Naked Science Forum
Non Life Sciences => Physics, Astronomy & Cosmology => Topic started by: Joe L. Ogan on 10/02/2010 21:03:03
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Why is a Solar storm a big threat? It appears that we had one in 2003. I was not even aware of it. It also appears that we may have another one about 2012 or 2013. It appears that we have never had a Solar storm that was directed at the Earth (at least not in recorded history). I can understand that it may interupt a lot of electronic equipment. Is there a direct threat to human life? Is there anything that one may be able to do to protect ones' life? Thanks for comments. Joe L. Ogan
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I don't think you need to fear for your life. A solar storm is unlikely to affect you directly. However, it can cause some major disruptions to RF communications equipment, and it can really mess up the power distribution grid by causing rather large currents that can overload and damage the system.
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Have a read of:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coronal_mass_ejection (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coronal_mass_ejection)
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While solar storm are no threat to us, solar superflare might be.
I don't believe a scenario like in the movie Knowing is possible.
Clearly that movie had a bad science advisors or they only care about visual effects. I don't believe a scenario as in Knowing is realistic.
It is however hypothesized that the Ordovician extinction might had been caused by a gamma ray burst or unusual high solar activity.
Also it seems that once at any 100 years we observe powerfull superflares coming from start more or less similar to Sun. See the link bellow:
http://www.tmgnow.com/repository/solar/superflares.html
There is no evidence of significant superflare events from our Sun in the past, so we may assume we are in a 'stable' arrangement. If a massive planet (like Jupiter) would have been much closer to Sun, superflares might had been more common.