Stars are active space objects that are not concerned about the fate of possible living beings on planets and satellites. Therefore, they generously pour large amounts of deadly energy in the form of flares into outer space. The memory of one of such distant events could be found recently in Greenland.
Solar flares
In essence, this is a tremendous energy release in the solar atmosphere. The energy of one event is capable of reaching an approximate amount of global consumption in a million years! A layer of magnetic shield protects against the catastrophic consequences of all earthly representatives.
However, powerful events make their way inside. Because of this, astronauts in orbit always arrive under threat (especially when performing a space walk), satellites and spacecraft. Can not feel safe and earthlings on the surface.
The fact is that the Earth is literally shrouded in electrical wires, which will be the first to fail with a powerful solar flare. Just imagine that you lose the usual electricity. Forgive communication satellites, radio, TV, Internet and light. And they will not be able to restore the system in a day or a week. These are months, and, possibly, years of work with serious financial expenses.
Recent Events
Carrington notes taken from observations of the 1859 outbreak. When they talk about the dangers of solar flares, they recall one of the brightest events - the case of Carrington in 1859. If the emission usually reaches the planet in 3-4 days, then at that time the journey took only 18 hours! The people of that time were lucky that their technology only reached the development of the telegraph, because one flash knocked them out and put fires to the stations. The Northern Lights showed up where they were never seen.
But do not think that all this is already in the past. In 1989, Canada was severely affected by a solar flare, spending almost $ 14 million to restore the country's electricity grid. The same problem touched Sweden in 2003.
Researchers fear repetition, so they constantly watch the sun. But the problem is that we have no means of protection. The maximum that can be done is to warn astronauts on the ISS in time and send commands to working satellites. If a flash breaks through the magnetic layer, then our technologically advanced age will not be much better.
Greetings from the past
This topic has been actively discussed because of a recent find in Greenland. It turns out geologists in the ice managed to fix the marks of an incredibly powerful solar event that touched the planet in 660 BC. er Scientists believe that if this were repeated in our time, then I had to say goodbye to a famous civilization. How to find traces of flash? For this, we took pieces of ice for analysis and conducted isotope and chemical analysis. Thus, we managed to find the markings of beryllium-10. It occurs when fast cosmic rays collide with nitrogen atoms. The high half-life of this element is about 1.36 million years, which made it possible to determine the date of the event.
The analysis showed that at that time our planet was confronted with a superpower star flash, which could surpass any known “modern” event a dozen times. But not even the power scares. Researchers are looking for traces of flares across the planet to date them. This should help to understand how often the Sun attacks us and predict a possible future event.
Unfortunately, the picture is disappointing. Of the particularly powerful events, the case in 774 AD is called. e., as well as in the 1204th. The trend suggests that these are repetitive cases, and the gap between them is very small.
Postscript
Modern knowledge and technology is not enough to make accurate forecasts. But more afraid of the lack of methods of protection. Therefore, scientists believe that, first of all, you need to take care of the security of mankind, if the Greenlandic or even the Carrington event repeats itself in our time.
