Did a huge solar storm blow up deep-sea mines during the Vietnam War? | Smart News

On August 4, 1972, dozens of mines appeared to explode spontaneously from the waters of Hon La, Vietnam. The weapons were placed there as part of Operation Pocket Money, a US plan to block the North Vietnamese shipping trade during the Vietnam War, and were supposed to explode in the presence of ships. But that summer summer of 1972, US troops flying over the island saw no ship that could have caused the mines to explode.

As Becky Ferreira reports for Motherboard, a new study accepted at the journal Space Weather proposed a solution to this mysterious event of war. According to the researchers, the mines were probably triggered by a powerful solar storm, which triggered the magnetic sensors of the mines and caused unexpected explosions.

The new research is based in part on declassified documents from the Navy, "long buried in the archives of the Vietnam War," according to the study's authors. Navy officials immediately opened an investigation into the unexplained detonations and soon suspected that solar activity was the cause.

As Brett Carter explains in the Conversationmany of the seemingly random mines were "magnetic-influenced mines" designed to detect changes in the magnetic field caused by the passage of ships. In the 1970s, it was common knowledge that solar activity could disrupt the Earth's magnetic field, but Navy officials wanted to confirm that this activity could also trigger deeply submerged mines. They consulted experts from the Space Environment Laboratory of the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and concluded with a "high probability" that the mines were fired. by an intense solar storm.

The new study, led by Delores Knipp of the University of Colorado, confirms this assessment. In the days leading up to the blasts, the researchers explained that a region known as MR 11976 was broadcasting "a series of bright light flares, improvements in energetic particles, and ejecta directed to the Earth." A "coronal mass ejection" or huge expulsion of the Sun's plasma and magnetic field reached Earth in just 14.6 hours; typically, according to GizmodoGeorge Dvorsky, it would take a day or two at such an event to touch the geomagnetic field of the Earth. Researchers attribute this speed to two previous impulses, which "cleared the interplanetary path" for ultra-fast ejection.

North Vietnam was not the only region affected by this solar storm. Scientists from several places, including the Philippines, Brazil, and Japan, have also noticed magnetic disturbances in the atmosphere. On August 4 and 5, 1972, US and Canadian power companies reported power outages ranging from mild to severe, as well as telephone and telegraph cuts on a cable connecting Illinois to the United States. 39; Iowa.

The researchers say that the 1972 event was probably of the "Carrington class", referring to a huge solar storm that occurred in 1859. During the Carrington event, named after Richard Carrington, the 39, a British astronomer who for the first time realized that solar activity could cause geomagnetic disturbances on the Earth, "aurora borealis were reported as far south as Cuba and Honolulu, while aurora borealis were also visible. far north than Santiago, Chile, "writes Richard A. Lovett of National Geographic. In the United States, sparks come out of the telegraphic equipment, sometimes triggering fires.

If such an event were to occur today, when our lives were closely tied to technology, the results could be catastrophic, resulting in massive power losses and disruptions in GPS and satellite communications. For example, using modern modeling to better understand solar storms, such as that of 1972, could help us prepare for similar events in the future.

"In our opinion, conclude the authors of the study, this storm deserves a new scientific visit as a great challenge for the space weather community."

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