This Multi-Trillion Dollar Disaster Is Coming, And Solar Astronomy Is Our Prime Defense

On December 12, 2019, the world's most powerful solar observatory —

the National Science Foundation's Daniel K. Inouye Solar Telescope — opened its eyes for the first time. With a whopping 4-meter diameter primary mirror and a unique, off-center design,

the Inouye Solar Telescope is capable of imaging features as small as

30 km in size on the Sun. Already, in its first light images released on

January 29, 2020, features in-between the Texas-sized convective cells

were revealed for the first time ever.

But the Inouye Solar Telescope offers so much more than just gorgeous

images of our parent star; it's one of a number of solar astronomy

projects that are all working together to protect our planet from a

multi-trillion dollar disaster that's definitely coming: a catastrophic

solar flare. It could come anytime this year or not for another few

centuries, but studying the Sun is the only way to be prepared. Here's

the science behind these beautiful images and videos.Until 1859, solar astronomy was extremely simple: scientists studied

the light from the Sun, the sunspots that occasionally dotted the Sun's

surface, and viewed the corona during solar eclipses. But in 1859, solar

astronomer Richard Carrington happened to be looking at the Sun,

tracking a large, irregular sunspot, when something unprecedented

occurred: a "white light flare" was observed, intensely bright and

moving across the spot itself for around 5 minutes before disappearing

entirely.

This turned out to be the first-ever observation of what we now call a solar flare.

Some 18 hours later (about three to four times the speed of most solar

flares), the largest geomagnetic storm in recorded history occurred on

Earth. Aurorae were observed around the world: miners awoke in the

Rockies; newspapers could be read by the aurora's light; the bright

green curtain appeared in Cuba, Hawaii, Mexico and Colombia. Telegraph

systems, even when disconnected, experienced their own induced currents,

causing shocks and even starting fires.If such an event were to occur today, the infrastructure we have for

electricity and electronics would experience devastating effects that could easily cause trilions of dollars in damage.

The problem is that geomagnetic storms, formed when certain space

weather events penetrate our magnetosphere and interact with the

atmosphere, can cause massive currents to flow even in electronic

circuits that are completely disconnected.

A key science goal for solar astronomy is to understand how the

interplay between the Sun, the space weather that causes these storms,

and the effects on Earth itself are all related. This is why the NSF's

Inouye Solar Telescope has, as its prime science goal, to measure the

magnetic field of the Sun at three different layers:

at the photosphere,in the chromosphere,and throughout the solar corona.With its enormous 4-meter diameter and its five science instruments —

four of which are spectro-polarimeters designed for measuring the Sun's

magnetic properties — it will measure the magnetic fields on and around

the Sun as never before.