Coronal Mass Ejection (CME)
The historical benchmark for solar storms is the Carrington Event of 1859. It did serious damage to the primitive communications infrastructure of the time (mostly telegraph lines).
The effects of the Carrington Event included electric shocks to telegraph operators, fires set by sparks, and considerable damage to the telegraph system, the “Victorian Internet” of its time. Auroras were bright enough to read a newspaper by.
Such storms are rare, but a CME in 2012 was a comparatively near miss. If it had happened just a week earlier, it would have hit the Earth and likely done serious damage to infrastructure. A report by the US National Academy of Sciences, available here, puts the possible damage, including things like economic losses from prolonged widespread power outages, at approximately 2 trillion dollars US (2 T$US).
They do consider mitigation measures, based largely on space weather forecasts, about like battening down when a hurricane warning is up. The damage will still be substantial. By way of comparison, the COVID 19 pandemic is estimated to have caused 5-8 T$US damage to the global economy.
Not a civilization-ender, but not to be ignored, either.
Mitigation is all very well, but prevention is better. Earth’s protection against the effects of a CME is its magnetic field. It protects against the solar wind, preventing the stripping of atmosphere Mars has experienced. A direct hit with a CME is sufficient to hammer it down and induce damaging electrical currents in satellites and power networks.
A NASA study of prospects for terraforming Mars proposed a satellite placed at the Mars-Sol L1 point, creating a magnetic field of 1-2 Tesla, which would, according to their modelling, accord Mars the same protection against the solar wind as Earth enjoys from its native magnetic field. This would in turn allow Mars to gain a much thicker atmosphere by reducing loss from the solar wind.
While no such proposal has been made for safeguarding Earth, it seems reasonable that sauce for Mars is sauce for Earth. To offer protection against super-storms, the field strength would undoubtedly have to be more than 1-2 Tesla. The record at this writing is 45.5 Tesla for a cuprate superconductor magnet, as reported here.
Such a satellite would not be small or cheap, but the business case for deploying it, considering the alternative, would be compelling.
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