Nearly 100 years ago, on May 15, 1921, multiple fires broke out in electrical and telegraph control rooms in various parts of the world, including the United States and the United Kingdom. In both New York and Sweden, the fires started in equipment in the control rooms and spread to the buildings, causing extensive damage.
Similar reports emerged from various parts of the world, including India, the United Kingdom and New Zealand, of disruptions to electrical and telegraph equipment. These incidents were attributed to magnetic fields created on Earth by a solar superstorm, one of the largest to hit the planet.
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“ The effects involved interference with radio communications, telegraphs and telephone systems, which were in use in 1921 ,” Jeffrey Love , a geophysicist in the Geomagnetism Program of the US Geological Survey (USGS), tells The Independent
A solar superstorm is a space weather phenomenonthat, if it were to affect Earth today, could cause more damage, according to Love.
“When we look back at that time, anything related to electricity wasn’t as important in 1921 as it is today,” he says.
Scientists have understood for many years how these solar storms occur and how they disrupt the power grid and communications networks. But the potential impact of this phenomenon is not fully understood today.
Solar storms are caused when the sun emits a wave of electrically conductive plasma, in what is called a coronal mass ejection (CME).
When CME are directed toward Earth, they can travel at very high speeds of about 2000 km per second, reaching Earth in a few days.
Since the plasma in CMEs is electrically conductive, it interacts with the Earth's magnetic field, bringing current to the ionosphere. This in turn produces a magnetic field through the principle of electromagnetism.
This process results in the creation of electric fields on the Earth's electrically conductive surface, sending electric current through the different types of rocks in the crust, which have different abilities to carry current.
Eventually, this current ends up affecting electrical networks and causing short circuits. Since networks are concerned with controlling and managing currents and are designed for alternating current, this sudden flow of current causes problems.
Experts say a solar superstorm could be particularly destructive to transformers in the power grid, as it can overheat them and cause them to malfunction due to unwanted current flow.
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Transformers rely on the balance of currents as voltages change – and if there is no balance, overheating can occur that interrupts their operation.
"So there could be a blackout, but there could be a quick recovery. There would be damage but it wouldn't be a huge amount of damage," says Mike Hapgood, head of the Space Environment Impacts Expert Group (SEIEG) in the UK.
Referring to the example of a moderate-level solar storm that hit the Earth in 1989, Hapgood said that the power outages that occurred in a region of Canada were resolved in about nine hours.
“People now know how to fix it. And I wouldn’t expect anything extensive. While some are raising fears that it will take years to fix the problem, I don’t think many people, especially engineers, really believe that,” says Dr. Hapgood.
However, scientists also say that satellite navigation systems could be significantly affected by a solar superstorm. It could cause outages for several days. In some places, the systems might work and in others, they might not.
Additionally, experts are unsure of the extent to which global internet connectivity could be affected by a solar storm.
According to a recent study, the resilience of undersea internet cables to such space weather phenomena has not been particularly tested.
The research predicts that long-distance fiber optic lines and submarine cables, which constitute a vital part of the global internet infrastructure, are vulnerable to this phenomenon.
Dr. Love also believes that long-distance communication cables could be particularly vulnerable due to their design.
However, not all experts agree that the effects on the Internet system could be equally devastating.
Dr. Hapgood argues that submarine cables are inherently less conductive and their high resistance would make them less vulnerable to such a phenomenon.
Due to the high resistance offered by submarine internet cables to the flow of geomagnetically induced currents (GIC) from solar storms, it is believed that likely no disruption will occur to the global Internet connection.
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Other experts, such as Dibyendu Nandi, suggest that these theoretical predictions should be scientifically tested. Undersea cables may be comparatively better, but the impact of solar storms on them “needs to be fully understood,” since they form the backbone of the global internet infrastructure.
Dr. Nandi has already proposed a way for an experiment that could show how undersea cables to conditions similar to those caused by a solar superstorm, while he and other experts believe that the impact also depends on how strong a solar storm can be.
While long-distance cables and communications satellites, which are integral parts of the global internet infrastructure, could be vulnerable to CMEs, experts suggest that there are some solutions for temporary connectivity, but this does not mean that there will be no problems and that their use will be immediate.
Experts seem to disagree about the impact of a solar storm on electrical and telecommunications networks. However, they do agree that there are no comprehensive plans yet for preparing for such a space weather phenomenon.
An American project, known as SWORM, organized through the White House, brings together different federal agencies to address global space threats.
“They are not only worried about the power grid, but also about the loss of communication satellites, as we may lose a portion of the satellites and GPS due to solar storms,” said Dr. Love.
The biggest problem, according to Dr. Hapgood, is the combination of all known information for finding an effective action plan.
Source: The Independent
