“The blessing and curse of Solis” (August 8th 2020)
I have always been fascinated by the Sun, which in scientific terms is basically a massive nuclear reactor, coveting hydrogen to helium, being the central star of our Solar System, with Earth in what astronomers deem sits within the Goldilocks Zone, not to cold and not to hot, a perfect planetary environment for life to evolve. Ancient civilizations, such as the Egyptians and Aztecs, worshiped the Sun, primely in their understanding, as a godlike energy source that provided sunlight, for crops to thrive. The Egyptians called the Sun “Ra”, the creator of everything, the Aztecs equally revered the Sun, portraying it as the deity “Huitzilopochtli”, the God of light and war, such were the thousands, as macabre as it was, of human sacrifices that occurred offering the hearts and blood of the victims. So that Huitzilopitchli could maintain its fight against darkness. But also to assit in shortening the duration of droughts and heat waves, to restore the balance. A fear that all societies, even to this day, have of the Sun being both a curse and a blessing, but for civilizations of thousands of years ago, it was the reliance of crops and food. A constant struggle in defining their place within in nature. The Sun, was that beacon, the penetrating light of the day, in competing, cyclically, with the darkness of night.
Now, in our technological advanced societies, the Sun indeed could end up becoming both hindrance and benefit to life on Earth. Whether that be an environmental issue on our planet, such as climate change, where the heating of Earth, which will cause oceans to rise, affecting temperature conditions throughout the globe. With an outcome that will be of harsher winters and severe droughts. Ironically, the Sun, depending on its temperament, may actually output less energy in the next decade. Thus slowing down the affects of climate change on the planet. This is referred to as a Solar Minimum. However there is another threat that is ever present, that well and truly may have occurred many times within the thousands of years of human development. These are the Solar Storms, massive ejections of electromagnetic radiation, from an erupting Coronal Mass Ejection (CME). In 1859, a Solar Storm event was recorded, now known as the Carrington Event, after Richard Carrington, a British Astronomer who observed the solar eruption within the observable 10th solar cycle, as a multitude of sunspots began to appear on the Sun’s surface from 1855.
The largest geomagnetic storm ever detected was released at the Earth, when it aligned into a direct orbital path of the CME, it took over 17 hours to reach the Earth from its initial solar flare. When it hit the Earth’s magnetosphere, it caused an environmental phenomenon called Auroras, ghostly waves of light, which were seen globally. They were so bright, the auroras that were witnessed turned night from the Northern and Southern hemispheres prematurely into what appeared as an eerie dawn. The 1859 solar storm, apart from creating a spectral light show through the Earth’s atmospheres, as ionized x-rays and ultraviolet radiation spread over the magnetosphere. The magnitude of the CME knocked out, at the time, global communications – more so the telegraph and electrical systems. As civilization was in its infancy in regards to power grids and communication networks, the effect of the Carrington Event was impacted where electrical systems were used, power lines caught fire, while telegraph operators witnessed sparks emitting from the equipment that they were using. The damage was minimal, but the event was never-the-less a significant historic event.
Particularly if the same solar storm was to have occurred today, when the precursor of what is known as a Solar Maximum, when sunspots, dark circular regions, begin to appear on the surface of the sun and the solar cycle begins to initiate. Which in turn means more active solar flares, that could lead to a more violent ejection from the originating sunspot that is facing directly at Earth. The effect will not just be devastating to our satellites, power grids and digital networks, but our current way of life, with its dependency on all facets of technology.
On May 29th 2020, a collection of sunspots have been monitored by Space weather scientists, noticing a solar flare erupt from the Sun, possibly heralding in the beginning of the Sun becoming more active. Which is now counted at 25 solar cycles since observations first started. More importunately a cluster of sunspots are now being observed titled AR2770, they are the size of Mars and have the potentiality to unleash a solar storm depending on their scale of ferocity. An unpredictable and massive CME aimed at Earth, if it was detected, we would only have hours to prepare.
Authored: A.Glass (August 9th 2020)
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