As humans, we really struggle to understand the expansiveness of time. We get excited about once-a-century storms and forget that where once-a-century events may be exciting, for every ten of them there is an even bigger once a millennium event and even a larger once per 10,000-year event. Our history hasn’t always done a good job convincing us the trials of past, low technology societies, reflect issues that can be devastating to our modern world.

Consider the Sun. It has been hanging out with Earth since before our world even had a moon. We periodically worry about solar flares or coronal mass ejections knocking out a few satellites, but it turns out we are not worrying nearly enough.

New research appearing in Nature Communications and led by Chiara Paleari describes a previously unknown solar energetic particle event that occurred in 7,176 BCE and may be larger than any previously known. This discovery was made using a northern Greenland ice core sample and confirmed using additional ice cores from Greenland and Antarctica.

When large solar energetic particle events hit our atmosphere, they interact and produce carbon-14, beryllium-10, and chlorine-36. The ratios of these radiogenic isotopes can tell a story of how energetic the blast was and when it was.

Prior research had identified events around 660 BCE, 774/5 CE, and 993/4 CE. Of these, the 774/5 event was the largest and may be the same strength as the newly discovered 7,176 BCE event. These were the kinds of events that would have impacted even early humans by harming the ozone layer and increasing cancers.

Our modern infrastructure is just not designed to handle these events. According to the research paper: The life of astronauts in space could be endangered due to high radiation exposure connected to [solar energetic particle events]. Further, they can have serious repercussions on communication and power systems, satellite life expectancy, and aircraft operations.

Past, much smaller storms, have taken down power grids in Canada, permanently damaged transformers in South Africa, and wreaked havoc on communications.

The authors of this paper point out that in doing risk assessments for life as we know it, we need to take into account this kind of solar activity — something we don’t currently do. And while I didn’t need one more society-destroying possibility in my life, knowing what could happen means we can prepare. So, now we all know — the Sun could randomly try and destroy modern society as we know it, and we need to find a way to be prepared.

More Information

Lund University press release

“Cosmogenic radionuclides reveal an extreme solar particle storm near a solar minimum 9125 years BP,” Chiara I. Paleari et al., 2022 January 11, Nature Communications