A large solar flare could push us all back into the Dark Ages for years, with no internet, satellite communications, mobile or landline telephones, electricity and all the millions of medical and other devices that rely on today’s communications systems and electrical power to operate, says Louis Lanzerotti, distinguished research professor at New Jersey Institute of Technology’s Center for Solar-Terrestrial Research.

Prof. Lanzerotti was speaking at a Symposium of Space Weather that was held in Washington DC last week.

At a push, we would all manage to survive without our smartphones, but how long would we manage with no electricity? What would happen to us if it took several years to get everything back to normal?

The specter of a geomagnetic solar storm with the power to disrupt or destroy communications satellites, mess up GPS systems, bring air travel to a halt, turn off telephones, computers and lights in our homes, offices and streets across the world for weeks, months, or even years, is something most members of the general public have no idea about.

However, this is a scenario that insurance companies worldwide, government agencies from national security departments to space agencies to parliaments, and scientists take very seriously.

Those who are aware of the potential problem call it ‘The Big One’ – they say this ‘low probability but high-impact event’ merits a significant push on several fronts, including forecasting, research and mitigation strategy.

Space weather experts come together

The Washington Symposium – Space Weather Science and Applications: Research for Today, Training for Tomorrow – drew space weather experts from the federal government, academia, private industry and the military.

Solar Flare artist impressionAn artist’s impression of a superflare. A stellar superflare was detected on a nearby star by NASA’s Swift satellite. Had such a powerful flare come from our Sun it would have triggered a mass extinction on Earth.

Regarding a colossal, well-timed solar storm for today’s global society, which is firmly-attached to a high-tech, electrically-powered umbilical crod, Prof. Lanzerotti said:

“Since the development of the electrical telegraph in the 1840s, space weather processes have affected the design, implementation and operation of many engineered systems, at first on Earth and now in space.”

“As the complexity of such systems increases, as new technologies are invented and deployed, and as humans have ventured beyond Earth’s surface, both human-built systems and humans themselves become more susceptible to the effects of Earth’s space environment.”

 
Apart from disrupting our energy and communication grids, what is generally known as space weather – strong bursts of electromagnetic radiation, magnetized plasma and energetic charged particles – could corrode our water and sewer pipelines, erase everything we have stored in our computer memory, harm astronauts out in space, and undermine security and military operations.

The symposium was sponsored by the Space Policy Institute at George Washington University and the Universities Space Research Association (USRA). It focused on the ever-growing urgency of both the development and creation of practical applications in the field and basic scientific research.

Daniel Baker, Director of University of Colorado-Boulder’s Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics (LASP), said “Once systems start to fail, [the outages] could cascade in ways we can’t even conceive.”

Dr. Baker is also a panelist who recommends greater support for the development and creation of engineering systems and devices that can protect Earth’s infrastructure.

Deadly superflare hits once a thousand yearsScientists from Denmark, Italy and China reported last month that a superflare, like the one observed on other stars, coming from our Sun could destroy much of life on Earth. They believe that Earth suffers the effects of a superflare every 1,000 years. (Image: https://theextinctionprotocol)

Recovery would cost trillions

A 2013 report published by Lloyd’s of London (Lloyd’s), an insurance market located in London’s primary financial district, estimated that a massive storm would directly affect twenty to forty million people for up to two years, depending ‘largely on the availability of spare replacement transformers’.

To recover from such a solar flare would cost from $600 billion to $2.6 trillion.

This symposium follows one last year – Space Weather: Understanding Potential Impacts and Building Resilience – held in Washington D.C. organised by the Executive Office of the President of the United States and attended by engineers and scientists from industry and academia, as well as politicians and policymakers.

In that symposium, the OSTP laid out a multi-part plan to deal with, as Prof. Lanzerotti put it, ‘civil societal issues related to all aspects of space weather.’ OSTP stands for Office of Science and Technology Policy – it is a department of the United States government, part of the Executive Office of the President.