an increase in chronic health issues like cardiovascular and respiratory problems.
Thomas Popik, the chairman of the Foundation for Resilient Societies spoke out about the possible implications of a Carrington-like solar flare in front of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission in 2016.
‘If a densely populated area such as Washington, D.C. lost all electric power, and no outside assistance was available, and people could not evacuate by car because gasoline station pumps were inoperable due to lack of power, and municipal water and sanitation services stopped working, what percent of the population would still be alive after one month?’ he asked, according to NBC News.
In 1989, an explosive solar flare left six million people in Canada without electricity for nine hours, disrupted electric power transmission from the Hydro Quebec generating station and melted several power transformers in New Jersey.
Speaking about the negative implications caused by a major solar flare at a time when companies rely heavily on electricity to function, MIT’s Energy Initiative, Francis O’Sullivan, told CNET in 2018: ‘It’s not just the lights going off now.
‘It’s bank accounts disappearing… If you think what would happen if the stock exchange was taken offline for a week or month or if communications were down for a week or a month, you very quickly get to a point where this might be one of the most important threats the nation faces, bar none.’
A major super flare event could result in a blackout lasting for just a few days up to several years, and reports estimate that a disastrous solar storm could cost upwards of $2 trillion in just the first year and could take over a decade to recover, reaching a possible $20 trillion in cost.