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An article in the journal Space Weather might have solved a mystery of the Vietnam War and better understand the magnitude of solar activity likely to interfere with the technology on Earth.
From time to time, solar flares (powerful explosions of magnetic energy on the Sun's surface) and coronal mass ejections (plasma clouds released by the Sun) can cause solar storms. The electromagnetic radiation they emit can interfere with communication systems. New research explored the consequences of a storm in 1972.
"The extreme weather events that occurred in early August 1972 had a considerable impact on the US Navy, which has not been widely reported," wrote the team's authors. Study led by Delores Knipp, professor of engineering at the University of Colorado at Boulder. "These effects, long buried in the archives of the Vietnam War, add credibility to the gravity of the storm: an almost instantaneous and unintended detonation of dozens of marine mines south of Hai Phong, in North Vietnam."
The magnetic detonators of these American mines were designed to be triggered when a ship passes nearby. However, the solar storm, which occurred on a star more than 90 million kilometers away, was enough to trigger them. In fact, according to the study, the electromagnetic pulse of the coronal mass injection that ultimately triggered the marine mine reached the Earth in 14.6 hours (which usually takes two days). The study also notes that the additional effects of the storm include radio failures, a visible aurora in parts of the United Kingdom and Spain, as well as damage to solar panels from satellites in orbit.
Documents recently declassified by the Navy reveal that officials suspected solar activity to exploit marine mines, but these documents were not fully examined before the investigation in the Space Journal, reports Gizmodo. The study's authors also called the solar activity in 1972 a "Carrington-class storm," which refers to a geomagnetic storm of 1859 that remains the most powerful ever recorded.
If a Carrington-like solar storm were to occur again, modern technology would be destroyed, researchers at the Boulder, Colorado, National Geographic Weather Prediction Center said. The catastrophic damage would include huge blackouts and the destruction of communication networks. In 2017, analysts at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics estimated that the costs of such an event would be equal to the GDP of the United States. Some scientists think that such extreme solar activity could occur in the next 100 years.
Knipp told Yahoo Finance that by examining how a solar storm had detonated marine mines, scientists could better understand solar activity in the future. "This event gives us an idea of the magnitude of what might be these big storms," Knipp said.
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