could a massive wave of particles from the sun knock out our electrical grid
all this plasma that comes rushing towards us actually interacts with the earth's magnetic
field and all those energetic particles come rushing in they can induce currents
and end up overloading the system and when you overload the power grids it could cause blackouts
imagine you wake up to go to work one morning only to discover that it is not morning yet
what you have mistaken for the sunrise is actually a massive space weather event causing bright
auroras so aurora is the beautiful result of space weather as those energetic particles from the sun
are funneled by by the earth's magnetic field down towards our atmosphere those energetic particles
hit nitrogen and oxygen atoms in the atmosphere and they light up this is exactly what happened
to many people including miners in the rocky mountains in 1859 during the carrington event
the largest geomagnetic storm or major disturbance of the earth's magnetosphere in recorded history
what happened there is you were able to see the aurora down to hawaii aurora normally
is centered on either the north or south poles this was a major disturbance in the atmosphere
even though the miners were not observing the sunrise this event can be traced back to the sun
a solar flare is when the magnetic fields on the sun reconnect in an absolutely explosive way
when the magnetic field snaps and reconnects in a huge release of energy and that release of energy
is the solar flare a solar flare is often accompanied by a coronal mass ejection or cme this
is what caused the carrington event the sun expels billions of tons of charged particles to travel
through space and once they reach earth they interact with earth's magnetic field compressing
earth's magnetic field in one way you can think of it as as when you ring a bell and it vibrates
while the cme smacks into earth and earth's magnetic field vibrates the carrington event
of 1859 did cause a disruption in communication due to damaged telegraph lines but it is nothing
compared to the impact an event like that could have today on the modern electrical grid basically
the power grid is like an antenna and we have this current that gets induced in our transmission line
we call it geomagnetically induced current and it is this induced current that can wreak havoc in
1989 the quebec region experienced a geomagnetic storm resulting from a significantly large coronal
mass ejection causing six million people to lose power for up to nine hours now the 1989 blackout
was a wake-up call for our industry the root cause was that between quebec and the united states
we have long corridors of transmission lines to transfer this huge amount of power between canada
and the united states you have to support and maintain a healthy voltage across the network
during these geomagnetic disturbance we lost seven of these devices that are critical to maintain
voltage and we saw a voltage collapse a blackout there's truly no other phenomena that can cause
such a wide area failure so slowly but surely we put all the pieces together and we figure out that
the root cause was this geomagnetically induced current this particular event led engineers and
researchers to better understand the harmful impacts of geomagnetic storms on the power grid
and prompted them to create new industry standards the power grid operators have to take certain
protective actions to maintain the stability of the grid it's very much like a chess game
good chess players can almost visualize moves and counter moves but that's exactly what we do every
minute we're running thousands upon thousands of what-if scenarios trying to check-mate this
geomagnetic disturbance the power grid isn't the only thing on earth affected by geomagnetic storms
they can also wreak havoc on gps technology you really don't want to land a plane when you
don't have gps airlines might reroute based on a threat from space weather
and they can really confuse pigeons pigeons get lost we interact with the pigeon racing community
and provide them with details of the geomagnetic activity before they launch their pitches because
if it's too geomagnetically disturbed they might not return for many reasons it is important to
know when space weather might impact earth and researchers are getting better at being able
to predict it today we are where terrestrial weather was about 20 years ago there's a lot
we learned in that evolution of meteorology that we can apply to the evolution of space weather
when we see a solar flare we have eight minutes from the time that that flare happens until that
the most energetic particles get here 12 hours to fit 18 hours for the coronal mass ejection itself
to hit we can put out a watch when we first detect this thing and determine it's earth directed
that gives the utility companies time to get ready for this we are now entering a new 11-year
solar cycle which means for the next several years the activity on the sun will increase
until we reach what is called solar maximum in 2025. as you approach solar maximum the
probability and likelihood of having more and more cms increases so as we start a new cycle
and approach solar maximum again should we be concerned about the next big geomagnetic storm
your worry level should be low but that doesn't mean we shouldn't prepare for it
because there's no guarantee that it won't happen tomorrow for power companies for airlines for
human space flight for satellite operators maybe pigeon racers you know they have to keep this in
mind we can say that we understand the problem we have situational awareness we have operating
procedures and we continue to engineer the problem out designing a grid that can withstand a one in a
hundred year type of event we've done our homework and we're ready to handle the next solar cycle