GMU Scientists Are Trying to Prevent a Solar Catastrophe

In May, a huge solar storm treated people around the world to stunning auroras. But the impact wasn’t just visual: Solar flares can interfere with our digital infra­structure, and many GPS systems lost signals or gave inaccurate location information. In New Zealand, the state-owned power company experienced a brief outage. None of it was a major issue this time—but it could be.

Imagine an event many times larger, such as the massive one that scientists believe hit Earth about 14,000 years ago. Internet, satellite communications, and many electronics would be zapped out of commission, with potentially catastrophic results. You wouldn’t want to be in a plane or undergoing surgery when an enormous solar flare struck. “A flare like that would be so intense that it would basically wipe out our infrastructure,” says Peter Becker, a professor of physics and astronomy at George Mason University. “We’re kind of due for perhaps a really strong event—maybe even the strongest in recorded history.”

Becker is currently working to try to prevent that scenario. He and his colleagues at GMU—along with a team of 15 researchers at the Naval Research Laboratory—recently secured a $13.6 million federal grant to continue their work studying solar flares and so-called coronal mass ejections that can wreak havoc on Earth’s electromagnetic field.

Becker has been working in the field of high-energy astrophysics at GMU for more than 30 years, and he’s been researching extreme solar flares for the last 15. His current research is intended to improve computer models that can predict when solar flares will strike. Becker and his team are collecting data from a NASA solar probe and a pair of satellites to monitor activity on all sides of the sun. Their goal is to get predictive models to the point where they can reliably give a few weeks of advance warning.

That won’t stop the flare, of course. “The sun is going to do whatever it wants to do,” Becker says. But accurate predictions allow effective preparation: Unplugging computers and routers and disconnecting from the internet, putting satellites in “safe mode,” grounding flights, and taking generators offline could keep them operative.

To be truly prepared, though, Becker says utilities and governments need to spend heavily on hardening internet cables and the power grid, an undertaking he doesn’t think will be taken seriously enough until a damaging solar storm serves as a wake-up call.

In the meantime, May’s northern lights were a reminder of the sun’s awesome power. “We are living around a star,” Becker says. “We’re floating in space in a very vulnerable situation. Just because the sun hasn’t done something that extreme in recorded history, that is by no means an indicator it’s not going to.”

Ike Allen

Assistant Editor