We're All Gonna DIIIEEEEE!!!!!

But not today:

"If [the plasma storm] had hit, we would still be picking up the pieces," says Daniel Baker of the University of Colorado, who presented a talk entitled The Major Solar Eruptive Event in July 2012: Defining Extreme Space Weather Scenarios.

The close shave happened almost two years ago. On July 23, 2012, a plasma cloud or "CME" rocketed away from the sun as fast as 3000 km/s, more than four times faster than a typical eruption. The storm tore through Earth orbit, but fortunately Earth wasn't there. Instead it hit the STEREO-A spacecraft. Researchers have been analyzing the data ever since, and they have concluded that the storm was one of the strongest in recorded history. "It might have been stronger than the Carrington Event itself," says Baker.

The Carrington Event of Sept. 1859 was a series of powerful CMEs that hit Earth head-on, sparking Northern Lights as far south as Tahiti. Intense geomagnetic storms caused global telegraph lines to spark, setting fire to some telegraph offices and disabling the 'Victorian Internet." A similar storm today could have a catastrophic effect on modern power grids and telecommunication networks. According to a study by the National Academy of Sciences, the total economic impact could exceed $2 trillion or 20 times greater than the costs of a Hurricane Katrina. Multi-ton transformers fried by such a storm could take years to repair and impact national security.

Is this a serious threat? Absolutely. Is it worth spending mental energy worrying about it? Nope. I'll tell you why.

First, math is on our side. These things are spatially confined anomalies which shoot out of the sun in random directions and are spread -- from our perspective -- across a sphere 186,000,000 miles in diameter. The frequency of the events is also relatively low and is measured in multi-year cycles. Statistically, it could easily be millions of years between impact events, and the last one was only about 150 years ago. I'll bet on those odds.

Secondly, there isn't a damned thing we can do about it if one does hit.

Says Daniel Baker, "We need to be prepared."

What exactly do you propose? That we shield every integrated circuit, every wire and every electrical transformer on the planet? Should we build a giant space umbrella? We can't even get the Space HabiTrail to function consistently on a day-to-day basis. Perhaps we could call in the Super Secret Space Ranger Protection Squad? Here's the harsh reality: If it happens, we're fucked. It'd be nice if we could do something about it, but we can't. We've a better chance of deflecting an asteroid the size of Obama's ego than we do of mitigating a plasma storm. So don't worry, Danny Boy. Be happy.


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