{"id":331849,"date":"2025-12-07T02:22:09","date_gmt":"2025-12-07T02:22:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/331849\/"},"modified":"2025-12-07T02:22:09","modified_gmt":"2025-12-07T02:22:09","slug":"how-solar-storms-that-cause-the-northern-lights-have-the-power-to-wreak-havoc-on-earth","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/331849\/","title":{"rendered":"How solar storms that cause the Northern Lights have the power to wreak havoc on Earth"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Much of the planning for a severe space weather is based on the Carrington Event of 1859, the most intense geomagnetic storm in recorded history.  <\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">This created rapid variations in the Earth&#8217;s magnetic field that caused electricity to be generated in long wires. <\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Telegraph operators suffered electric shocks, pylons were seen to spark and some conversations between operators could carry on while batteries were disconnected. <\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">All this happened a long time ago, but with today&#8217;s advanced technologies the effects of a similar event would be far more disruptive.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Satellites can be badly affected. Strong solar storms can cause the Earth&#8217;s atmosphere to expand out into space, which creates more drag for satellites. This can cause them to slow down enough for some to deorbit and fall back to Earth. <\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">This is not just a theoretical risk &#8211; in February 2022 a solar storm <a href=\"https:\/\/svs.gsfc.nasa.gov\/5193\/\" class=\"ssrcss-16fdtb5-InlineLink e1kn3p7n0\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">led to the loss of 38 satellites, external<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Orbital changes of satellites also increase the risk of collision and space weather can also play havoc with sensitive electronics on board, causing malfunctions.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Radio communications can be badly impacted with GPS systems lost or disrupted for many days &#8211; so your car sat-nav could stop working, creating gridlock in cities. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Much of the planning for a severe space weather is based on the Carrington Event of 1859, the&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":331850,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[64,63,128,285],"class_list":["post-331849","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-space","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-science","tag-space"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/331849","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=331849"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/331849\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/331850"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=331849"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=331849"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=331849"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}