Huge Solar Storm of 2012 Would Have Sparked Calamity on Earth- Space.com

Huge Solar Storm of 2012 Would Have Sparked Calamity on Earth 5 days ago ... If a gigantic solar storm that erupted from the sun in 2012 had hit Earth, it's possible that it would have spelled disaster on the planet. www.space.com/26669-huge-solar-storm-2012-destruction.html Huge Solar Storm of 2012 Would Have Sparked Calamity on Earth By Elizabeth Howell, Space.com Contributor   |   July 29, 2014 11:30am ET 201 31 2070 Submit 1101 Reddit If a huge solar eruption in 2012 had hit the Earth, the effects would have been so devastating that we'd still be recovering two years later, scientists working on several new studies conclude. A huge coronal mass ejection — a large cloud of hot plasma sent into space — erupted from the sun on July 23, 2012. The CME went through Earth's orbit, and had it happened only one week earlier, our planet would have been in the way and faced severe technological consequences. There would have been three waves of damage associated with the extreme solar storm. First, X-rays and ultraviolet radiation from the solar flare would have produced radio blackouts and GPS navigation errors. The second part would have seen satellites fried by energetic particles like electrons and protons, which arrived only minutes to hours later. [Biggest Solar Flares of 2014: Sun Storm Photos] Finally, magnetized plasma from the CME would have struck our planet within the next day. Power blackouts could have been devastating, making it difficult to even flush the toilet because most urban areas use electric water pumps. "I have come away from our recent studies more convinced than ever that Earth and its inhabitants were incredibly fortunate that the 2012 eruption happened when it did," Daniel Baker at the University of Colorado, who led a study of the storm in Space Weather, said in a statement. A huge solar storm in 2012 could have cause wide-spread devastation on Earth, if it had given the planet a direct blow. Credit: Solar Dynamics Observatory/NASA View full size image See how solar flares, sun storms and huge eruptions from the sun work in this SPACE.com infographic. View the full solar storm infographic here. Credit: Karl Tate/SPACE.com View full size image Disturbance in the solar force Researchers know about severity of the space weather thanks to NASA's STEREO-A spacecraft, one of a twin NASA pair of satellites that is examining the sun. It found that the magnitude of the flare was similar to the Carrington event, an 1859 solar storm that set telegraph lines aflame as the Northern Lights were seen as far south as Cuba. STEREO-A wasn't hurt by the blast because it travelled safely outside the Earth's magnetosphere, a zone above our planet that carries magnetic currents and can short out satellites. Also, the satellite was designed to withstand solar shocks — unlike some others. "Thanks to STEREO-A we know a lot of about the magnetic structure of the CME, the kind of shock waves and energetic particles it produced, and perhaps most importantly of all, the number of CMEs that preceded it," Pete Riley of Predictive Science Inc., who published an unrelated paper in Space Weather, said in the same statement. Riley calculated that in the next 10 years, there is a 12 percent chance that a Carrington-class solar storm could happen. He used a parameter called Dst, "disturbance – storm time," that looks at how much the magnetic field around Earth shakes when coronal mass ejections hit. Astronomers today estimate the Dst for Carrington was anywhere between negative 800 nanoTesla (nT) and negative 1,750 nT. By comparison, an ordinary storm that causes northern and southern lights only produces about negative 50 nT. In March 1989, the province of Quebec in Canada lost power due to an intense solar storm that was measured at negative 600 nT. The geomagnetic storm that narrow missed Earth in 2012 was twice as powerful, Riley said. 'Perfect solar storm' The 2012 storm was so powerful that several coronal mass ejections erupted from the sun, creating a "superstorm" that made it many times more powerful than an ordinary one, an unrelated paper in Nature Communications said. The blast was actually a "double-CME" — two CMEs separated by only 10 to 15 minutes — that whizzed through an area of space that had already been cleaned by another CME just four days before. This meant the interplanetary medium in that region was not as thick as usual, the University of California, Berkeley's Janet Luhmann and former postdoctoral researcher Ying Liu found. "It's likely that the Carrington event was also associated with multiple eruptions, and this may turn out to be a key requirement for extreme events," added Riley. "In fact, it seems that extreme events may require an ideal combination of a number of key features to produce the 'perfect solar storm." Follow Elizabeth Howell @howellspace. Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebookand Google+. Original article on Space.com. Solar Quiz: How Well Do You Know Our Sun? Many of us take the sun for granted, giving it little thought until it scorches our skin or gets in our eyes. But our star is a fascinating and complex object, a gigantic fusion reactor that gives us life. How much do you know about the sun? Start the Quiz 0 of 10 questions complete EDITOR'S RECOMMENDATIONS Massive Solar Storm Near-Miss - Earth Averts Disaster | Video The Sun's Wrath: Worst Solar Storms in History Anatomy of Sun Storms & Solar Flares (Infographic) Attack of the Sun | Video Show end quote from: Huge Solar Storm of 2012 Would Have Sparked Calamity on Earth A researcher has predicted that there is a 12% chance that this event that causes this much calamity could happen within the next 10 years. He was very surprised that percentage was this high. However, if we take out the    probabilities to 100 to 300 to 500 years the probability this dangerous situation will occur is around 100%. So, it is not if it is when this happens. And the problem is imagine everyone mostly in self driving cars worldwide. Then imagine self driving planes and ships too. Then imagine what happens to all GPS satellites when they turn upside down for 24 hours or more to all the self driving cars, boats and planes. How many millions of people will be dead in cars, maybe about 6000 planes coming out of the sky equals about 600,000 in passenger planes. And then how many people worldwide will be lost without GPS satellites on boats and hiking and in cars on dirt roads on earth in the dark who don't know where they are? How many ships in the fog won't know where they are and how many might run into each other worldwide? This is a nightmare scenario which means when it does happen (the further into the future it happens) the more millions that will die suddenly all over earth within a few minutes or hours of this event. And then insurance companies have researched that this would cost a minimum of .6 trillion to I believe 1.6 trillion dollars in damages and take at least 10 years to recover from.