Scientists assure that in order to save human civilization, hundreds of billions of dollars will have to be spent on the construction of a space shield
In September 2017, the Sun did not calm down for more than a week, blazing with flares of the most powerful - X-ray class X. Up to X 9.3. Such anomalous activity of the star, which should have been on the decline in its activity, gave scientists a reason to refresh the popular horror story that in the near future the Sun will emit a flash hundreds, or even thousands of times more powerful than recent ones. It will not destroy humanity, but it will cause catastrophic damage to infrastructure.
The September flares painted the sky with flashes of northern lights.
Back in 2012, experts from NASA and the American Academy of Sciences published a paper in which they promised a powerful solar cataclysm with nightmarish consequences for our high-tech civilization.
In subsequent works, scientists continued to insist: trouble will surely happen. It's only a matter of time. Since super-powerful solar flares are by no means supernatural phenomena. They have already happened. For example, in the century before last. The outbreak, which flashed in the fall of 1859, was called the "Carrington event" - after the English astronomer Richard Carrington. He was the first to notice unusually large sunspots, which, in the end, gave rise to that flare. Experts figured that it could qualify for the X100 level. That is, it was more than 10 times more powerful than September 2017.
The "Carrington Event" knocked out telegraphs. They sprinkled sparks, shocked telegraph operators and set fire to paper. Today, such an “event” will burn electrical grids around the world. Not to mention computers, communication satellites, ATMs and telephones.
First of all, the outbreak will render the transformer substations unusable. The end of the world will come - in the sense that the Earth will plunge into darkness. And then into chaos.
And just recently, a new study was released called Impact and mitigation strategy for future solar flares. Its authors Manasvi Lingam and Avi Loeb of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics assure that the Sun will blaze with a super-powerful flare in the next 150 years. The damage from it will be comparable to the US GDP. Approximately $ 20 trillion. Human civilization may not survive such losses. Therefore, it must be protected.
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Lingam and Loeb propose already now to collect about 200 billion dollars and use this money to build a space shield that will shield the Earth from emissions from the Sun and its destructive radiation.
The shield will be an electromagnet - a giant coil of copper wire powered by solar panels.
Scientists plan to place a structure weighing about 100 thousand tons at the Lagrange point - between the Sun and the Earth. This point is located at a distance of 329 thousand kilometers from our planet - where the forces of attraction of the Sun and the Earth balance each other.
A working coil will form a magnetic cocoon. The cocoon will cover the Earth and will not let harmful emissions to it. No matter how powerful they are.
Concept of the protection of the Earth.
"Defenders" urge to spend money now, so as not to end up in the Stone Age later. After all, the "Carrington event" is by no means the limit. A group of Japanese scientists from the University of Nagoya under the leadership of Professor Fusa Miyake found on ancient cedars and oaks traces of a solar flare 20 times more powerful than the "Carrington". It could be classified as X2000. The cataclysm happened in 775 AD. For a long time, of course. But the more time has passed since that terrible event, the higher the likelihood of its repetition.
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And Mars will protect
A project similar to that hatched by Lingam and Loeb is already in place at NASA. But not for Earth, but for Mars. It was proposed by Jim Green, director of NASA's Planetary Science Division Director. The goal is also to create a magnetic cocoon, to hide the Red Planet in it and thereby generally isolate it from the solar wind.
Having protected the Earth, it will be possible to think about Mars (in the figure).
The solar wind gradually blew into space the once very dense Martian atmosphere. And continues to carry away its remains. And according to Green's calculations, if the losses are stopped, the atmosphere will gradually recover.
As the scientist assures, in a few years the temperature on Mars, which is protected from the solar wind by a magnetic shield, will begin to rise. The frozen carbon dioxide will begin to evaporate, the atmospheric pressure will rise, which in less than 10 years will reach half of the earth's. Then the water ice frozen hundreds of millions of years ago will begin to melt and turn into rivers, seas and oceans. Mars will eventually transform. And someday it will become a "second Earth".
The conversion process is lengthy. But it will go automatically.
Protected Mars will gradually come to life.
VLADIMIR LAGOVSKY
