The sun can easily be referred to as the most important object in our sky. People here on earth can hardly comprehend the massive size of our sun, people may rarely talk about the significance it holds for life on earth, but this life enabler has a tendency of throwing tantrums every now and then, tantrums that can spell disaster for earthlings. Before diving into the severity of these tantrums let us know some facts about the sun in order to understand the gravity of the situation (pun intended).
Starting with a simple question to know more about sun
What is the size of the sun?
1.39 million Km is the answer in simple words, but what does it mean? This means if we could fit earth inside the sun, we would require more than a million piles of the earth to fill it up. Comfortably sitting at the center of our solar system, the sun alone accounts for 99.86% of the mass of our solar system. That is like whatever our solar system has including all planets, comets, asteroids, moons and all the dust is just 0.14%. Holding a mass of 2 octillion tons of matter, that is 2 followed by 27 zeros, number would look like this: 2,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000
It is definitely not small, not even by galactic standards. Our sun is in the top 10% of the largest stars in our galaxy but is still considered to be the average-sized main-sequence star.
What is sun made up of?
So we have heard a lot that it is mostly hydrogen. So, this hot and almost perfect sphere is majorly made up of hydrogen 73% but it contains helium 25% and 2% of other elements ranging from oxygen to carbon and neon. Conditions at the sun can be simply expressed as hellish. Conditions if put in numbers can simply toss anyone’s capability to comprehend. Let’s give it a try, pressure is over 260 billion times more than what we experience here on earth and the temperature in the core is 15 million Celsius. That is hot enough to give us sunburn even from a staggering distance of around 150 million km. These conditions make its core able to crush hydrogen to an extent where it fuses to form helium, and releases energy at the same time. Again the numbers are huge, it turns around 700 million tons of hydrogen into 696 million tonnes of helium and 4 tonnes is released as energy.
Ok so now coming to the main topic of the sun’s tantrums. These are known as coronal mass ejections (CMEs) and solar flares or in more general terms “Solar Storms”. I know this raises many questions, let's take them one by one.
What are solar storms
Sun goes through an 11 years cycle of relative calm and disturbance, and when the sun is in its disturbing phase, it tends to throw out a lot of radiation and high energy particles into the solar system including Earth. This phenomenon is known as a solar storm.
What are solar storms caused by
Now we know what they are, so we come at what causes them. Since Sun is a hot soup of plasma, that is it has a lot of free electrons and protons flowing around, and as we know flowing charges creates magnetic fields and vice versa, this random flow creates messed up magnetic fields that are entangled all over inside the sun and on its surface.
These fields shape the flow of charges as well and hold a massive amount of energy. This extends way beyond earth’s orbit and carries some amount of plasma along with it forming solar wind that reaches to the edge of the heliosphere in all directions. These charged particles are trapped by the earth’s magnetic field and directed toward poles by it, where they interact with the oxygen and nitrogen in our atmosphere giving us the spectacular northern and southern lights.
But the sun’s magnetic fields get tangled beyond a limit and a knot is formed, they snap. Hence releasing a massive amount of energy in form of a wave of radiation known as Solar Flares, and when it emits billions of tonnes of plasma, t is known as Coronal Mass Ejections (CMEs).
Solar storm effects on humans
Now, comes the question,
What are the effects of these storms on humans?
Though it is believed it doesn’t cause any issue directly to humans other than posing a risk to astronauts and our electrical equipment. Since most of the solar flare effects are negated by our atmosphere, and the coronal particles are deflected by the earth’s magnetic field and funneled to poles.
Recent studies direct towards health effects on humans due to the solar weather but mention that they are short but pervasive. Mostly concerning for already ill people as the effects may range from headache, disturbed sleep, anxiety, psychological issues, low functional activity of central nervous system to the disturbance in heart rhythm.
This article has more details on this issue: Solar storm effects on humans – Aspects of Mind (health.blog)
Apart from this, humans have a lot at stake when it comes to our electric grids and electronic devices. In the current situation, we are heavily dependent on technology; hence effects can be felt in daily life.
Massive solar storms can bend our magnetic field and align with it, eventually snapping and trapping a huge amount of energy that will be directed towards the earth, destroying our power grids, communication lines, satellites, and other electronic equipment. Repairing this may take years and can throw our lives decades into the past.
Now comes the most essential question
When will the solar storm hit earth
We have been no stranger to these solar storms but never bothered enough any time as much as we do now. So predicting or making efforts to predict solar storms at the very least is what many scientists Though it is hard and almost impossible to exactly predict a storm before it hits us but due to past experience we are beginning to make more and more accurate guesses.
A recent study by an Indian origin Sangeetha Abdu Jyothi of the University of California states a massive superstorm may hit the earth, severely breaking down the internet and lines of communication which may take months to fix. This time it is believed to be bad enough that nothing we have to compare to it in the past 50 years.
In the past 1859, a massive solar storm damaged telegraph lines across the US and Europe, back when we were barely dependent on any electronics. In 1989 a solar storm caused a blackout in Quebec due to the failure of the power grid. Though now our engineers are capable enough to save our grids that may require prior warnings. A massive storm nearly missed earth in 2012 and recent Scientist from different places mention that a massive storm is coming but doesn’t know exactly when.
Here is the NASA article on research NASA - Solar Storm Warning
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