In the 21st century that we live in, we are slowly transitioning to a world where technology is slowly becoming ever more pervasive in human life, taking over almost all aspects of it.
This has led to us, increasingly becoming more and more dependent on the various modern day technologies that we have invented for ourselves to serve various purposes, be it to augment human life or to push things further in terms of other advancements.
I mean consider the internet and how much of a necessity it has become today to conduct the various important tasks without which the world would come to a stand still. In fact, I even wrote about this the other day.
Imagine what would happen if one day, all our modern day technologies were rendered useless in a scenario that is depicted pretty well in the movie, “The day the Earth stood still”. Although there is a very slim chance of that happening, there is one way that it can and that too in the near future.
Dangers From The Sun
Although the sun forms the basis for life here on our planet, it can also become quite dangerous for our way of life. There are many phenomena that could result in the wiping out of most of our technological infrastructure.
Solar flares, for example can impact the Earth’s magnetosphere and cause disruptions in wireless communication on our planet but that is just the tip of the iceberg.
Sometimes, a solar flare is accompanied by what is called a ‘coronal mass ejection’ (CME) wherein there is a significant release of plasma and charged particles from the Sun. In fact, in 1859, such a CME took out the then communication networks all around the globe.
As you can imagine, the damage was not severe as it was 1859, and the network that was affected was still not mainstream to have affected most people.
Today however, the scenario is completely different. We are totally reliant on these communication networks and the internet which could all be shut down completely because of these deadly CMEs.
According to experts, a large CME could melt the copper that is used inside the electrical transformers which could cause major outages throughout the world.
Also, there would be no internet or heating or air conditioning and even operations at gas pumps would be halted. And that’s not all! The many different satellites revolving the planet for various purposes would also stop working which could knock out the GPS systems causing mayhem down here on Earth.
Experts believe that the Earth would have to bear a loss of an estimated $2 trillion and it would take us a long time to recover from the event, possibly even a decade.
The scary thing is that such a CME has a 12% chance of occurring over the next 10 years, which although not much, is still a possibility. Therefore, scientists are at work thinking about ways we can deal with this and one of the proposed ways sounds like a sci-fi solution.
An Earth-Sized Shield
Scientists recently proposed in a paper that Earth could be protected with the help of a massive shield that literally blocks the CMEs. Such a shield would be space-borne and would need to be such that it doesn’t block sunlight.
Therefore they speculate that a magnetic field shield (like the ones they show in movies) would be perfect for this purpose. Doing so will require a huge amount of copper wire which would be needed to be lifted to space, but they believe that it is possible, from an engineering standpoint.
The costs involved would probably venture into the hundred billion dollar mark which is still a lot less than the $2 trillion in losses that we would have to incur otherwise.
And with the cost of launching stuff to space coming down in the next decades, thanks to the efforts of SpaceX, maybe it could cost a lot less. In any case, we badly need a solution to save ourselves and our way of life from the dangers of the sun.