Free Astronomy Magazine July-August 2024

13 JULY-AUGUST 2024 worst. We have no way of knowing when an event comparable to Car- rington’s might happen again. Fur- thermore, we do not know how often these events occurred before 1859. Before electrical networks and devices existed, those phenom- ena attracted attention only due to the appearance of auroras. Understanding the mechanisms un- derlying the triggering of CMEs and predicting their magnitudes is a pri- ority for solar physicists. But even with the current fleet of spacecraft dedicated to observing the Sun, all that scientists can really do now is provide, at best, a few days’ warn- ing of the arrival of a flow of solar plasma. We can only minimize the H ere at the side, NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory captured this ultraviolet image of a flare (X5.8) that exploded on May 10, 2024, in the same active region as the previous ones. [NASA/SDO] Below, the active regions of May 9, with a close-up of that day’s intense flare. [NASA/SDO and the AIA, EVE, and HMI science teams/helioviewer .org/Graphic compiled in Canva by Daisy Dobrijevic] ting their supplies of necessities and moving around in general. Water could no longer be pumped upwards against the pull of grav- ity, leaving those living “uphill” of their local water sources without. Electric cars could not be recharged until normal- ity returned. Uninter- ruptible power supplies and generators intended for life-saving systems would have limited au- tonomy. Only the accu- mulators of photovoltaic systems, ironically fueled by the same Sun that was the origin of the global disaster, would be able to guarantee energy for essential activities. A 2013 study by British insurance giant Lloyd’s of London estimated that power outages following a Car- rington-type event could lead to up to $2.6 trillion in lost revenue for the North American energy industry alone. The study asserts that conti- nental-scale blackouts would last a very long time because such an event could simultaneously damage multiple very high-voltage trans- formers that are not easy to replace. Returning to the state of affairs that existed prior to a possible Carring- ton Event would certainly require years, during which our civilization would certainly be able to display its