Bursts of solar flares from the Sun's surface look spectacular, but they can pose a danger to us here on Earth. If one was to hit us hard enough, it would knock our entire planet into darkness. and here's what would happen if a massive solar storm hit the Earth. It wouldn't be the solar flares that sent us back into the pre-technological era. It'd be the giant clouds of hot plasma and electromagnetic radiation that the Sun spews out. This is a phenomenon known as a coronal mass ejection, or CME.
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In 2012, a powerful CME shot through the Earth's orbit. Luckily, we missed a direct hit. We weren't so lucky back in 1859, when the electromagnetic radiation of another CME set telegraph pylons on fire. The telegraph. That's really all there was for technology at the time. But now? Our entire planet is deeply reliant on electricity and electronics. If a solar storm that strong were to strike today, we'd be in a much worse situation. It would start with an enormous explosion on the Sun's surface.
The solar flare would zap the Earth's upper atmosphere with a giant electromagnetic pulse. This would block radio signals between the Earth and our orbiting satellites, but wouldn't damage them just yet. Not until minutes to hours later, when a stream of charged particles started bombarding the Earth's magnetosphere. These particles would hit some of the satellites and damage their electronics. Our communication systems would begin failing. But the worst is yet to come. After anywhere from 12 hours to several days, a cloud of plasma would finally reach the Earth. First, it would hit NASA's ACE satellite, designed to warn us about the upcoming storm. Even with that warning, we'd only have about 30 minutes before that space cloud rained down on our magnetosphere and triggered a geomagnetic storm here on Earth. Hopefully, you're not on an airplane at the time, because its GPS system would fail, and your pilot would have to start navigating without it. On Earth, the geomagnetic storm would start to melt our power grid transformers. Do you know what that means? Not much fun for all us power-hungry humans down here. All the lights would go out. You wouldn't be able to charge your phone or your laptop. Your fridge would stop refrigerating, and your heater would stop heating you up. Make sure you have some spare cash because all the ATMs would be useless, just like your credit cards. Most likely, you wouldn't even be able to flush your toilet, since in most modern cities water supply is controlled electronically. Anything and everything relying on the internet would shut down. No banking services, no internet access in the transportation system, and no social media to vent your frustration in. We can't control the space weather. If the Sun were to send us a direct hit, this hypothetical scenario would get real. Almost real.
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NASA and The Space Weather Prediction Center keep monitoring the activity of our Sun. Their 3-day forecast would give us a heads up if our star looked suspicious. We might have time to disconnect transformers and switch the satellites into safe mode. Maybe one day we'll build a protective shield around the Earth to prevent something like this from affecting us.
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