The calm before the solar storm?

The sun is finally emerging from one of the deepest solar minimums in recent history and could be heading toward an unusually active period in its eleven-year cycle over the next few years:

Looks like disaster flicks aren’t too removed from reality since all this could well be the potential result of a gigantic solar storm, according to a new report by NASA. The report, a warning, says Earth and space are coming together in a way that’s new to human history. ...A solar storm, which is essentially violent eruptions in the sun, can eject destructive radiation and charged particles into space. These are closely connected to magnetic fields – which are hazardous for satellites and space stations.

It is estimated that fusion reactions in the core convert about 600 million tons of hydrogen into helium every second. In the center of stars like the sun, matter is converted directly into energy by way of the proton-proton fusion reaction. This series of nuclear reactions ultimately produces one helium-4 nuclei which weighs a tiny bit less (About 0.7% less) than the four protons that went into making it. That missing mass has been converted into high energy photons called gamma rays, and some strange particles called neutrinos, released during each of the individual reactions. But only the energy released as gamma rays will heat the photosphere of the sun's outer layers as they leave the center. Neutrinos are the phantoms of the particle physics universe; each has a fifty-fifty chance of making it through several lights years of solid lead without so much as slowing down.

It’s sobering to think that because trillions of photons are produced every second, and their jagged journey to space occurs in random steps an inch or so in length, there are untold numbers of primeval photons still wandering through the sun’s interior that were liberated when it first lit up five billion years ago. Once free, they traverse the distance between the earth and sun in eight minutes and in doing so, release heat and light into the Solar System to the tune of almost 400 trillion terawatts -- 400,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 watts. That’s a lot of light bulbs!

Most of that energy is delivered in a nice steady flow, but not always. In 1859 the largest solar storm in recorded history struck the earth. The Carrington Event was the solar version of the perfect storm. A number of factors led to a special type of solar flare called a Coronal Mass Ejection (Shown above hitting the earth's magnetic field and radiation belts, and left squirting from the sun, both courtesy of the Wiki) that came speeding our way, blasting the region of space where the earth happened to be at the time with a hail of particles and played havoc with the upper atmosphere. In the complex electromagnetic dance that followed, brilliant aurora, usually confined to northern and southern polar regions, lit up skies as bright as dawn from the Rocky Mountains to the Caribbean, and the early telegraph networks in the US and Europe were knocked out.

Solar flares are fairly common, mass ejections happen every few years, really big ones like the 1859 monster perhaps as often as every decade or two. Fortunately, space is big and the earth is usually not in the solar crosshairs. But scientists studying ice cores and other records have found evidence that we’ve been hit by similar events plenty of times in the past. On average, the earth has been in the wrong place at the wrong time about every 500 years.

The odds are in our favor. But if something like the Carrington Event were to hit our global communications networks today it might well shut down large sections of the information superhighway for weeks or months, along with chunks of the power grid and global communications and positioning satellite systems. It could well be an utter technological disaster on a scale we are completely unprepared to deal with.

More:

ESA's solar orbiter

NASA's SOHO solar observatory

More on solar sails