The Danger of a Solar Storm

A rather large solar flare occurred on February 14th, which signals the beginning of cycle of flares that will reach its peak, called a solar maximum, in about two years. How bad can they get? The worst solar flare on record occurred in 1859 and was named the Carrington Event, after the scientist who studied it.

The flares were so powerful that "people in the northeastern U.S. could read newspaper print just from the light of the aurora," Daniel Baker, of the University of Colorado's Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics, said at a geophysics meeting last December.

In addition, the geomagnetic disturbances were strong enough that U.S. telegraph operators reported sparks leaping from their equipment—some bad enough to set fires, said Ed Cliver, a space physicist at the U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory in Bedford, Massachusetts.

In 1859, such reports were mostly curiosities. But if something similar happened today, the world's high-tech infrastructure could grind to a halt.

Such a flare today could disrupt our cellular signals, internet, GPS system, satellite transmissions, and even our electrical grid. Read all about it at National Geographic.

Link -Thanks, Marilyn Terrell!

(Image credit: SDO/NASA)