Could Solar Storms Destroy Civilization? Solar Flares & Coronal Mass Ejections

2 years ago
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Climate has justifiably been a hot topic in advanced economies over the past decade. The study warns that unless we urgently change the way we treat climate, the problem will become increasingly intractable. But the earth's climate is not the only problem facing humanity. There is another kind of climate problem that needs our attention and we can't do anything about it.
Solar storms, known technically as coronal mass ejections, were until recently thought to be extremely rare -- occurring roughly every two centuries or so. But there's reason to believe it could be more frequent than that. This is a problem, to put it mildly, as people become more dependent on electricity.
In 1859, the Sun spewed out high-speed plasma, which broke through the sun's magnetic field and headed toward Earth. The coronal mass ejection hit the Earth's magnetic field and twisted it, causing telegraph outages around the world, known as the "Carrington event." It has long been the scientific consensus that solar storms on this scale are rare.
In the 19th century, the telegraph was cutting-edge technology. But right now, we have power grids, airplanes, satellites and computers that could be affected by another solar storm. We know that. Carrington events and even worse solar storms occur more frequently.
Earlier this month, after the release of the study results, Hisashi Hayakawa, said the study has concluded that "for the modern civilization, the carrington event is the most severe space weather events once, but if a century, this kind of event occurred frequently, we have to rethink how to prevent and reduce this kind of space weather disasters."

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