Head of the Department of Astronomy at Harvard University Abraham Loeb and his colleague Manasvi Lingam (USA) estimated the time when a superflare destructive for human civilization would break out on the Sun. A related study is available at the arXiv.org electronic preprint library.
Superflares, as a result of which the Sun throws out about 1034 erg into the surrounding space, according to scientists, occur with a frequency of two thousand years. The last time a similar phenomenon occurred in 775, its recurrence is expected in about 750 years.
“We conclude that the risk from super-flares is under-estimated, and that humanity could witness their onset, leading to devastating economic and technological losses, over the course of a thousand years,” the authors report in the publication.
The estimates given by scientists indicate that the energy of solar superflares is in the range from 2 × 10 34 to 6 × 10 36 erg, the lower limit of this value corresponds to the minimum damage to the planet's ecosystem, but large damage to the infrastructure created by man.
In particular, solar superflares can completely disable Earth satellites and electrical systems. During the geomagnetic storm of 1859, telegraph systems on the planet were out of order, and the northern lights were observed even in the equatorial regions.
Solar superflares pose the greatest danger to the ozone layer, which protects the biosphere from ultraviolet radiation. Excessive radiation leads to overheating of the near-surface layers of the atmosphere, suppression of photosynthetic organisms and DNA degradation.
