Sci-Fi Eye: The wrong kind of sunshine

While looking through The Engineer, my eye was caught by the headline, ‘Rail Signalling at Risk from Space Weather.’ [11 Dec 2023] The accompanying article explained that a new study led by Lancaster University has shown how space weather has the potential to play havoc with rail signal infrastructure during solar storms, when geomagnetically induced currents surge through the overhead cables, potentially switching rail signals from red to green and vice versa.

Obviously, this has the potential to cause serious collisions and delays, but there are plenty of other ways our electronic world can fall prey to the sun’s tantrums.

During a coronal mass ejection, huge amounts of plasma and magnetic flux are expelled from the sun’s atmosphere. During the most active part of the sun’s 11-year cycle (solar maximum), these events happen several times per day, while at solar minimum, maybe only once per week—and very occasionally the Earth will be in the path of the ejecta.

When the charged particles from a coronal mass ejection hit the Earth’s atmosphere, they cause a geomagnetic storm that can disrupt radio transmissions and damage power lines. The most famous recorded example of this is the Carrington Event of 1859, which disabled the US telegraph network, causing fires and electric shocks. More recently, in 1989, a geomagnetic storm disrupted power distribution in Quebec and caused aurorae as far south as Texas.

If another large coronal mass ejection hit the Earth today, our satellites would most obviously be at risk, and the intense radio emissions and magnetic effects could disrupt our satellite-based communication, weather, and GPS networks. At the same time, the energetic ultraviolet radiation would heat the Earth’s atmosphere, causing it to expand and increase the drag on those satellites, shortening their orbital lifetimes.

A severe event could also knock out power and disrupt electronic hardware, perhaps even causing errors and data loss as charged particles flip ones to zeroes and vice versa.

According to New Scientist, the most powerful solar storm ever to have hit us may have occurred 14,300 years ago, leaving a huge spike in radioactive carbon in tree rings from the time. So far, evidence has been discovered for nine more of these ‘Miyake’ events. Should one occur today, it could destroy all our satellites and potentially disable energy grids for months.

A really big one could effectively end human civilization in its current form, destroying the economy, depriving the population of power, communication, fuel, food distribution, water and medicine, and plunging us back into the Dark Ages just as effectively as an asteroid strike.

Unsurprisingly, science fiction authors have written about just such a scenario. In the novel Sunstorm by Arthur C. Clarke and Stephen Baxter, a major solar event affects almost all the Earth’s electronics. Alas, devastating though this is, it’s only the prelude to a far more massive event that threatens to sterilise the entire Earth.

The short story ‘Inconstant Moon’ by Larry Niven, which was later adapted into a 1996 Outer Limits episode, begins with an unusually bright Full Moon. Everyone admires it until Jupiter also lights up and the narrator realises the Moon is so bright because it’s reflecting the light of a massive solar flare that has potentially ravaged the day-side of the planet.

J.G. Ballard’s The Drowned World, is set in a future in which increased solar activity has warmed the world, melting the ice caps and turning London into a swampy jungle, whereas in The Maze Runner series of young adult books by James Dashner, a series of catastrophic solar flares have devastated human society and rendered part of the Earth’s surface a barren wasteland known as The Scorch.

There have also been many disaster movies that use huge solar flares as their basis, such as the unimaginatively titled Solar Flare in 2008, and Nicholas Cage’s Knowing in 2009.

So, what can we do to mitigate the risks?

Critical pieces of infrastructure can be placed in Faraday cages to protect them from currents, and capacitors can be used to drain excess energy from power grids. Stockpiling vital components, such as transformers and circuit breakers, would also decrease the time it would take to repair the network. However, the very best way to minimise disruption may be to forecast such events and shut the grid down before they happen.  

Gareth L. Powell has twice won the British Science Fiction Association Award for Best Novel and been a finalist for the Locus Award. You can find him online at www.garethlpowell.com