NASA Scientist Dives Into Perfect Space Storm

[Ron Baalke]

Donald Savage
Headquarters, Washington October 23, 2003
(Phone: 202/358-1547)

DC Agle
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
(Phone: 818/393-9011)

RELEASE: 03-344

NASA SCIENTIST DIVES INTO PERFECT SPACE STORM

Newly uncovered scientific data of recorded history's most
massive space storm is helping a NASA scientist investigate its
intensity and the probability that what occurred on Earth and in
the heavens almost a century-and-a-half ago could happen again.

In scientific circles where solar flares, magnetic storms and
other unique solar events are discussed, the occurrences of
September 1-2, 1859, are the star stuff of legend. Even 144 years
ago, many of Earth's inhabitants realized something momentous had
just occurred. Within hours, telegraph wires in both the United
States and Europe spontaneously shorted out, causing numerous
fires, while the Northern Lights, solar-induced phenomena more
closely associated with regions near Earth's North Pole, were
documented as far south as Rome, Havana and Hawaii, with similar
effects at the South Pole.

"Remarkably, science has documented solar events a hundred times
more intense," said Dr. Bruce Tsurutani, a plasma physicist at
NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. "But none of
them interacted with the Earth in such a violent manner. What
happened in 1859 was a combination of several events that
occurred on the Sun at the same time. If they took place
separately they would be somewhat notable events. But together
they create the most potent disruption of Earth's ionosphere in
recorded history. What they generated was the perfect space
storm," he said.

To begin to understand the perfect space storm you must first
begin to understand the gargantuan numbers with which plasma
physicists like Tsurutani work every day. At over 1.4 million
kilometers (869,919 miles) wide, the Sun contains 99.86 percent
of the mass of the entire solar system: well over a million
Earths could fit inside its bulk. The total energy radiated by
the Sun averages 383 billion trillion kilowatts, the equivalent
of the energy generated by 100 billion tons of TNT exploding each
and every second.

But the energy released by the Sun is not always constant. Close
inspection of the Sun's surface reveals a turbulent tangle of
magnetic fields and boiling arc-shaped clouds of hot plasma
dappled by dark, roving sunspots.

Every once in a while -- exactly when scientists cannot predict -
- an event occurs on the surface of the Sun that releases a
tremendous amount of energy in the form of a solar flare or a
coronal mass ejection, an explosive burst of very hot,
electrified gases with a mass that can surpass that of Mount
Everest.

What transpired during the dog days of summer 1859, across the
150 million-kilometer (about 93 million-mile) chasm of
interplanetary space that separates the Sun and Earth, was this:
on August 28, solar observers noted the development of numerous
sunspots on the Sun's surface. Sunspots are localized regions of
extremely intense magnetic fields. These magnetic fields
intertwine, and the resulting magnetic energy can generate a
sudden, violent release of energy called a solar flare. From
August 28 to September 2 several solar flares were observed.
Then, on September 1, the Sun released a mammoth solar flare. For
almost an entire minute the amount of sunlight the Sun produced
at the region of the flare actually doubled.

"With the flare came this explosive release of a massive cloud of
magnetically charged plasma called a coronal mass ejection," said
Tsurutani. "These things actually fire out from the Sun radially,
so not all of them head toward the Earth. But those that do
usually take three to four days to reach Earth. This one took all
of 17 hours and 40 minutes," he noted.

Not only was this coronal mass ejection an extremely fast mover,
the magnetic fields contained within its charged particles were
extremely intense and in direct opposition with Earth's magnetic
fields. That meant the coronal mass ejection of September 1,
1859, overwhelmed Earth's own magnetic field, allowing charged
particles to penetrate into Earth's upper atmosphere. The endgame
to such a stellar event is one heck of a light show and more --
including potential disruptions of electrical grids and
communications systems.

Back in 1859 the invention of the telegraph was only 15 years old
and society's electrical framework was truly in its infancy. A
1994 solar storm caused major malfunctions to two communications
satellites, disrupting newspaper, network television and
nationwide radio service throughout Canada. Other storms have
affected systems ranging from cell phone service and TV signals
to GPS systems and electrical power grids. In March 1989, a solar
storm much less intense than the perfect space storm of 1859
caused the Hydro-Quebec (Canada) power grid to go down for over
nine hours, and the resulting damages and loss in revenue were
estimated to be in the hundreds of millions of dollars.

"The question I get asked most often is, 'Could a perfect space
storm happen again, and when?'" added Tsurutani. "I tell people
it could, and it could very well be even more intense than what
transpired in 1859. As for when, we simply do not know," he said.

To research this perfect space storm, Tsurutani and co-writers
Drs. Walter Gonzalez, of the Brazilian National Space Institute,
and Gurbax Lakhina and Sobhana Alex, of the India Institute of
Geomagnetism, used previously reported ground, solar and auroral
observations, and recently re-discovered ground-based magnetic-
field data from Colaba Observatory in India. The findings were
published in a recent issue of the Journal of Geophysical
Research.

For more information on the Internet, visit:
http://sse.jpl.nasa.gov/planets/
http://www.nasa.gov
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