NASA Says We Need to Be Ready for the Next Big Solar Storm

It sounds almost like a contradiction to the piece I wrote last week about the Sun slipping into hibernation, but it isn't. Bear with me.

The last time the Sun entered a well below average solar minimum, in 1859, it was ushered in by a giant solar storm. How big? Entire telegraph facilities were set ablaze owed to the immense currents induced by troves of ultra high energy particles streaming through our atmosphere.

And while auroras are commonplace near the arctic poles, they were seen in unexpected places like Cuba and Hawaii. Well, what if we are headed into a deep solar minimum and the Sun decides to reach for one last big gasp before falling off to sleep?

When was the last time you were in a telegraph station? Yeah, I've never been in one either. And hey, auroras are beautiful, I wouldn't mind seeing one here in the central US. So what's the big deal?

The big deal is that our infrastructure is incredibly reliant on power distribution stations, GPS satellites, telecommunications satellites and a host of other advanced electronics. And, uh, well it turns out that a sea of charged particles with energies experienced in the 1859 eruption wouldn't exactly play nice with our stuff.

To give you a perspective on what this might look like, a recent NASA article puts it this way:

An avalanche of blackouts carried across continents by long-distance power lines could last for weeks to months as engineers struggle to repair damaged transformers. Planes and ships couldn't trust GPS units for navigation. Banking and financial networks might go offline, disrupting commerce in a way unique to the Information Age. According to a 2008 report from the National Academy of Sciences, a century-class solar storm could have the economic impact of 20 hurricane Katrinas.

In order to avoid these catastrophic scenarios, scientists, legislators, power company representatives and others are meeting to discuss our preparedness and look toward creating some fail safes to prepare for the mother of all solar storms.

One of the cool technologies available is the ability NASA has to create a 3D model of the incoming storm's morphology, and tracking it in real time as it approaches. The idea is that if we can predict when and where storm fronts are going to impact Earth, the electrical smart grid can be systematically shut down to prevent catastrophic failure of the system.

This would create a temporary blackout for certain areas, but avoid the more long term damage and power loss that allowing a direct impact would create. The trick is, naturally, integrating this technology into the grid system. But that's why these meetings are taking place.

In terms of direct danger to humans, those at the greatest risk are astronauts. Those aboard the Shuttle and International Space Station are exposed to radiation levels several times that of power plant workers on Earth. With their expose so closely monitored already, they are the ones for whom an evacuation procedure may be necessary.

Before concluding I would be remiss if I didn't mention that we may never see a giant solar storm, like the one of 1859, in our lifetimes. But the threat of one is real, and we need to be prepared.