Transcription
Today we're going over the big question about solar storms. How big can they get and how often do they happen?
The regular ebb and flow of sunspots follows an 11-year cycle, where we do get an increase in sunspots, solar flares, and geomagnetic storms on a roughly decadal basis. But not every cycle brings a major solar flare. In fact, those happen on much longer time scales. While the average 11-year cycle may offer only an X9 or X15, the strongest flare event, every century or two we get one much bigger in the X30 to X80 range, with an average of about X40. We haven't taken one of those in the electric age of Earth, but that would be a major risk to global power grids for critical failure.
But on even longer time scales, the sun can go even bigger. In a recent morning broadcast, we covered the new survey done on sunlike stars that recorded super flare and mega flares up to the X6 million level. That is a psychotically massive x-ray blast. Nobody is suggesting the sun could make something that large, but sunlike stars were once thought to not even be able to super flare at all. It was considered surprising when they revealed not only that they can make them, but an X28,000 was observed on a sunlike star, and then several others in the x-million range. To be clear, if the sun ever did that, the Earth would be destroyed, the atmosphere shredded, and its life sterilized from the planet.
But scientists have begun to study the detailed magnetic fields of the sun, sunspots, and solar flares, and now believe the sun can make super flares in the X100 to X1000 range. In fact, the most critical study on these events suggests that on the multi-millennial scale, the sun may produce an X500 to X700 flare, with an X1000 flare occurring roughly every 6,000 years. It is interesting that that also appears to be the same timeline as the Holocene climate events and the geomagnetic excursions, likely not a coincidence.
A more recent paper by NASA scientists confirmed that the sun can make that X1000 flare. Still a far cry from the X6 million, but for Earth, that is a devastating event. It is quite worrisome that such an event happens to be due again soon, like in our lifetimes. And such an event would throw us back into the Stone Age: every grid gone, every piece of technology fried, no vehicles, no manufacturing centers, no gas, no ATMs, no banking, no refrigeration, no heating or air conditioning, no food transportation, no way to preserve it, no water treatment or supply to homes, no 911, no internet, no cell phones, and no way to recover, but to start from the beginning all over again.
For these bigger events, it is also quite clear that the ozone would take an incredible decimation. They believe that the centennial X40 event would cause such ozone losses to wildly spike Earth's temperature. In fact, there's evidence that it happened in the middle of the 1800s, and that it sent the climate into chaos for a little bit. So what would an X1000 do? We can only guess.
But what we know for sure is that sunlike stars can super flare. Our sun has left evidence of its past super flares in tree rings, ice cores, and sedimentation. We know that we are due for another one soon, and so we watch and we wait. And if we're smart, we prepare for a return to the times before electricity.
A link to the full space weather learning lessons playlist is found below the video, and I'll see you in the morning for The Daily Show. Be safe, everyone.