Our Sun routinely spews violent clouds of gas hurtling through space at unimaginable speeds. Such coronal mass ejections (CMEs) occur when the Sun’s magnetic field becomes tangled and, in righting itself, swarms of charged particles called superheated plasma are released. And if fired at just the right angle toward Earth, these plasma clouds can wreak unimaginable havoc on our electrical grids, technology and infrastructure.
Such a disaster-inducing solar storm has now been labelled an “inevitability”, with such terrifying consequences for us all on Earth, a report has warned.
The US Geological Survey (USGS) has published a report in the scientific journal Space Weather examining an event known as the 1921 New York Railroad Storm.
This was a violent geomagnetic storm that single-handedly put swathes of the northeastern United States into a black out.
And worryingly, USGS researchers admit these alarming effects could be repeated at almost any moment.
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This is because historical measurement and prediction technologies are no guarantee of predicting when the next so-called Carrington Event will occur.
All that can be said with confidence is Earth will likely get hit with another massive solar geomagnetic super storm within the next century.
The researchers wrote in the report: “The severe space weather event of 13‐16 May 1921 produced some spectacular technological impacts, in some cases causing destructive fires.
“It was characterised by extreme solar and geomagnetic variations, and spectacular aurora, recorded at many locations around the world.
“A wealth of information is available in scientific journals, newspapers, and other sources, enabling us to reconstruct the storm timeline.
“This shows that a series of major CMEs bombarded Earth in May 1921.
“The first pair may have prepared the way for latter intense activity, clearing density from the region between Sun and Earth, and energising Earth’s magnetosphere.
“Thus, a subsequent CME could travel more quickly and drive even more energy into the already active magnetosphere.
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“The timeline of the 1921 event, including the confusion caused by prosaic faults, can be used to construct scenarios for use today by those emergency managers planning how to reduce the adverse impacts of future space weather events.”
A Harvard professor famed for his Oumuamua extrasolar asteroid theory has now proposed an innovative $100billion solution ahead of the next hit.
Professor Loeb told Express.co.uk: “A Carrington-type event would cost roughly $2-3trillion [£1.5- 2.3trillion] told, in terms of infrastructure damage.”
The famed Professor believes the most innovative mitigation would be to deflect this blob of energetic particles away from the Earth.
He added: “We would create a current loop that would produce a magnetic field by deflecting charged particles.
“And it would be situated at the lagrange point, because there is no gravitational acceleration at this location.
“This would be a major engineering project but we worked-out the numbers and the cost seems to be worth it, if you compare it to the cost of damage.
“The cost for the magnetic deflector project is £100billion [£79.4billion], given that the cost of taking 1kg into space costs about $1,000 [£795].
“But I think it will take first Carrington-like event of the modern era of technology before politicians act.”
