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Earth Will Only Have 12 Hours To Prepare For Massive Solar Storm
22 hours ago
(Rex Shutterstock)
Trains will be disrupted, power will go out, satellite signals will go wonky - that’s what we have to look forward to when the sun next has a melt down, and we’re unlikely to get more than 12 hours warning.
In a new government document, the Department of Business, Innovation and Skills has laid out its Space Weather Preparedness Strategy, outlining the risks of unsettled space weather as well as what it plans to do about them.
Trains will be disrupted, power will go out, satellite signals will go wonky - that’s what we have to look forward to when the sun next has a melt down, and we’re unlikely to get more than 12 hours warning.
In a new government document, the Department of Business, Innovation and Skills has laid out its Space Weather Preparedness Strategy, outlining the risks of unsettled space weather as well as what it plans to do about them.
The document
explains that the worst case scenario is a ‘coronal mass ejection’ -
huge eruptions on the sun which cause parts of its corona to detach. The
corona is the pearly glow around the sun that you can only usually see
during a total solar eclipse, made up of plasma and rarefied gases.
The
worst case scenario is based on the Carrington event of 1859, which
caused solar-flare related x-rays and radiation storms. In 2015, a
similar event could cause the national grid to fail, satellite
operations to shut down, increased radiation on flights and upset to
electronic systems.
The
report suggests that there are three things the country needs to do to
prepare for such an event: improve alerts and warnings, update power and
communication infrastructure with failsafe backups and have a plan in
place to deal with the effects should they come to pass.
As
for you: the advice from the government is to prepare yourself for a
solar event just as you would for any other natural hazards like floods
and storms.
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