A recorded geomagnetic storm that significantly affected earthly civilization occurred only once – in 1859. But these are flowers compared to what stars like the Sun are capable of. Using a sample of 56,450 stars similar to our star, scientists showed that flares two orders of magnitude more powerful can occur every 100 years. This work is replete with exaggerations and full of gaps, but it turns out that we have been very lucky so far.
Image source: NASA
We don’t fully understand the physics of the Sun. The burning processes of stars are based on quantum physics and real chance. When studying the activity of the Sun and stars of the same class and scale, scientists rely on statistics that outline the boundaries of what is possible. On Earth, we judge the historical activity of the Sun by the level of nitrogen in the ice of the Arctic and Antarctica, and also, more recently, by the level of the carbon-14 isotope in wood. Using these “records,” it was possible to reconstruct a number of extreme solar flares that occurred in the past, the most powerful of which occurred a little more than 14 thousand years ago.
But scientists have other archives – a whole universe of data in every sense. It is enough to collect statistics on megaflares of sun-like stars and apply the obtained data to our system. There is only one insurmountable error: the activity of a star depends on the speed of its rotation around its axis (the slower and older the star, the lower the activity), and this speed cannot always be measured. Scientists replaced the lack of this information with data on the brightness of stars and their temperature, selecting those most similar to the Sun based on their combined set of characteristics.
After sorting through stars from the catalog of observations of the Kepler telescope, the researchers selected 56,450 stars that are conditionally similar to the Sun. 2527 of them recorded 2889 superflares with an energy hundreds of times higher than the 1859 flare. And if then equipment at telegraph stations all over the Earth flared up, then in the event of a megaflare, all satellites would probably be disabled and electronics on the surface of the Earth would be widely affected. A massive failure of electronics will become a real end of the world for a civilization dependent on it.
Simple calculations have shown that stars similar to the Sun can emit megaflares every 100 years. If this is so, then our star definitely owes us the “end of the world.” But there is one more stretch in the work. The 1859 event was also accompanied by a coronal mass ejection towards the Earth. A flare without ejection of solar mass – mostly X-rays – is also not sugar. This is an interruption of communication and exposure of everyone who flies on airplanes or in spacecraft.
The real threat is the plasma of the Sun – the coronal mass. Charged particles in the form of solar wind can greatly inflate the atmosphere and literally drop satellites, as well as cause induced currents in extended metal structures on the earth’s surface. Flares are not always accompanied by a coronal mass ejection, which serves as another unknown in the apocalyptic equation of scientists. Finally, flares are also often directed away from Earth, further reducing the likelihood of Doomsday. Therefore, to paraphrase the classic, we can say that the conclusions about the high probability of the end of the world are greatly exaggerated. But we must not forget about this possibility. We continue to look into the issue.