A recorded geomagnetic storm that significantly affected world civilization has occurred only once, in 1859. But these are small flowers compared to what stars like the Sun can do. Using a sample of 56,450 stars similar to our luminary, scientists showed that explosions twice as powerful could occur every 100 years. This work is full of cracks and gaps, but it turns out we’ve been very lucky so far.

We do not fully understand the physics of the Sun. The burning processes of stars are based on quantum physics and a real situation. When studying the activity of the Sun and stars of the same class and scale, scientists rely on statistics that outline what is possible. On Earth, we judge the Sun’s historical activity by the level of nitrogen in Arctic and Antarctic ice and, more recently, by the level of the carbon-14 isotope in wood. Based on these “records” it was possible to reconstruct a number of extreme outbursts that occurred on the Sun in the past, the most powerful of which occurred a little more than 14,000 years ago. years ago

But scientists also have other archives; A universe of data in every sense. It is sufficient to collect statistics on megaflares of Sun-like stars and apply the resulting data to our system. There is only one insurmountable error: the activity of a star depends on the speed of its rotation around its axis (the slower and older the star, the lower the activity), and this speed cannot always be measured. Scientists replaced this lack of information with data on the brightness and temperature of stars and selected those that were most similar to the Sun in terms of general characteristics.

After examining stars in the Kepler telescope’s observing catalogue, the researchers selected 56,450 stars that were tentatively similar to the Sun. Of these, 2,527 recorded 2,889 superflares with hundreds of times the energy of the 1859 eruption. And if equipment at telegraph stations catches fire all over the world, then in the event of a megaflash, all satellites may be disabled and electronic devices on the Earth’s surface will be greatly affected. A mass failure in electronics would be the literal end of the world for a civilization dependent on it.

Simple calculations have shown that stars similar to the Sun can emit megaflares every 100 years. If so, our star certainly owes us the “end of the world.” However, there is another dimension to the matter. The 1859 event was also accompanied by a coronal mass ejection towards Earth. A flare from the Sun without a mass eruption (mostly X-rays) is no sugar either. This means that anyone flying in planes or spaceships is out of touch and exposed.

The real threat is the Sun’s plasma, or coronal mass. Charged particles in the form of the solar wind can greatly inflate the atmosphere and literally bring down satellites, as well as cause induced currents in metal structures on the Earth’s surface. Flares are not always accompanied by a coronal mass ejection; This is another unknown in scientists’ doomsday equation. Finally, flares are also often directed away from Earth, further reducing the likelihood of Armageddon. Therefore, paraphrasing the classics, we can say that the conclusions regarding the high probability of the end of the world are greatly exaggerated. But you can’t forget about this possibility. We continue to understand the problem.