The Cosmic Talk #9

Hey nerds! Welcome back to the Cosmic Talk. It has been a very long awaited return. For those of you who haven’t kept up with any space or Earth news in the past year, COVID-19 has taken over the world in a global pandemic. As we move further into the changes it has created for us Earthlings, schools are starting back up after the abrupt ending during spring break. Hence, here I am, back again with a new periodical. This year, my senior year, as I struggle in my physics class in order to provide more info for you fellow readers and the Cosmic Talk, I will be formatting these articles differently this year. I will only be focusing on one subject per edition rather than three. I feel that this will allow me to include more accurate detail in each topic rather than multiple short ones.  

With that, let’s get into this month’s issue.

I know that it might seem like 2020 will be the year the world ends, with how corona is continuing to take over, but did you know the world actually almost ended in 2012? And no, I’m not referencing the end of the Maya calendar. No, this is something that went completely under our noses, or should I say, completely over our heads.

The phenomena that nearly ended the world, and very well could still end the world in our lifetime, is known as a geomagnetic storm. According to the Space Weather Prediction Center, a geomagnetic storm is a major disturbance of Earth’s magnetosphere that occurs when there is a very efficient exchange of energy from the solar wind into the space surface on the sun, which can lead to the release of a massive amount of Coronal Mass (almost sounds familiar huh?). These events are pretty common, and every so often when being perfectly aligned with Earth, the CME can intersect with the surface. This is what happened in 2012. The CME that arose from the solar storm had barely missed our planet. 

Scientist’s have discussed what this ‘end of the world’ would entail, and with how reliant Earth is on technology, a CME could very well finish us off for good. If a CME as strong as the one that occurred in 2012 happened today, all of the day to day technology would cease to work, Earth’s satellites would fail, nuclear reactor coolers would stop working which would lead to dangerous circumstances and radiation would increase in the atmosphere. The list goes on. One thing leads to another, contact between people and countries would get cut off, which ultimately could end with countries of the world imagining the worst. This could be many things, but the worst that could come from this would be a world war. If such a thing broke out, things would only continue to fall from there, until society, maybe, would be no more. Of course, these events are merely scientists speculating the possibilities, but you never know what may happen. 

Studies show that these events happen very frequently, and one study showed that the bigger events happen at least once every 25 years, so expect one in your lifetime, and don’t be surprised when the cities go dark, and the stars begin to shine a little brighter. 

2020 is the year for anything to go wrong, but lets hope that a Coronal Mass Ejection isn’t one of those things. We’ve had enough Corona(l) already. Here’s to surviving the year so far and everything that’s been thrown at us. This has been the Cosmic Talk, until next time!