Earth is entering peak solar flare season

Picture this: You’re out for a walk one day when, suddenly, the northern lights fill the sky with waves of glowing blue and green. Puzzled, you pull out your phone – but there’s no internet connection or cell service. And it’s not just you; the entire world has been transported back to the analog age.

While this may sound like the beginning of an alien invasion movie, it’s actually a scenario experts say has a small chance of happening in the near future as the Sun enters a particularly active period for solar flares.

☀️🧲 Let’s break it down… The Sun’s magnetic field operates on a cycle where its north and south poles swap places every 11 years. As the magnetic fields change, so does the level of activity on the Sun’s surface, which varies from high to low (and back again).

After several years of downtime, the Sun is now entering a high activity phase that’s projected to peak in 2025.

• And more solar activity means higher odds of a catastrophic flare happening – like the Carrington Event in 1859, when a solar electromagnetic pulse (EMP) disrupted Earth’s magnetic field so much that telegraph systems in the Northern Hemisphere were rendered useless.
• So far, Earth hasn’t experienced a major solar flare in the digital age. But if it were to occur, experts predict the flare would wipe out power grids, internet signals, and satellite/radio comms across the globe for weeks or months, costing ~$7 billion per day in lost productivity for the US alone.

✋ Yes, but: Much like a flop from Martin Scorsese, these powerful solar flares don’t happen very often. There’s between a 1.6% and 12% chance Earth will experience an extended internet disruption within the next decade due to a solar flare, per a 2021 study from UC Irvine.