May 23, 1967 could be the day of the start of a nuclear war. On this day, the US Air Force was ready to put into action loaded tactical nuclear bombers. It all started with the fact that the radar systems designed to track Soviet ballistic missiles were completely disabled. The event is viewed by the military as an act of aggression. And then there's the Cold War! Fortunately, before the nuclear bombs were launched, the US Air Force was called off.
Just built at that time, the American Solar Activity Observatory was able to explain the true cause of the massive breakdown of radar equipment. This reason turned out to be a series of powerful solar flares. At least that's what a recently declassified military history document says, describing how humanity nearly destroyed itself due to the oddities of space weather.
"Here's what they call, 'blown, so blown!" Says Delores Knipp, a former US Air Force officer and space weather researcher at the University of Colorado at Boulder.
Space weather is a term that broadly encompasses the most practical aspects of the science of solar-terrestrial communications. Most often, this means solar activity, which begins with solar flares, as well as powerful X-ray and ultraviolet emissions into space. When a solar flare reaches the upper limit of our atmosphere - the ionosphere - it begins to behave like an electromagnetic pulse, an electrical discharge of destructive force that burns out all the electronics around.
Thomas Berger, Director of the Space Weather Prediction Center, comments:
“Radio communication still sometimes suffers from such phenomena. Transmitting radio messages over the horizon becomes difficult. When, for example, airplanes fly over the poles, the only means of communication with the control center are microwave radio waves. But this is only a temporary difficulty, lasting from 10 minutes to several hours at worst."
Following the main flare, the Sun usually releases a giant cloud of magnetized plasma called a coronal mass ejection. This slowly moving “bubble” of stellar material takes 12 hours to several days to reach Earth, but it is the one causing the most severe effects of the solar activity, from the aurora borealis to widespread power outages.
Space weather is fortunately temporary, Berger says. However, it can cause more serious problems if the people in power do not understand what is really going on. This happened during the "great solar storm" in May 1967. At that time, the US military had just begun to constantly monitor solar activity with the equipment of the Air Force Meteorological Service, which provided daily reports to forecasters at NORAD (North American Aerospace Defense Command).
Promotional video:
View of the Sun on May 23, 1967 in the narrow visible range of H-alpha. Bright spots in a photo of the sun indicate the epicenter of solar flares
By May 18, 1967, observers had discovered several sunspots concentrating on one region of the sun's surface. At noon on May 23, a series of solar flares were noted and photographed, including what would later be regarded by scientists as the largest solar radio flare of the 20th century. Soon after the flares were detected, NORAD's Solar Observation Center sent a message to headquarters about an impending giant geomagnetic storm that would reach Earth within the next 36-48 hours.
However, this forecast came with a delay. As a result, the outbreak of the geomagnetic storm "put on the ears" of the Air Force, when the failed ballistic missile early warning system (BMEWS) forced the command to issue an order to prepare for the launch of nuclear weapons.
The radar system used at the time of the Cold War and operating in the far northern latitudes became a textbook example of technologies that could be disabled as a result of space weather. According to Knipp and her co-authors, some of whom are retired US Air Force officers and close to the events described today, this delay in the transmission of information by the Center for Observing and Predicting Solar Activity actually nearly caused a global nuclear catastrophe.
“None of the missiles were launched. We know this for sure,”says Knipp.
“Was war inevitable? As far as we know, the decision took from tens of minutes to several hours, and ultimately the space weather forecast received in the right place and at the right time was able to prevent this global catastrophe.
About 40 hours later, the main geomagnetic storm reached Earth, took out radio communications and then lit up with aurora borealis all the way to New Mexico for almost a week.
NIKOLAY KHIZHNYAK