During the night on Sunday April 23, the Northern Lights could be seen at very low latitudes near the Earth’s equator, very far from the usual polar environment. The photogenic spectacle was captured in unusual places like Texas or Extremadura, where it was captured by astrophotographer Lorenzo Cordero, an image named the best of the day by NASA. “It’s simply due to one of the largest magnetic storms seen in recent years, caused by a solar filament,” summarizes Consuelo Cid Tortuero, a researcher at the University of Alcalá de Henares and principal scientist at the National Space Weather Service (SeNMEs). ).
According to physicist Scott W. McIntosh, director of the US National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), the phase known as the maximum of the solar peak appears to have been brought forward a year earlier than planned. In addition to his records of sunspot spread, McIntosh draws on information his team has collected over 20 years by comparing historical solar intensity data dating back to 1750. Everything indicates that the peak intensity will be reached in late 2023 or early 2024, which would mean a “Terminator event”, according to the American scientist. This terminator phenomenon occurs when the usual solar cycle – which lasts 11 years – abruptly ends, the star’s polarity changes, and the new cycle with greater intensity begins.As one solar cycle ends and the next begins, the Sun can experience violent magnetic field collisions, resulting in gigantic plasma tsunamis that can charge the Sun’s surface for weeks .
Geophysicist Joan Miquel Torta confirms that we are indeed in a more active solar cycle than currently expected according to the previous solar model’s prediction estimates, drawing a comparison to living in “a seismic zone”: “There could be more activity, though.” that not all events are critical,” assures Torta of the Ebro Observatory (CSIC). For example, in 2012, a strong solar ejection was observed, but it did not reach Earth. For Cid, we are “on track for a solar peak,” though he qualifies: “The worst part is the descending part of the cycle when there are many filaments in the sun.” Those filaments that Cid is talking about are about they are bulges that can eject solar material into space and pose a hazard when aligned with our planet. The fact that there are more sunspots means “more activity and there’s a greater chance of something happening,” says the scientist from SeNMEs, a center founded in 2014 that produces daily reports and alerts on extreme events related to the sun offers sun activity. .
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The citizen does not have to worry about the critical weak points of large infrastructures. “But it’s what keeps me up at night,” McIntosh is honest. “Someone has to be responsible for the fact that the power grid is damaged by a solar event and the water cannot be treated, that’s important,” says the physicist.
Torta, an expert in geophysical security and specializing in the vulnerability of the power grid in the face of space weather, categorizes solar flares at their maximum as “low-probability but very high-impact events” because of the potential for them to cause problems for the power grid or satellites. “When this center was founded 100 years ago, they used cosmic physics to study the relationship between the sun and the earth,” recalls the scientist from the Ebro Observatory, describing how the public’s appreciation of his galactic ecosystem has changed .
Solar flare captured in July 2022. NASA/JPL-Caltech
The shift in the perception of space and the human relationship to the cosmos is due to the proliferation of satellites and electrification. A reality that forces us to pay much more attention to solar flares, since “these phenomena have begun to affect our technological systems, the infrastructures that we have developed and therefore our dependence,” says Torta. A development that “comes with the telegraph since the 19th century and is now even more advanced,” he summarizes.
system vulnerability
All the scientists interviewed mention the Carrington event as the greatest solar storm — by Richard Carrington, the astronomer who documented it — when in 1859 an extremely powerful flare scorched what was then the telegraph network in the United States and United Kingdom during the night broke in. He returned during the day in the Caribbean, Hawaii or the Canary Islands. Another iconic event happened in 1989 in Quebec, Canada, when a lightning strike shut down a hydroelectric power station and “millions of people were left without light for 12 hours,” recalls Miguel Herraiz, professor emeritus in Complutense University’s physics department.
The leap from 200 years ago to today’s techno-scientific society brings with it new dangers due to system overload: the decline in radio emissions, GPS navigation or communication satellites. “Geomagnetic storms have a big impact and disrupt equipment in very high electrical conductivity situations,” says Torta, who is now more aware of protecting critical infrastructure. “The destruction of an electrical node could be catastrophic. It would be months of work due to the difficulty of replacing the parts,” Herraiz explains.
The expert on geomagnetism and vulnerability from the Ebro Observatory says: “We must not dramatize or become paranoid, but it is advisable to analyze the extent of our vulnerability.” Torta points out that for the occurrence of an “extreme event ‘ many extraordinary coincidences must occur: ‘Not only does the ejection capture the Earth at its center, but also that the magnetic field associated with this plasma moving with the solar wind has a… polarity consistent with the Earth’s magnetic field is opposite, so a phenomenon called magnetic reconnection occurs, which is the one that commands, and that’s complicated.
The researcher suggests that each country “needs to know its electricity grid and analyze how dependent it is on its technology”. Overall, the geophysicist praises the fact that society has also become “more resilient to climate phenomena”, as has technology, because transformers or satellites are no longer the same as they were in the 1970s.
southern aurora
The Earth is completely exposed to the activity of the sun, and when it reaches violent proportions in the form of eruptions or solar flares (solar flares in English), there is an increase in radiation and the emission of extremely energetic particles, which directly affect our affect planets. When a large mass of plasma from the Sun hits Earth, the solar wind periodically causes geomagnetic storms in the upper layers of the atmosphere. In space weather, its most colorful manifestation is usually the Northern Lights, visible in the strip of the planet’s north and south poles.
Photo showing a Northern Lights taken by Extremaduran photographer Lorenzo Cordero from the city of Casar de Cáceres. Lorenzo Cordero (EFE)
If the storm is strong, however, the auroras may be visible at lower latitudes, which, like weeks ago, includes the Iberian Peninsula. The peak of the solar cycle, which causes much more material to be flung from the star toward Earth, has resulted in them being observed in the southern United States and Europe, locations rarely used due to their proximity to the equator.
For Professor Herraiz, the increase in boreal sightings is helping to talk about the “geophysics of Earth’s space environment.” A key aspect is the early detection of space weather phenomena, which can enable preventive measures to be taken to reduce damage from extreme solar events. Something the physicist believes is crucial: “The more science there is, the better information we will have and the more precise prevention will be.”
“The aurora is the most striking manifestation of the magnetic storms caused by the mass coming from the sun and hitting the earth,” summarizes María Teresa del Río Gaztelurrutia of the University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU) Planetology Team. . Physics clarifies that these are common events and that they can only cause problems if they are “bestial events”. This causes the sky to unusually glow with hues of purple, violet, and violet at dusk, when electrons and protons collide with Earth’s oxygen and nitrogen.
The astro show seen in the twilight sky is the “friendly face,” says Herraiz. Aristotle, Seneca and Pliny the Elder already spoke of inexplicable skylights in the texts of their time, “which allows the assumption that the auroras have already been observed in our latitudes and that these atmospheric phenomena are as old as the world,” says Herraiz. “Only now do we take them in better.”
“What is being considered is a consequence of the effects of a coronal mass ejection.” [CME, por sus siglas en inglés] that entered the Earth’s magnetosphere from the Sun, and the interaction of high-energy particles swept up by the perturbed solar wind and entered our planet’s atmosphere,” explains Herraiz. The light emitted by these particles, when energy is lost, creates this symphony of colors that we call auroras, but also shows physical phenomena that occur at the atomic level. This interaction “makes evident and, in a way, visible, the existence of our atmosphere and the Earth’s magnetic field,” the professor emeritus points out, and usually “poses no danger in itself.”
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