How Scientists Plan to Protect Earth from a Solar Storm Capable of Returning Civilization to the Stone Age

For most of the time, Earth is reliably protected from the Sun's dangerous radiation. A magnetosphere exists around the planet — a region created by a magnetic field that arises due to the movement of molten iron in the Earth's core.

It acts as a kind of shield, deflecting most of the charged particles constantly flying from the Sun. Some of these particles are directed towards Earth's magnetic poles, and when the solar wind is particularly active, they become visible as the Northern and Southern Lights. This activity follows cycles that average 11 years.

But from time to time, the Sun ejects enormous clouds of plasma into space — so-called coronal mass ejections. When such an ejection is directed towards Earth, a solar storm occurs. With particularly great power, it can literally "punch through" the planet's natural defenses.

The consequences can affect more than just space technology. Solar storms can damage satellites, disrupt GPS and radio communications, disable electronics, and induce strong currents in power lines, threatening large-scale emergency outages.

Scientists note that such events are not so rare, but truly extreme solar storms, capable of causing global consequences, occur approximately once a century.

When the Sun Already Caused Problems

History knows several examples where solar activity has already led to serious consequences.

In March 1989, a solar storm disabled the power grid in the Canadian province of Quebec. Over six million people were left without electricity for nine hours.

An even more dangerous event occurred in 2012. At that time, one of the most powerful solar storms in at least the last century and a half took place. Earth avoided a direct hit only because it had already passed through that section of its orbit.

The latest example is the Gannon solar storm in 2024. It forced New Zealand energy companies to take precautionary measures in advance. In the US, at the same time, a GPS outage occurred during the planting campaign in North and South Dakota, as well as northern Minnesota. According to estimates, farmers lost about a billion dollars.

Coronal mass ejection on the Sun, recorded by the NASA Solar Dynamics Observatory on June 18, 2015. A cloud of solar plasma erupted into open space. It is precisely such ejections that can cause powerful solar storms when they reach Earth. The image was obtained in the extreme ultraviolet range and colored red for clarity.

Space "Airbag"

It is precisely for such exceptional situations that the StormWall project ("Storm Wall") has been proposed.

Its authors are Boston University Professor Brian Walsh, University of Michigan Professor Daniel Welling, and their colleagues.

They propose placing six large satellites, approximately the size of a school bus, in geostationary orbit. In normal mode, they will await their turn.

If monitoring systems detect a truly dangerous solar storm, the satellites will simultaneously release a large quantity of barium, lithium, or sodium.

Within minutes, sunlight transforms this substance into a shield of ionized gas, which slows down the approaching giant blob of plasma.

As a result, on the surface of our planet, a potential global catastrophe capable of completely disabling power grids turns into an ordinary night spectacle for those who decide to look up at the sky and admire the Northern Lights.

According to researchers' calculations, this plasma barrier will operate for about six hours — enough time for the most dangerous plasma masses to bypass Earth, and for their impact to significantly weaken.

Daniel Welling compares the system to a car's airbag. It will only be deployed when all other protective measures are deemed insufficient. And, like an airbag, it's a one-time operation. After deployment, the entire system will effectively have to be rebuilt.

Павялічыць

Can Earth Really Be Protected from Solar Storms?

The idea looks promising, but even its authors admit that several very complex tasks need to be solved before practical implementation.

The first is the timely prediction of solar storms. Unlike ordinary weather, space weather is currently much harder to predict. Scientists do not have enough sensors in space, and the processes that lead to powerful coronal ejections are very complex.

Additionally, an international decision-making system will be needed: after detecting a threat, specialists must confirm that other protection methods are no longer sufficient, and only then authorize the use of StormWall.

Another difficulty is the launch. To create the plasma shield, approximately 380,000 kilograms of barium, lithium, or sodium need to be launched into geostationary orbit. This orbit is approximately 36,000 kilometers from the Earth's surface — 68 times farther than Starlink satellites fly.

Today, this is an almost unrealistic task. It would require numerous launches of the world's most powerful rockets.

Researchers place certain hopes on SpaceX's American Starship, which is still undergoing testing, as well as China's super-heavy rocket "Changzheng-9" (Long March 9), whose first launch is expected in the early 2030s.

Even under the most optimistic scenario, the project's authors note that additional research and experiments alone will take at least five years.

How Much Could It Cost?

Preliminary estimates show that creating StormWall could cost from several tens to approximately 100 billion dollars.

The authors believe that this is not such a large sum for humanity. They note that next year alone, technology companies plan to invest about a trillion dollars in building infrastructure for artificial intelligence. Against this backdrop, the cost of a system that could protect data centers from a catastrophic solar storm, capable of turning them into inoperable heaps of steel and silicon, no longer seems fantastical.

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