December 1, 2023 • 44 mins
Peter Becker, a professor in the Physics and Astronomy Department in George Mason University’s College of Science, talks with Mason President Gregory Washington about how a predicted major increase in solar storm activity could be a prelude to an “internet apocalypse.” Can we prepare? What could be the consequences? What are the economic implications? A $14 million federal study Becker is leading with the Navy could provide better predictive capabilities and help us better understand exactly what’s at stake.
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Episode Transcript
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Narrator (00:04):
Trailblazers in research, innovators in technology and those who simply have a
good story. All make up the fabricthat is George Mason University.
Where taking on the grand challenges thatface our students, graduates and higher
education is our mission and our passion.Hosted by Mason President Gregory
Washington, this is theAccess to Excellence podcast.
Gregory Washington (00:26):
A team of George Mason University scientists has received an almost
$14 million federal grant to work withthe Department of the Navy to study
and better understand increased solaractivity that could potentially cause
what is being calledan internet apocalypse.
Such an event would disruptall of Earth's communications,
(00:49):
including satellite communications.My guest, Peter Becker,
a professor in the Department of Physicsand Astronomy in Mason's College of
Science, is the principalinvestigator of the research.
Dr. Becker has a PhD in astrophysicsfrom the University of Colorado,
and his research focuses on topicsin high energy astrophysical theory.
(01:14):
His model for studying accretionflows onto rotating neutron stars
has become the standard for researchersstudying these extreme objects.
Now though,
he's part of an effort to protect theEarth from the effects of what many
predict will be an increasein solar storms and their
(01:35):
potential consequences.Peter, welcome to the show.
Peter Becker (01:40):
Thank you so much, President Washington. It's a pleasure to be here with you.
Gregory Washington (01:44):
Well, look, this is, uh,
quite a scary topic anddepending on how you look at it,
but this is one that we needto talk about. Look,
if you go on your Facebook page,
your cover photo though is not apicture of stars or a planet of
solar flares disrupting the,
our communication systemand burning up satellites,
but it's of you playing aguitar in a band at a local bar.
(02:08):
Now, is that your rock and roll alter ego?
Peter Becker (02:10):
Yeah, that's basically the, you just hit the nail on the head there. Yeah.
My other passion in my lifeis my music, my music hobby.
But science is the primary focus. I,
I did figure out early in life that Ididn't want to be a full-time musician.
I realized I was born to be a scientist.
I've never second guessed that decisionbecause my scientific career has been
the source of really all the inspirationand motivation and my main creative
(02:34):
output in my life. So, uh, the musicthing is a lot of fun as a release. It's,
it's a little bit, sort of moreof an emotional thing, I guess,
versus the very sort ofclinical quantitative work that I do as a scientist.
So it's a, it creates anice balance in my life.
Gregory Washington (02:48):
Oh, that's outstanding. So from the photos,
you seem pretty proud ofyour two Les Paul guitars.
What's so special about 'em?
Peter Becker (02:58):
Right. Well, if you play a lot and if you play on stage,
you tend to get connectedto certain instruments.
So it's actually a little bit of a covidstory there because I used to play a
Fender Stratocaster mainly on stage,
but I had about 30 years onthat particular instrument,
and the frets were worn out, so Ineeded to have it re fretted. Well,
I gave it to a luthier over in Manassasand it disappeared for a couple years
(03:18):
because of Covid. So I had nochoice but to, to bring up my Les Pauls.
And then with those on stage, it'sjust a different sort of experience.
They're a little more solid, alittle meatier you might say.
And then it was tough to go backto the Stratocaster after that.
So I started sort of collecting LesPauls a little bit. I don't have too many,
I have about four, I guess. Butthe ones that you saw are my favorites.
(03:39):
Uh, there's a Sunburst and then there'sa, a Blueberry Burst it's called.
And those are dialed in quite nicely now.
So those are my main instrumentson stage at the moment.
Gregory Washington (03:48):
That, that is really,
really interesting because you have thisphenomenal career in astrophysics,
and yet you have this strong,strong connection to music.
So what got you started in music and thenwhat got you started in astrophysics?
Peter Becker (04:03):
Okay, yeah, those are interesting questions.
So I guess music would be mysister's record collection, I guess,
which I wasn't really into thatmuch when I was a young teen.
And she would be playing certainthings that were great, like, uh,
Elton John and, uh, the Beatles andCat Stevens and some other stuff.
But I actually wasn'treally into it at the time,
but it's a funny thing 'cause itsinks in kind of subliminally.
(04:24):
And then when I was an older teenager,
I got really into her record collectionand started listening to the radio.
And I was a teenager in theseventies. So they're all,
all these great bands that were doingsome amazing stuff called Progressive Rock
at the time. So bands like Boston and, uh,
Rush and even Pink Floyd, you couldput in that group. And REO Speedwagon,
they had virtuoso guitar players.
(04:45):
And when I heard that guitarscreaming at me through the speakers,
as they say the old cliche, it spoke tome and I got very interested in that.
So I was an undergraduate in collegeat the time, but as I said, I,
I knew early on that I wanted to be ascientist because I was also into the
original Star Trek shows and Mr.Spock and all that good stuff.
And the Apollo program, I was nine yearsold when the lunar landing occurred.
(05:07):
So that had a huge impact on me, andthat was stronger actually than music.
And so I got interested in astronomy.
And then when I was afreshman in high school,
I actually wasn't doing too well becauseI hadn't discovered astronomy yet.
I remember halfwaythrough my freshman year,
I suddenly just got interested inastronomy. My mother had been, of course,
bugging me to do myhomework and this and that.
(05:27):
And I told her I made a dealwith her. Tell you what,
just stop bugging me and I'll make sureI get all my homework done on time.
And that was the deal we had. And itwas a win-win situation for both of us.
And I excelled after that and graduated,
did quite well in high school and collegeand ended up going to graduate school
in Boulder, Colorado, whichwas fantastic for five years.
And then I've been here at Masonsince '92 and couldn't be happier.
(05:50):
Didn't really expect to spend my wholecareer here, but I've been here over,
over 30 years now. And I've loved it,
been treated very well here and it's beena wonderful environment for me to keep
doing my science and workingwith my graduate students.
Gregory Washington (06:02):
Oh, it's outstanding. So this,
so-called Internet Apocalypse.
Is that just a marketing sloganto get people's attention?
Or are we really talking about, youknow, I, in preparation for this,
I tried to ask myself the fundamentalquestion, what would life be like?
What would we lose if for whateverreason we lost the internet?
Peter Becker (06:25):
So yeah, it is a thing. It's not just hype, it's a real concern.
And it's basically because of coursethe internet is growing and the
internet share of theworld economy is growing.
It's like pushing 20% and at the sametime the sun is ramping up its activity
in a way that hasn't occurred in thelast 20 years or so, in other words,
(06:46):
since before the internet.
So the concern is that solar flare is anevent where there's a huge explosion on
the sun. And we can tell thatbecause we see a huge flash of light.
And that flash of light iskind of like the muzzle flash,
and then there's gas thatis ejected from the sun,
that's called a CoronalMass Ejection or CME.
And that basically can go ina random direction in space.
(07:06):
But when it comes towards Earth,
then all these particles can arriveat Earth and do things to our magnetic
field.
And we can actually tell what's going tohappen when we see that first flash of
light. Because if it formsa halo around the sun,
that's a signature that we're basicallylooking down the barrel of this cannon.
The flare is the muzzle flash,and then the bullet is the CME,
the Coronal Mass Ejection. And if itcomes towards Earth, we see that halo.
(07:29):
And we have about 18 to 36 hours ofwarning. Now, this has happened many,
many times before, and I can talkabout a couple of specific examples,
but we haven't had a severe solarstorm and a large CME strike earth's
magnetic field directly sincepretty much before the internet era.
So the internet is not really built tohave a robust enough infrastructure to
(07:52):
actually survive that kind of disruption.
And we can talk about exactly what I meanby the disruption and how it happens.
So, you know,
it's like anything else that it wasbuilt as strong as it needed to be built
based on the economicbottom line at the time.
And so it's not engineered at the levelthat you're required to handle severe
disruption. The power gridis somewhat in the same boat,
(08:13):
but it's a little bit more robust.
Gregory Washington (08:15):
Oh, man.
Peter Becker (08:15):
But, uh, if we talk about DOD communications,
the original intranetwas called the ARPANET.
And that's actually relativelyhardened, could, might even survive.
But the way I look at it is ifyou build the internet harder,
it's sort of an insurance policyagainst a large disruptive event,
which may or may not happen.
And some people buy insurance andsome people don't buy insurance.
And if you buy it, it can beexpensive, but you're protected.
(08:37):
And if you don't buyit, you're vulnerable.
And the way it is rightnow is the internet really doesn't have that insurance
policy behind it.
'cause it wasn't engineered up to thatkind of a level of hardness to be able to
handle this kind of disruption.
Gregory Washington (08:50):
So just for our audience, and let me make sure I get this right.
Solar storms will become much moreactive over the next 10 years,
is what you're predicting.
And you even said that the peaktime will be between 2024
and 2028. Oh boy. And during that time,
the entire internet could conceivablybe knocked out for a period
(09:14):
of weeks to months inthe event of an extreme
solar flare. Is that right?
Peter Becker (09:21):
Right. So I could sketch that out for you if you like.
Gregory Washington (09:23):
Yeah, please do.
Peter Becker (09:24):
Okay, so let's look at a historical precedent.
So the last large flare in CME thatdirectly struck Earth with this
event called the CarringtonEvent, which was in 1859.
And that was actually recorded andreported by an astronomer in England named
Richard Carrington. And he noticeda tremendous brightening of the sun.
He could actually see with his eyes.And he went outside and it was,
(09:45):
the sun itself hadactually gotten brighter.
They didn't know about CMEsback in those days in 1859,
but about a week or so later,
there was a tremendous disruptionof the telegraph system.
So the telegraph system was theinternet back then, right?
And we had all kinds ofcurrents running up and down the cables,
the telegraph wires,
and there were reports that some operatorsmay have even been electrocuted from
(10:09):
touching the equipment.
And the whole system was brought downfor weeks to months. So as I said,
that was, that was theinternet back in 1859.
And if you think about a telegraphsystem, it's got pretty robust wires.
It's kind of like the home wiringfor a lamp or something like that.
It's pretty large gaugewiring. And it was taken out.
And then if you think about modernelectronics, we have hair-width circuits,
(10:29):
wires running all over the place,and optical fibers and things much,
much more delicate. So in an eventof that magnitude happen now,
it would cause a lot ofcircuits to actually get fried.
If you think about all the, uh, utilityclosets, the relay rooms and the,
the office buildings and on campus here,
there's mysterious closets all over theplace that are chock full of electronic
(10:51):
equipment that's extremely vulnerableto this type of interference.
So if you have a large enough event,
you're talking about hardware actuallygetting fried and people having to go out
into the field to makehardware replacements.
And that's going to take a longtime if it's widespread enough.
So a very large event could actuallytake the internet out for as long as a
month. And there's additionaldamage to the power grid, too,
(11:14):
that we're not really focusing ontoday. But that's part of this as well.
So if you lose the internet,
the economic damage in the U.S. aloneis considered to be on the order about
$10 billion per day. And soif that escalates, you know,
you pretty rapidly run into an economicdisruption that's larger than covid,
let's say, as an example.
(11:34):
Now the 1859 event isn't eventhe largest that we're aware of.
There's evidence of much largerevents in the distant past,
which are scarier because ifyou have an even larger event,
you're talking about a larger amountof disruption and longer time to make
repairs.
But there was an event about 14,000 yearsago that was probably about a hundred
times stronger than this CarringtonEvent I was just referring to.
(11:55):
Now 14,000 years ago, humanswere around on the planet,
but there's no recordedhistory from that time.
So the way that we knowabout it is actually from evidence in tree rings and ice
cores.
And this is actually kind of interesting'cause you've probably heard about how
Carbon-14 is used to date things thatwere alive to determine when they were
alive. Things likethat.
So the way that Carbon-14 actually getsformed is it's actually produced in the
(12:18):
upper atmosphere when cosmic rays andalso particles from the sun strike
nitrogen atoms up there andconvert them into carbon atoms,
which are radioactive Carbon-14atoms. And this happens all the time.
So we're in a bath of radioactiveCarbon-14 in the atmosphere,
constantly filteringdown. It's not dangerous,
but it gets absorbed by living thingsand metabolized into their bodies.
(12:40):
And then when they die,they stop metabolizing it.
So a clock starts running and you cantell from how long it takes the Carbon-14
to naturally decay, whichis a few thousand years,
you can tell how old thatsample is.
So what happened at 14,000 years ago wasthere was a tremendous increase in the
production,
a big spike in the production of thisradioactive Carbon-14 in the upper
(13:01):
atmosphere, which filtered down and wasabsorbed in all sorts of living things,
including these trees that were discoveredin France that actually fossilized
trees, which have ancient tree ringsthat show a big spike in Carbon-14.
So this amazing indirect evidence wasused to deduce that there was a huge solar
flare at that time and a hugeCME that did strike earth.
And we also see evidencefor this enhancement in ice cores from Greenland that
(13:25):
correlate with the same time. So itturns out that events that large,
once we found out about that one,
we started looking throughthe geological record.
And it turns out they seem to happen about every thousand years or so.
So we're overdue for one.
It's been about a thousand years sincethe last one that's kind of comparable to
the one I was justspeaking about occurred.
And it's also been about 150 yearssince the Carrington Event occurred.
(13:48):
And that one's estimated to occurevery hundred years roughly.
So if you think about it,we're on the clock here,
and if you just look at theprobability of things happening,
we're in a sweet spot right now forsome large event.
Gregory Washington (14:01):
No, I hear you.
But, but you know, you, you, youbecome, in terms of your analysis,
you highlight 2024 to 2028.
Why those particular years?
Is it because we're justclose to that time period now?
Or is there something in the mathematicalor physical record that points
(14:22):
you to that, you know,that, time period?
Peter Becker (14:25):
That's a good question. So if you look at the cycles of solar activity,
we haven't talked about that,
but the sun goes through about a 20year cycle where its magnetic poles
can reverse.
And that cycle's also associated withthe increase and decrease in sunspot
number. And when you have a lot of sunspots, you get a lot of flares and CMEs,
because the sunspots are the points wherethe magnetic field comes out and forms
(14:47):
loops, which can sometimes burstreleasing particles into space.
So we're just entering a periodof enhanced solar activity,
which is called Solar Cycle 25right now.
And it's the sun, of course, that'shad millions of solar cycles,
but we've only been keeping track o overa period of 25 of these cycles that we
call it Solar Cycle 25.But then on top of that,
(15:09):
there's also a longer term cycle inthe sun called the Gleissberg Cycle.
That's about a hundred year cycleof overall increase and decrease.
So you have another wave sittingon top of these 20 year bumps.
You have a general increasethat's happening right now on a hundred year cycle,
and that's lined up roughly with thetime period that we're talking about
2024, 2025 through 2028.
(15:32):
So the concern is that there's definitelyan increased risk of a very large CME
launching towards Earth.Now, you know, again,
they're basically gonna go inrandom directions in space,
but is a small chance they'regonna head towards Earth.
But that's already been includedin the statistics.
So we're basically due for somethinglarge heading in our direction,
(15:52):
unless we get very lucky and we havegotten lucky, um, for quite a long time.
Gregory Washington (15:56):
And that's the whole planet, right?
I presume given thedistances travel in the
way in which these waves will expand,
it's not like part of the planetwill be affected and another part
will not. Is that accurate?
Peter Becker (16:12):
That's exactly right. Yeah. So,
so just say a little bit more aboutwhat actually happens physically.
So we have this, we have the flare,as I mentioned, and if we see a halo,
we know the CMEs coming towards Earth,it'll take 18 to 36 hours to get here.
And then when the particles get here,
it's not like they're gonna sweepdown to the surface of the earth and
incinerate life as we knowit.
The magnetic field will protect us.
(16:33):
But what happens is the magnetic fieldsort of gets hit by a hammer of these
particles and that causes waves tomove through Earth's magnetic field.
And physicists know that when youhave a changing magnetic field,
it actually gives rise tochanging electric field.
and an electric field canaccelerate charged particles because as
you know,
electrons are gonna flow from the negativeto positive terminal on a battery,
(16:54):
for example.
Gregory Washington (16:55):
And that's how you fry circuits.
Peter Becker (16:57):
Exactly, you get that current going.
And then there's a kind of a little bitof an insidious thing that people don't
necessarily think about,
but you could actually also get currentsinduced in the surface of the Earth
itself. So if you think, oh, mycomputer's grounded, let's say, well,
grounding actually can biteyou in a case like this.
'cause you can get currents actuallycoming up through the ground that are
(17:17):
induced by these magneticwaves I'm talking about.
But there is a way to deal with it.First of all, again, we have warning,
if we see the flash, we have 18 to 36hours of warning.
Gregory Washington (17:27):
Okay, wait a minute.
Wait a minute. Okay, let'stalk about that.
It's America,, there's a warninggoes out. Okay.
In 18 to 36 hours,
highly likely your electronicsare gonna be fried.
Things are just not going to work.
Peter Becker (17:44):
You basically start unplugging stuff.
Gregory Washington (17:46):
Because the reality is we have very little control over what the sun
does.
Peter Becker (17:51):
like, like none.
Gregory Washington (17:53):
Okay. So the real research is a) giving us
predictive capability, right?
So that's more in alignment of thephysics side of it, right?
You're looking atit being able to predict these,
understanding the magnitude ofwhat's going to hit us
(18:14):
from the perspective of fields.
Peter Becker (18:16):
Yep, exactly.
Gregory Washington (18:17):
Quantifying that.
Peter Becker (18:19):
That's exactly right. So as you said, we, we can't control the sun.
The sun's gonna do whatever itwants to do at any time. So for us,
it's all about two things, predictivecapability. The earlier warning,
the better every hour of warning youhave is gold because you could maybe put
another satellite in a safe mode ordisconnect another transformer from the
power grid.
So you can save millions and millionsof dollars if you have more warning.
(18:43):
So our research is about tryingto amplify that time period,
trying to extend that time period so thatwe can make predictions over a longer
timeframe, uh, which Ican talk about some more.
That's actually the whole basisfor the research program that I'm,
I'm PI on that you mentioned.
Gregory Washington (18:58):
But that's one thing. It's a second piece here. What you do,
what kinds of things shouldpeople do in order to
function? What kinds ofthings could we do now, right?
What's the mitigating strategies thatyou put in place so that we can actually
continue some semblance of operationsuntil you get all of the stuff, right?
(19:20):
Because what'll happen is it'll go downfor a period of time, right?
But you'll bringsystems back online slowly.
And thenit'll take a period of time,
but we'll start to function again, right?
Peter Becker (19:32):
Right. The actual timescale for the event itself would be, again,
about 24 to 48 hours.
That's how much time the matter behanging around Earth causing problems.
Then it would slip past Earth andgo into the outer solar system.
So we get hit by that hammer for24 to 48 hours. But after that,
you can start using radioequipment again, for example,
as long as it's not damaged.
Gregory Washington (19:51):
As long as it's not damaged.
Peter Becker (19:52):
As long as it's not damaged.
Gregory Washington (19:52):
But most of it will be damaged.
Peter Becker (19:54):
Well, not necessarily because if it's unplugged, if it's just sitting there,
it won't necessarily be fried.
But this does depend on the magnitudeof the event that we're talking about.
There's mitigationmeasures there too. Actually,
if you shroud electronicequipment in metal,
like if you wrap a phone in aluminum foil,
that's actually not crackpotthat actually would work.
It creates what we call aFaraday cage,
(20:16):
which runs currents around, so fieldsdon't penetrate that electronic device.
So you can do things like that toprotect your electronic equipment,
small items, but oncethe plasma passes by,
the interference will die down and we'llactually be able to use radios again.
Gregory Washington (20:32):
Okay
so then that's the strategy, right?
How do you structure yourselfsuch that you can create
a Faraday cage around as much of the stuffthat you want to protect as possible?
Right? Faraday cagesaren't hard to build.
I've been in buildingsthat are essentially Faraday cages, right?
Peter Becker (20:51):
Yep, a lot of secure places that.
Gregory Washington (20:53):
Yeah, a lot of secure places. nothing gets in, nothing gets out.
And somaybe that is part of a,
in the 18 to 24 hours or36 hours that you have,
gonna have a hard time buildingthose kind of things, right?
So if you had
a mechanism in place whereyou can protect as much as possible,
that would allow you to get backand get up and going quickly.
(21:15):
That's right. Yeah. And as,
like I was discussing the kind ofanalogy of an insurance policy before.
So I think what's gonna happen is thatthere's going to have to be a moderate
scale event to reallyget people's attention,
and not just in terms of individualsprotecting their devices,
but in terms of society,
doing things like maybeshielding hospitals and places like that where we don't
(21:36):
want electronic equipment to malfunctionbecause it's life sustaining equipment.
Or maybe parts of the network aregonna have to be shielded better.
But that kind of investment probably isn'tgonna happen until there's a moderate
scale event. So my hope is it's not amassive event that causes a huge problem,
but just a large enough event to getsociety's attention and make them realize
that we're entering sort of deeperwater in terms of the solar activity,
(22:00):
and we need to invest in hardeningcertain aspects of the infrastructure.
Now let me ask you this. Who's listening to you?
I know you got research from that's fund,looks like it's funded from the Navy,
and so maybe they're listening,although interestingly enough,
if they're out to sea,
they might be at the safestposition of all .
(22:21):
They're not grounded toanything. But,
but who's listening?
Peter Becker (22:27):
DOD is certainly paying a lot of attention to this. So this is, this is a,
the $14 million grant that the Navy'sproviding because they're very concerned
about maintaining communications.
There's some connections with concernsabout an electromagnetic pulse that
could be associated with anuclear detonation. So there's,
there's a little bit of a crossover therein terms of maintaining communications
across the board in terms of any kindof electromagnetic disruption that could
(22:50):
take place.
But the Navy's particularly concernedabout the sun because of the potential.
The sun is such a huge dominantobject in the solar system.
We really need to understand it betterthan we do right now for lots of
different reasons. I mean, there's,
there's even issues with possiblechanges in the level of solar output that
could change climateon Earth, for example.
There's historical evidencethat that's happened.
(23:11):
So it all comes under the umbrella ofsecurity, at least in the United States,
when the Department of Defense is lookingat a lot more than just rockets and
missiles and defense systems.
They're actually thinking aboutall aspects of national security,
which includes a lot of fundamentalscience research of this type.
So the Navy's very interested in some,
(23:32):
and Mason students are involvedin doing simulations with the sun.
We're running advanced simulations to tryto connect subtle changes in the sun's
behavior with the possibility that we'reseeing the onset of a large event that
might not happen for awhile, for weeks, let's say.
That would be a tremendous amount ofadditional early warning that we would
have. So we're interested in doing that.
(23:54):
We're also heavily involvedin sun observation.
We're helping to run asatellite system called Stereo,
which is actually two satellites inorbit around the same distance from
the sun that the Earth is. Butthey're on the other side of the sun,
giving us sort of an early warningsystem on the backside of the sun.
The sun rotates in about 30 days.
So if a flare is developing onthe backside in a week or so,
(24:17):
it could be on the front sideand could actually burst,
shoot that cannon of matter towards earth.
So being able to see the far side of thesun gives us a much more comprehensive
capability to do this kind of early warning.
So we're involved in dataacquisition and analysis from
Stereo and other satellites,
and also running enhanced sophisticatedsimulation codes to try to improve our
(24:39):
predictive capability of what's gonnahappen in the atmosphere of the sun.
Gregory Washington (24:43):
So for those folk who may not know,
explain the concept of asolar storm and solar flares.
Peter Becker (24:50):
Sure. So, well, we know the Earth has a magnetic field, for example, right?
And we have a magnetic northpole magnetic south pole.
And the north magnetic pole is prettyclose to the geographical north pole,
which is where the Earth's spin axiscomes through. The sun is very similar,
but the field is much stronger,
and the field actually pervades the wholesun down to the core where the nuclear
(25:12):
reactions are taking place in the sun.
So the magnetic field really controlsa lot of the dynamics in the sun.
It controls how the matterboils on the surface of the sun,
where we see convection, hot mattercoming up and cold matter going down.
And we also see the magnetic fieldsticking out of the sun into space.
And so I mentioned sun spotsbefore. They always come in a pair,
(25:34):
north and south polarity, sunspots,
and there's magnetic fieldthat connects those two.
And that magnetic field helps to confinesome of this hot matter that's boiling
up on the surface of the sun. Butwhen the pressure becomes too much,
the magnetic field can'tnecessarily hold it anymore.
And it goes through what's called areconnection event. And that loop kind of,
(25:55):
uh, severs itself.
And then you get a closed loop thatgoes off into space and a smaller
loop that's still connectingthe two sunspots on the sun.
So that's how we're generating all thishigh temperature, high energy matter.
So it's interesting tonote that in some cases,
these extreme solar flares andexplosions could even produce gamma rays,
(26:16):
which are the highest energy form ofradiation that we can observe in the
universe.
And what's surprising about that is thatif you look at the temperature of the
surface of the sun, it's about 6,000Kelvins. And that's basically yellow hot.
If you have a yellow hot matchhead or something like that,
it actually has a temperatureof about 6,000 Kelvins,
like the surface of the sun. But that'sway too cold to produce gamma rays.
(26:38):
So the fact that we see gamma rayssometimes indicates that there's particles
that are actually beingaccelerated by strong fields.
Getting back to whatyou were saying before,
strong electric fields are acceleratingelectrons and protons to such high
energies that we canproduce these gamma rays.
And that's actually my personal area ofresearch where my research intersects
with the solar physics is in tryingto understand how those particles are
(27:01):
accelerated during these flares to suchhigh energies that they can even produce
gamma rays. So wehave a model for that.
It's a interesting challenge becausethe particles that get accelerated don't
come from nowhere.
They're actually members of the populationparticles on the surface of the sun
every day, protons andelectrons and things.
So how do they get up tosuch high energies? They,
(27:23):
they sort of start as members of thisthermal population of 6,000 Kelvins or so,
but then they end upwith such a high energy,
they're basically what wecall relativistic particles,
which means that their kinetic energy ofmotion is equal to or larger than their
rest mass energy,
which is what you get from Einstein'sfamous formula E equals mc squared.
That's the rest-mass energy.But when these particles, uh,
(27:46):
get to what we call relativistic energiesor speeds very close to the speed of
light, their kinetic energy is actuallyeven greater than that rest-mass energy.
And that's how they can producethis higher energy gamma radiation.
So that's a puzzle that we're helpingto contribute to the solution of working
with my students atMason. That's, as I said,
one component of this larger solarphysics research projects that's going on.
Gregory Washington (28:08):
That is interesting.
Why are we not hearing a lotabout this in the mainstream media?
Do you think people just say, thisis just too science fiction for us?
Or it's, I got bigger fish to fry or,
or worry about right now and to worryabout something that I don't know when
it's gonna happen?
Peter Becker (28:26):
Yeah. Well, I mean,
it's true that your average person isnot gonna worry about a solar flare
because they have much more bread andbutter kitchen table issues to deal with
on a daily basis. Buton the other hand, the,
the profile of the possible internetapocalypse is definitely going up in the
media. I,
I've actually been doing a whole bunchof interviews over the last
(28:47):
couple of weeks on the subject.And, and it is in the popular press.
There's an article in the WashingtonPost just a few weeks ago,
the Wall Street Journal's done aseries. Forbes has done a series, um,
because it's.
Gregory Washington (29:00):
What was the catalyst? What prompted people to start paying attention?
Peter Becker (29:03):
It's really the idea that we're seeing a, an increase in solar activity,
which is documented.
And we also are seeing a largecross section for disruption of
global commerce. So I think it hascaught the attention of certain people,
and that's filtering intothe mainstream media.
And I think this is probablygonna get amplified over time,
(29:24):
because as the activity increases, we'regoing to see reports of, for example,
much more extensiveNorthern Lights phenomenon,
which we just saw a week ortwo ago. As a matter of fact,
two medium-sized CMEs actually didreach Earth just about 10 days ago
and created very spectacular aurora, uh,
a couple of weekends ago that were notedin the popular media. But that's again,
(29:48):
kind of the tip of the iceberg.We may see more of that,
but then that's going to transitioninto blackouts here and there,
not necessarily majorblackouts but significant ones.
The last time we saw areally major blackout was, I think in the late nineties,
the whole province of Quebec, Canadalost power for about 24 hours.
So, you know,
(30:08):
events like that are going to start tobecome more common and it's going to get
people's attention and hopefully willcause us to reconsider what we need to do
in order to harden theinfrastructure. Because again,
we can't control the events themselves.
The sun's gonna dowhatever it needs to do.
And the sun's been around forbillions of years and, and you know,
our modern industrial economy's onlybeen around for a couple hundred years,
(30:30):
so it's completely meaningless amountof time compared to the lifetime of the
sun. So if the sun is entering a phasewhere its activity is gonna change,
we just have to deal with that.
And if that may be something that hasnever occurred before in human history,
because we haven't been around that long,
but we are living with a star and93 million miles away, as you said.
So for the most part,it's extremely beneficial.
(30:51):
It's given us life on earthand all the wonderful things,
the photosynthesis and the warmthand the liquid water that we have at,
in this Goldilocks zone where weare 93 million miles from the sun.
But there can also be an alter ego there.
And the sun is definitely capable ofunleashing tremendous firestorms or
particles that can have very seriousconsequences on Earth. Again, I mean,
(31:14):
there's even worries about events thatcould be even a thousand times larger
than the Carrington event in1859. Very unlikely to occur,
much like large earthquakes.
These large solar disruptionsare impossible to predict.
But we know that the large ones arevery infrequent and very widely spaced.
But if you get a large enough event,
then you're talking about much more severedisruption that's difficult to really
(31:37):
extrapolate from anything thatwe've seen before in human history.
Gregory Washington (31:41):
So let's talk about that for one second.
So that storm that you just highlighted,
the one that wassignificantly more potent and
substantial than the Carrington event,
my understanding is thatoccurred about 14,300 years ago.
Something aroundthat time period. Right?
Pete Becker (31:57):
That's the one I was talking about. Yes.
Gregory Washington (31:59):
And so the thought is the research is that there've been
nine such extreme solar events.
One every 1200 some-odd years.
I'm trying to get you to handicap thisfor me
so, so I can place internet betsso that when it happens,
you can't collect yourmoney, right?.
Peter Becker (32:18):
There you go. Always scheming money for Mason.
Gregory Washington (32:22):
Exactly. You know.
Peter Becker (32:24):
The ultimate donor. But anyway, well, it's difficult to put a precise number.
I would say that for an event as largeas this one from 14,000 years ago,
it's probably more like a,
it's probably more like a percent perhundred years for an event that large.
But if you go back tothe Carrington event,
then you're talking definitely about apercent per year for an event that large.
(32:45):
Okay. Because that's gottascale about a hundred years.
So it's about a percent peryear of chance overall.
It's probably only a 10th of a percentor so of this 14,000 year ago event.
Gregory Washington (32:56):
Well then that means we're long overdue.
Peter Becker (32:58):
Yes. That's exactly the concern that the sun is entering, again,
not only Solar Cycle 25, butalso this Gleissberg cycle,
which is a hundred year cycle.
It's beefing up to a level prettysimilar to what it was back in the
Carrington time, becausethat was 150 years ago.
So the Gleisberg cycle would've beenmore active at that time too.
Gregory Washington (33:18):
So there is a cycle that actually is prompting this.
There is a precursor eventsthat are happening that
really give you alarm. Is that right?
Peter Becker (33:28):
Yeah, that's a great analogy.
Because it's much like earthquakesagain, where you can see some precursors,
small earthquakes.And in fact,
we're just seeing this right now inIceland where they're super concerned
because they're having like athousand earthquakes in 24 hours,
if you can imagine. Right?
And they're evacuating villages becausethat definitely could indicate that
there's a large eruption coming. And yes,
(33:48):
there's that kind of correlationof solar activity as well.
But having said that, nobody's runningaround ringing alarm bells yet.
It's not as if we're, I mean,
the analogy with what's happening inIceland breaks down because we're not
seeing that level within the sun,
where we're really anticipatinga huge event, you know,
next week or in the next month.But there is a trend in that direction.
(34:10):
And at a certain point in a year or so,
it's a possibility that alarm bells willbe ringing and we'll actually be much
more worried about this. So the levelof consciousness is definitely going up.
And again, it's also becauseof the vulnerability of economically of the world.
It's not just communicationand sending email,
it's global e-commerce that'ssort of pushing a 20% level now.
(34:32):
If you disrupt that communication,it's a lot more than just email.
It's basically gonna bring the worldeconomy almost grinding to a halt,
except for local economies that can goon in the absence of communication. So,
Yeah. It's, it's a worry.
Gregory Washington (34:46):
It is a worry. So it seems like there should be some
development of backup systemsand backup processes to help
some functions continue.
Peter Becker (34:58):
For one thing, it's a good idea to shield data centers.
We were talking about shielding before.
It's a good idea to shield data centersand also to have redundant backup data
centers. You know, we have these thingson computers called RAIDS systems.
Mm-Hmm.,
R-A-I-D-S with multiple hard drives thatclone off each other and have backups.
So if you lose one hard drive, you don'tlose your whole data archive, right?
Gregory Washington (35:18):
Exactly right.
Peter Becker (35:19):
We kind of need to do that with larger data centers too,
because the effects of thesestorms can be localized.
So you might lose one in the U.S. butanother one in Australia, let's say,
could survive. And the loss of dataitself is of course a big deal.
Data is value these days. Data ismoney. So if data's literally lost,
that's just as bad as losingreal time communication.
Gregory Washington (35:40):
Oh, yeah. Without question. Without question. So where's the playbook?
Who's put that together? So you, you'vehighlighted a number of strategies.
Is somebody puttingthat framework together?
It's almost like an insurance policy.We're talking about when, not if.
And we're probablytalking about our lifetime.
Peter Becker (36:00):
Yeah, I think that's probably true. And so, I mean,
the U.S. government and DOD are definitelyworking on mitigation strategies for
their own equipment andtheir own satellites.
And the large communications companiesare working on mitigation strategies for
their networks and theircommunication satellites.
My concern is mostly with the healthcaresystem because I do feel that there's a
lot of vulnerability there andcivilian infrastructure associated with
(36:22):
healthcare, keeping people alive,
which often relies on data transmissionas well as maintaining power.
So I think there's a sortof a soft spot there.
It's not clear to me that there's anygovernment entity that's looking at that
particular aspect of this problem.
Gregory Washington (36:36):
I see. I see. You know,
we had another astrophysiciston Hakeem Oluseyi who has
also taught here at Mason, and hetalked a lot about space exploration.
If there is an event like this, whatdoes it do for space exploration?
Does it make people alittle more concerned?
Peter Becker (36:54):
Yeah, that's a good question. So space exploration,
the ramifications of allthe solar activity kind of depends on your altitude off
of Earth. So we have the space station in,
so-called low Earth orbit about 300miles above the surface of the Earth.
That's low enough that it's somewhatprotected by Earth's magnetic field.
But you wouldn't wanna leave astronautsup there if you knew that a huge CME was
(37:16):
coming by because they would definitelyreceive harmful amounts of radiation.
But they have a Soyuz capsulehanging around up there,
which is sort of their lifeboat. Andyou do have 18 to 36 hours of warning.
So you could bail out and you could getback to the relative safety of Earth.
And again,
Earth's fields are gonna protectyou from the particles directly.
You'll only have to dealwith the secondary effects of the magnetic waves and
(37:38):
electric currents,
but you're not gonna actually getfried by the particles. In orbit's
another story. Now,
if you go farther out into space andyou're talking about a lunar colony, well,
on the surface of the Moon,you're totally vulnerable.
'cause there's no magneticfield protection at all.
The moon has no magnetic field andit's outside earth's magnetic field.
So the idea would be to buildunderground shelters on the Moon. Okay.
And I actually,
(37:58):
I just read an article a few months agoabout how they found a likely spot where
there's apparently a cave on themoon that they may land near.
Because if it's already dug outas a cave, you can go in there,
hopefully there's no weird lunar creaturesor anything. waiting for you.
, you can go first.
Gregory Washington (38:16):
, Hey, no worries, .
Peter Becker (38:18):
But that would actually provide natural shelter from harmful particles that
we're talking about. Now,
when you go and you starttalking about Mars exploration,
that's when things get really diceybecause it takes years to get to Mars and
you're in deep space, wayoutside Earth's magnetic field.
You can't lead shield a spacecraftlike that because if you use lead,
(38:40):
you're not gonna get it off the ground.It's not gonna launch.
So you've gotta find another way toprotect astronauts on the way to Mars.
Once they get there again,
they would probably digunderground shelters and they.
Gregory Washington (38:50):
They might actually be better off than Earth, right?
Because it'll hit Earthfirst and then, right?
Peter Becker (38:55):
Yeah. And, and for that matter,
it might hit Earth and not hit theseastronauts on the way to Mars because the
path you take to Mars wouldactually be a curved path through space.
So a CME that hits Earth,
you might actually be outta the line offire if you're floating around in space.
But the worry is that you wouldn't be,
and then that's a big concern as to howwe would actually protect astronauts.
(39:16):
They'd have a certain amountof maneuvering capability. But the problem is,
is the cloud of gas we'retalking about is so large,
you couldn't actually manually reorienta spacecraft in a direction that would
get you out of that, because thenyou're not gonna reach Mars at all.
You're gonna end up floating around indeep space forever.
Um, yeah.
So they've gotta develop ways of maybeusing electromagnetic fields to create an
(39:37):
artificial magnetic fieldaround the spacecraft.
Kind of a magnetic cocoonor something.
Might be strong enough todo that. Or other types of shielding.
Again, you can't leadshield the spacecraft,
but you can use layers of foil mightbe effective unless you're dealing with
very high energy particles like thoserelativistic ones I was talking about,
which can actually plowthrough thin sheets of metal.
Gregory Washington (39:58):
So as we wrap up over the next five years,
what is your handicap on aCarrington like event happening?
I think the odds are about 50-50because, and the reason I say that.
Those are amazing odds.
Well, the reason I say thatis because after Carrington,
one might ask when was the last timethere was an event that was close to that,
and that was actually in 2003.
(40:19):
And it happened to be theHalloweens solar storm of 2003,
almost exactly 20 years ago.
And that one was just as large anevent and it almost struck Earth head
on, but it was kind of aglancing blow across earth.
So we had a lot of spectacular auroraand Northern Lights and some localized
power blackouts, but weweren't hit directly by that.
(40:40):
And so that was about 20 years.
So my guess is that an event like that,
that directly strikes Earth isn't reallythat unlikely to happen in the next
five to 10 years.
Wow. That's scary.
Peter Becker (40:53):
But again, an event that large, we would definitely survive.
Gregory Washington (40:56):
We would survive as humans. The question is,
what is mankind's state after that period?
I'm getting on another tangenthere, but this is great.
It's almost like you should be havingconversations now with humanist.
Because the real issue isnot just what happens once
the solar storm hits.
(41:17):
The real issue is what happens tosociety afterward and how do you
manage and mitigate theaftermath? Is it gonna be a month?
Is it going to be two months, right?
Do you remember what happened inthis society when we could not get
toilet paper? Do you rememberduring, during the pandemic?
Do you remember whatensued for something as
(41:41):
as mundane as that?
Peter Becker (41:43):
Right. Yeah. You're absolutely right. And you kind of alluded to this earlier too,
in our conversation when you'retalking about radio communication,
loss of communication, whatcould happen to society.
And I think we're at an especiallydelicate time now because of the rise of
conspiracy theories ingeneral right now.
And the kind of the breakdown of rationalhuman thought or American thought
anyway.
Gregory Washington (42:02):
Without question.
The breakdown of rational thought andthe breakdown of understanding and belief
in science, right?
Peter Becker (42:08):
Yes. Yes. Exactly. So if you think about it,
a communications internet blackoutin a context like that, again,
with the country,
awash in more guns than thereare people in this country.
Gregory Washington (42:20):
And imagine what would people do if they couldn't get ahold of their social media
for a month? This willbe catastrophic for some folk.
Peter Becker (42:26):
Yeah. I have to agree.
We can only hope that maybea better spirit will actually prevail if they're not
able to read the conspiracy theorieson social media during the blackout.
Who knows?
It might be actually returned to a simplertime when we spoke more directly to
our neighbors and actuallyunderstood each other eye to eye.
Gregory Washington (42:45):
It would definitely put you in a more localized setting
for communication and engagement.
Peter Becker (42:50):
So that could be good. Maybe.
I guess that's a good way to endon a bright note at least.
Gregory Washington (42:55):
Yeah, end on a bright note.
That is going to wrap things up for ourAccess to Excellence. Thank you, Peter.
Peter Becker (43:04):
You're welcome.
Gregory Washington (43:06):
Peter Becker, a professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy in George Mason
University's College of Science.
I am Mason President Gregory Washingtonsaying, until next time, stay safe,
Mason Nation.
Narrator (43:20):
If you like what you heard on this podcast,
go to podcast.gmu.edu formore of Gregory Washington's
conversations with thethought leaders, experts,
and educators who take on the grandchallenges facing our students, graduates,
and higher education.That's podcast.gmu.edu.
Trailblazers in research, innovators in technology and those who simply have a
good story. All make up the fabricthat is George Mason University.
Where taking on the grand challenges thatface our students, graduates and higher
education is our mission and our passion.Hosted by Mason President Gregory
Washington, this is theAccess to Excellence podcast.
Gregory Washington (00:26):
A team of George Mason University scientists has received an almost
$14 million federal grant to work withthe Department of the Navy to study
and better understand increased solaractivity that could potentially cause
what is being calledan internet apocalypse.
Such an event would disruptall of Earth's communications,
(00:49):
including satellite communications.My guest, Peter Becker,
a professor in the Department of Physicsand Astronomy in Mason's College of
Science, is the principalinvestigator of the research.
Dr. Becker has a PhD in astrophysicsfrom the University of Colorado,
and his research focuses on topicsin high energy astrophysical theory.
(01:14):
His model for studying accretionflows onto rotating neutron stars
has become the standard for researchersstudying these extreme objects.
Now though,
he's part of an effort to protect theEarth from the effects of what many
predict will be an increasein solar storms and their
(01:35):
potential consequences.Peter, welcome to the show.
Peter Becker (01:40):
Thank you so much, President Washington. It's a pleasure to be here with you.
Gregory Washington (01:44):
Well, look, this is, uh,
quite a scary topic anddepending on how you look at it,
but this is one that we needto talk about. Look,
if you go on your Facebook page,
your cover photo though is not apicture of stars or a planet of
solar flares disrupting the,
our communication systemand burning up satellites,
but it's of you playing aguitar in a band at a local bar.
(02:08):
Now, is that your rock and roll alter ego?
Peter Becker (02:10):
Yeah, that's basically the, you just hit the nail on the head there. Yeah.
My other passion in my lifeis my music, my music hobby.
But science is the primary focus. I,
I did figure out early in life that Ididn't want to be a full-time musician.
I realized I was born to be a scientist.
I've never second guessed that decisionbecause my scientific career has been
the source of really all the inspirationand motivation and my main creative
(02:34):
output in my life. So, uh, the musicthing is a lot of fun as a release. It's,
it's a little bit, sort of moreof an emotional thing, I guess,
versus the very sort ofclinical quantitative work that I do as a scientist.
So it's a, it creates anice balance in my life.
Gregory Washington (02:48):
Oh, that's outstanding. So from the photos,
you seem pretty proud ofyour two Les Paul guitars.
What's so special about 'em?
Peter Becker (02:58):
Right. Well, if you play a lot and if you play on stage,
you tend to get connectedto certain instruments.
So it's actually a little bit of a covidstory there because I used to play a
Fender Stratocaster mainly on stage,
but I had about 30 years onthat particular instrument,
and the frets were worn out, so Ineeded to have it re fretted. Well,
I gave it to a luthier over in Manassasand it disappeared for a couple years
(03:18):
because of Covid
And then with those on stage, it'sjust a different sort of experience.
They're a little more solid, alittle meatier you might say.
And then it was tough to go backto the Stratocaster after that.
So I started sort of collecting LesPauls a little bit. I don't have too many,
I have about four, I guess. Butthe ones that you saw are my favorites.
(03:39):
Uh, there's a Sunburst and then there'sa, a Blueberry Burst it's called.
And those are dialed in quite nicely now.
So those are my main instrumentson stage at the moment.
Gregory Washington (03:48):
That, that is really,
really interesting because you have thisphenomenal career in astrophysics,
and yet you have this strong,strong connection to music.
So what got you started in music and thenwhat got you started in astrophysics?
Peter Becker (04:03):
Okay, yeah, those are interesting questions.
So I guess music would be mysister's record collection, I guess,
which I wasn't really into thatmuch when I was a young teen.
And she would be playing certainthings that were great, like, uh,
Elton John and, uh, the Beatles andCat Stevens and some other stuff.
But I actually wasn'treally into it at the time,
but it's a funny thing 'cause itsinks in kind of subliminally.
(04:24):
And then when I was an older teenager,
I got really into her record collectionand started listening to the radio.
And I was a teenager in theseventies. So they're all,
all these great bands that were doingsome amazing stuff called Progressive Rock
at the time. So bands like Boston and, uh,
Rush and even Pink Floyd, you couldput in that group. And REO Speedwagon,
they had virtuoso guitar players.
(04:45):
And when I heard that guitarscreaming at me through the speakers,
as they say the old cliche, it spoke tome and I got very interested in that.
So I was an undergraduate in collegeat the time, but as I said, I,
I knew early on that I wanted to be ascientist because I was also into the
original Star Trek shows and Mr.Spock and all that good stuff.
And the Apollo program, I was nine yearsold when the lunar landing occurred.
(05:07):
So that had a huge impact on me, andthat was stronger actually than music.
And so I got interested in astronomy.
And then when I was afreshman in high school,
I actually wasn't doing too well becauseI hadn't discovered astronomy yet.
I remember halfwaythrough my freshman year,
I suddenly just got interested inastronomy. My mother had been, of course,
bugging me to do myhomework and this and that.
(05:27):
And I told her I made a dealwith her. Tell you what,
just stop bugging me and I'll make sureI get all my homework done on time.
And that was the deal we had. And itwas a win-win situation for both of us.
And I excelled after that and graduated,
did quite well in high school and collegeand ended up going to graduate school
in Boulder, Colorado, whichwas fantastic for five years.
And then I've been here at Masonsince '92 and couldn't be happier.
(05:50):
Didn't really expect to spend my wholecareer here, but I've been here over,
over 30 years now. And I've loved it,
been treated very well here and it's beena wonderful environment for me to keep
doing my science and workingwith my graduate students.
Gregory Washington (06:02):
Oh, it's outstanding. So this,
so-called Internet Apocalypse.
Is that just a marketing sloganto get people's attention?
Or are we really talking about, youknow, I, in preparation for this,
I tried to ask myself the fundamentalquestion, what would life be like?
What would we lose if for whateverreason we lost the internet?
Peter Becker (06:25):
So yeah, it is a thing. It's not just hype, it's a real concern.
And it's basically because of coursethe internet is growing and the
internet share of theworld economy is growing.
It's like pushing 20% and at the sametime the sun is ramping up its activity
in a way that hasn't occurred in thelast 20 years or so, in other words,
(06:46):
since before the internet.
So the concern is that solar flare is anevent where there's a huge explosion on
the sun. And we can tell thatbecause we see a huge flash of light.
And that flash of light iskind of like the muzzle flash,
and then there's gas thatis ejected from the sun,
that's called a CoronalMass Ejection or CME.
And that basically can go ina random direction in space.
(07:06):
But when it comes towards Earth,
then all these particles can arriveat Earth and do things to our magnetic
field.
And we can actually tell what's going tohappen when we see that first flash of
light. Because if it formsa halo around the sun,
that's a signature that we're basicallylooking down the barrel of this cannon.
The flare is the muzzle flash,and then the bullet is the CME,
the Coronal Mass Ejection. And if itcomes towards Earth, we see that halo.
(07:29):
And we have about 18 to 36 hours ofwarning. Now, this has happened many,
many times before, and I can talkabout a couple of specific examples,
but we haven't had a severe solarstorm and a large CME strike earth's
magnetic field directly sincepretty much before the internet era.
So the internet is not really built tohave a robust enough infrastructure to
(07:52):
actually survive that kind of disruption.
And we can talk about exactly what I meanby the disruption and how it happens.
So, you know,
it's like anything else that it wasbuilt as strong as it needed to be built
based on the economicbottom line at the time.
And so it's not engineered at the levelthat you're required to handle severe
disruption. The power gridis somewhat in the same boat,
(08:13):
but it's a little bit more robust.
Gregory Washington (08:15):
Oh, man.
Peter Becker (08:15):
But, uh, if we talk about DOD communications,
the original intranetwas called the ARPANET.
And that's actually relativelyhardened, could, might even survive.
But the way I look at it is ifyou build the internet harder,
it's sort of an insurance policyagainst a large disruptive event,
which may or may not happen.
And some people buy insurance andsome people don't buy insurance.
And if you buy it, it can beexpensive, but you're protected.
(08:37):
And if you don't buyit, you're vulnerable.
And the way it is rightnow is the internet really doesn't have that insurance
policy behind it.
'cause it wasn't engineered up to thatkind of a level of hardness to be able to
handle this kind of disruption.
Gregory Washington (08:50):
So just for our audience, and let me make sure I get this right.
Solar storms will become much moreactive over the next 10 years,
is what you're predicting.
And you even said that the peaktime will be
and 2028. Oh boy. And during that time,
the entire internet could conceivablybe knocked out for a period
(09:14):
of weeks to months inthe event of an extreme
solar flare. Is that right?
Peter Becker (09:21):
Right. So I could sketch that out for you if you like.
Gregory Washington (09:23):
Yeah, please do.
Peter Becker (09:24):
Okay, so let's look at a historical precedent.
So the last large flare in CME thatdirectly struck Earth with this
event called the CarringtonEvent, which was in 1859.
And that was actually recorded andreported by an astronomer in England named
Richard Carrington. And he noticeda tremendous brightening of the sun.
He could actually see with his eyes.And he went outside and it was,
(09:45):
the sun itself hadactually gotten brighter.
They didn't know about CMEsback in those days in 1859,
but about a week or so later,
there was a tremendous disruptionof the telegraph system.
So the telegraph system was theinternet back then, right?
And we had all kinds ofcurrents running up and down the cables,
the telegraph wires,
and there were reports that some operatorsmay have even been electrocuted from
(10:09):
touching the equipment.
And the whole system was brought downfor weeks to months. So as I said,
that was, that was theinternet back in 1859.
And if you think about a telegraphsystem, it's got pretty robust wires.
It's kind of like the home wiringfor a lamp or something like that.
It's pretty large gaugewiring. And it was taken out.
And then if you think about modernelectronics, we have hair-width circuits,
(10:29):
wires running all over the place,and optical fibers and things much,
much more delicate. So in an eventof that magnitude happen now,
it would cause a lot ofcircuits to actually get fried.
If you think about all the, uh, utilityclosets, the relay rooms and the,
the office buildings and on campus here,
there's mysterious closets all over theplace that are chock full of electronic
(10:51):
equipment that's extremely vulnerableto this type of interference.
So if you have a large enough event,
you're talking about hardware actuallygetting fried and people having to go out
into the field to makehardware replacements.
And that's going to take a longtime if it's widespread enough.
So a very large event could actuallytake the internet out for as long as a
month. And there's additionaldamage to the power grid, too,
(11:14):
that we're not really focusing ontoday. But that's part of this as well.
So if you lose the internet,
the economic damage in the U.S. aloneis considered to be on the order about
$10 billion per day. And soif that escalates, you know,
you pretty rapidly run into an economicdisruption that's larger than covid,
let's say, as an example.
(11:34):
Now the 1859 event isn't eventhe largest that we're aware of.
There's evidence of much largerevents in the distant past,
which are scarier because ifyou have an even larger event,
you're talking about a larger amountof disruption and longer time to make
repairs.
But there was an event about 14,000 yearsago that was probably about a hundred
times stronger than this CarringtonEvent I was just referring to.
(11:55):
Now 14,000 years ago, humanswere around on the planet,
but there's no recordedhistory from that time.
So the way that we knowabout it is actually from evidence in tree rings and ice
cores.
And this is actually kind of interesting'cause you've probably heard about how
Carbon-14 is used to date things thatwere alive to determine when they were
alive. Things likethat.
So the way that Carbon-14 actually getsformed is it's actually produced in the
(12:18):
upper atmosphere when cosmic rays andalso particles from the sun strike
nitrogen atoms up there andconvert them into carbon atoms,
which are radioactive Carbon-14atoms. And this happens all the time.
So we're in a bath of radioactiveCarbon-14 in the atmosphere,
constantly filteringdown. It's not dangerous,
but it gets absorbed by living thingsand metabolized into their bodies.
(12:40):
And then when they die,they stop metabolizing it.
So a clock starts running and you cantell from how long it takes the Carbon-14
to naturally decay, whichis a few thousand years,
you can tell how old thatsample is.
So what happened at 14,000 years ago wasthere was a tremendous increase in the
production,
a big spike in the production of thisradioactive Carbon-14 in the upper
(13:01):
atmosphere, which filtered down and wasabsorbed in all sorts of living things,
including these trees that were discoveredin France that actually fossilized
trees, which have ancient tree ringsthat show a big spike in Carbon-14.
So this amazing indirect evidence wasused to deduce that there was a huge solar
flare at that time and a hugeCME that did strike earth.
And we also see evidencefor this enhancement in ice cores from Greenland that
(13:25):
correlate with the same time. So itturns out that events that large,
once we found out about that one,
we started looking throughthe geological record.
And it turns out they seem to happen about every thousand years or so.
So we're overdue for one
It's been about a thousand years sincethe last one that's kind of comparable to
the one I was justspeaking about occurred.
And it's also been about 150 yearssince the Carrington Event occurred.
(13:48):
And that one's estimated to occurevery hundred years roughly.
So if you think about it,we're on the clock here,
and if you just look at theprobability of things happening,
we're in a sweet spot right now forsome large event.
Gregory Washington (14:01):
No, I hear you.
But, but you know, you, you, youbecome, in terms of your analysis,
you highlight 2024 to 2028.
Why those particular years?
Is it because we're justclose to that time period now?
Or is there something in the mathematicalor physical record that points
(14:22):
you to that, you know,that, time period?
Peter Becker (14:25):
That's a good question. So if you look at the cycles of solar activity,
we haven't talked about that,
but the sun goes through about a 20year cycle where its magnetic poles
can reverse.
And that cycle's also associated withthe increase and decrease in sunspot
number. And when you have a lot of sunspots, you get a lot of flares and CMEs,
because the sunspots are the points wherethe magnetic field comes out and forms
(14:47):
loops, which can sometimes burstreleasing particles into space.
So we're just entering a periodof enhanced solar activity,
which is called Solar Cycle 25right now.
And it's the sun, of course, that'shad millions of solar cycles,
but we've only been keeping track o overa period of 25 of these cycles that we
call it Solar Cycle 25.But then on top of that,
(15:09):
there's also a longer term cycle inthe sun called the Gleissberg Cycle.
That's about a hundred year cycleof overall increase and decrease.
So you have another wave sittingon top of these 20 year bumps.
You have a general increasethat's happening right now on a hundred year cycle,
and that's lined up roughly with thetime period that we're talking about
2024, 2025 through 2028.
(15:32):
So the concern is that there's definitelyan increased risk of a very large CME
launching towards Earth.Now, you know, again,
they're basically gonna go inrandom directions in space,
but is a small chance they'regonna head towards Earth.
But that's already been includedin the statistics.
So we're basically due for somethinglarge heading in our direction,
(15:52):
unless we get very lucky and we havegotten lucky, um, for quite a long time.
Gregory Washington (15:56):
And that's the whole planet, right?
I presume given thedistances travel in the
way in which these waves will expand,
it's not like part of the planetwill be affected and another part
will not. Is that accurate?
Peter Becker (16:12):
That's exactly right. Yeah. So,
so just say a little bit more aboutwhat actually happens physically.
So we have this, we have the flare,as I mentioned, and if we see a halo,
we know the CMEs coming towards Earth,it'll take 18 to 36 hours to get here.
And then when the particles get here,
it's not like they're gonna sweepdown to the surface of the earth and
incinerate life as we knowit.
The magnetic field will protect us.
(16:33):
But what happens is the magnetic fieldsort of gets hit by a hammer of these
particles and that causes waves tomove through Earth's magnetic field.
And physicists know that when youhave a changing magnetic field,
it actually gives rise tochanging electric field.
and an electric field canaccelerate charged particles because as
you know,
electrons are gonna flow from the negativeto positive terminal on a battery,
(16:54):
for example.
Gregory Washington (16:55):
And that's how you fry circuits.
Peter Becker (16:57):
Exactly, you get that current going.
And then there's a kind of a little bitof an insidious thing that people don't
necessarily think about,
but you could actually also get currentsinduced in the surface of the Earth
itself. So if you think, oh, mycomputer's grounded, let's say, well,
grounding actually can biteyou in a case like this.
'cause you can get currents actuallycoming up through the ground that are
(17:17):
induced by these magneticwaves I'm talking about.
But there is a way to deal with it.First of all, again, we have warning,
if we see the flash, we have 18 to 36hours of warning
Gregory Washington (17:27):
Okay, wait a minute.
Wait a minute. Okay, let'stalk about that.
It's America,
In 18 to 36 hours,
highly likely your electronicsare gonna be fried.
Things are just not going to work.
Peter Becker (17:44):
You basically start unplugging stuff.
Gregory Washington (17:46):
Because the reality is we have very little control over what the sun
does.
like, like none
Gregory Washington (17:53):
Okay. So the real research is a) giving us
predictive capability, right?
So that's more in alignment of thephysics side of it, right?
You're looking atit being able to predict these,
understanding the magnitude ofwhat's going to hit us
(18:14):
from the perspective of fields.
Peter Becker (18:16):
Yep, exactly.
Gregory Washington (18:17):
Quantifying that.
Peter Becker (18:19):
That's exactly right. So as you said, we, we can't control the sun.
The sun's gonna do whatever itwants to do at any time. So for us,
it's all about two things, predictivecapability. The earlier warning,
the better every hour of warning youhave is gold because you could maybe put
another satellite in a safe mode ordisconnect another transformer from the
power grid.
So you can save millions and millionsof dollars if you have more warning.
(18:43):
So our research is about tryingto amplify that time period,
trying to extend that time period so thatwe can make predictions over a longer
timeframe, uh, which Ican talk about some more.
That's actually the whole basisfor the research program that I'm,
I'm PI on that you mentioned.
Gregory Washington (18:58):
But that's one thing. It's a second piece here. What you do,
what kinds of things shouldpeople do in order to
function? What kinds ofthings could we do now, right?
What's the mitigating strategies thatyou put in place so that we can actually
continue some semblance of operationsuntil you get all of the stuff, right?
(19:20):
Because what'll happen is it'll go downfor a period of time, right?
But you'll bringsystems back online slowly.
And thenit'll take a period of time,
but we'll start to function again, right?
Peter Becker (19:32):
Right. The actual timescale for the event itself would be, again,
about 24 to 48 hours.
That's how much time the matter behanging around Earth causing problems.
Then it would slip past Earth andgo into the outer solar system.
So we get hit by that hammer for24 to 48 hours. But after that,
you can start using radioequipment again, for example,
as long as it's not damaged.
Gregory Washington (19:51):
As long as it's not damaged.
Peter Becker (19:52):
As long as it's not damaged.
Gregory Washington (19:52):
But most of it will be damaged.
Peter Becker (19:54):
Well, not necessarily because if it's unplugged, if it's just sitting there,
it won't necessarily be fried.
But this does depend on the magnitudeof the event that we're talking about.
There's mitigationmeasures there too. Actually,
if you shroud electronicequipment in metal,
like if you wrap a phone in aluminum foil,
that's actually not crackpotthat actually would work.
It creates what we call aFaraday cage,
(20:16):
which runs currents around, so fieldsdon't penetrate that electronic device.
So you can do things like that toprotect your electronic equipment,
small items, but oncethe plasma passes by,
the interference will die down and we'llactually be able to use radios again.
Gregory Washington (20:32):
Okay
so then that's the strategy, right?
How do you structure yourselfsuch that you can create
a Faraday cage around as much of the stuffthat you want to protect as possible?
Right? Faraday cagesaren't hard to build.
I've been in buildings
Peter Becker (20:51):
Yep, a lot of secure places that.
Gregory Washington (20:53):
Yeah, a lot of secure places. nothing gets in, nothing gets out.
And somaybe that is part of a,
in the 18 to 24 hours or36 hours that you have,
gonna have a hard time buildingthose kind of things, right?
So if you had
a mechanism in place whereyou can protect as much as possible,
that would allow you to get backand get up and going quickly.
(21:15):
That's right. Yeah. And as,
like I was discussing the kind ofanalogy of an insurance policy before.
So I think what's gonna happen is thatthere's going to have to be a moderate
scale event to reallyget people's attention,
and not just in terms of individualsprotecting their devices,
but in terms of society,
doing things like maybeshielding hospitals and places like that where we don't
(21:36):
want electronic equipment to malfunctionbecause it's life sustaining equipment.
Or maybe parts of the network aregonna have to be shielded better.
But that kind of investment probably isn'tgonna happen until there's a moderate
scale event. So my hope is it's not amassive event that causes a huge problem,
but just a large enough event to getsociety's attention and make them realize
that we're entering sort of deeperwater in terms of the solar activity,
(22:00):
and we need to invest in hardeningcertain aspects of the infrastructure.
Now let me ask you this. Who's listening to you?
I know you got research from that's fund,looks like it's funded from the Navy,
and so maybe they're listening,although interestingly enough,
if they're out to sea,
they might be at the safestposition of all
(22:21):
They're not grounded toanything
but who's listening?
Peter Becker (22:27):
DOD is certainly paying a lot of attention to this. So this is, this is a,
the $14 million grant that the Navy'sproviding because they're very concerned
about maintaining communications.
There's some connections with concernsabout an electromagnetic pulse that
could be associated with anuclear detonation. So there's,
there's a little bit of a crossover therein terms of maintaining communications
across the board in terms of any kindof electromagnetic disruption that could
(22:50):
take place.
But the Navy's particularly concernedabout the sun because of the potential.
The sun is such a huge dominantobject in the solar system.
We really need to understand it betterthan we do right now for lots of
different reasons. I mean, there's,
there's even issues with possiblechanges in the level of solar output that
could change climateon Earth, for example.
There's historical evidencethat that's happened.
(23:11):
So it all comes under the umbrella ofsecurity, at least in the United States,
when the Department of Defense is lookingat a lot more than just rockets and
missiles and defense systems.
They're actually thinking aboutall aspects of national security,
which includes a lot of fundamentalscience research of this type.
So the Navy's very interested in some,
(23:32):
and Mason students are involvedin doing simulations with the sun.
We're running advanced simulations to tryto connect subtle changes in the sun's
behavior with the possibility that we'reseeing the onset of a large event that
might not happen for awhile, for weeks, let's say.
That would be a tremendous amount ofadditional early warning that we would
have. So we're interested in doing that.
(23:54):
We're also heavily involvedin sun observation.
We're helping to run asatellite system called Stereo,
which is actually two satellites inorbit around the same distance from
the sun that the Earth is. Butthey're on the other side of the sun,
giving us sort of an early warningsystem on the backside of the sun.
The sun rotates in about 30 days.
So if a flare is developing onthe backside in a week or so,
(24:17):
it could be on the front sideand could actually burst,
shoot that cannon of matter towards earth.
So being able to see the far side of thesun gives us a much more comprehensive
capability to do this kind of early warning.
So we're involved in dataacquisition and analysis from
Stereo and other satellites,
and also running enhanced sophisticatedsimulation codes to try to improve our
(24:39):
predictive capability of what's gonnahappen in the atmosphere of the sun.
Gregory Washington (24:43):
So for those folk who may not know,
explain the concept of asolar storm and solar flares.
Peter Becker (24:50):
Sure. So, well, we know the Earth has a magnetic field, for example, right?
And we have a magnetic northpole magnetic south pole.
And the north magnetic pole is prettyclose to the geographical north pole,
which is where the Earth's spin axiscomes through. The sun is very similar,
but the field is much stronger,
and the field actually pervades the wholesun down to the core where the nuclear
(25:12):
reactions are taking place in the sun.
So the magnetic field really controlsa lot of the dynamics in the sun.
It controls how the matterboils on the surface of the sun,
where we see convection, hot mattercoming up and cold matter going down.
And we also see the magnetic fieldsticking out of the sun into space.
And so I mentioned sun spotsbefore. They always come in a pair,
(25:34):
north and south polarity, sunspots,
and there's magnetic fieldthat connects those two.
And that magnetic field helps to confinesome of this hot matter that's boiling
up on the surface of the sun. Butwhen the pressure becomes too much,
the magnetic field can'tnecessarily hold it anymore.
And it goes through what's called areconnection event. And that loop kind of,
(25:55):
uh, severs itself.
And then you get a closed loop thatgoes off into space and a smaller
loop that's still connectingthe two sunspots on the sun.
So that's how we're generating all thishigh temperature, high energy matter.
So it's interesting tonote that in some cases,
these extreme solar flares andexplosions could even produce gamma rays,
(26:16):
which are the highest energy form ofradiation that we can observe in the
universe.
And what's surprising about that is thatif you look at the temperature of the
surface of the sun, it's about 6,000Kelvins. And that's basically yellow hot.
If you have a yellow hot matchhead or something like that,
it actually has a temperatureof about 6,000 Kelvins,
like the surface of the sun. But that'sway too cold to produce gamma rays.
(26:38):
So the fact that we see gamma rayssometimes indicates that there's particles
that are actually beingaccelerated by strong fields.
Getting back to whatyou were saying before,
strong electric fields are acceleratingelectrons and protons to such high
energies that we canproduce these gamma rays.
And that's actually my personal area ofresearch where my research intersects
with the solar physics is in tryingto understand how those particles are
(27:01):
accelerated during these flares to suchhigh energies that they can even produce
gamma rays. So wehave a model for that.
It's a interesting challenge becausethe particles that get accelerated don't
come from nowhere.
They're actually members of the populationparticles on the surface of the sun
every day, protons andelectrons and things.
So how do they get up tosuch high energies? They,
(27:23):
they sort of start as members of thisthermal population of 6,000 Kelvins or so,
but then they end upwith such a high energy,
they're basically what wecall relativistic particles,
which means that their kinetic energy ofmotion is equal to or larger than their
rest mass energy,
which is what you get from Einstein'sfamous formula E equals mc squared.
That's the rest-mass energy.But when these particles, uh,
(27:46):
get to what we call relativistic energiesor speeds very close to the speed of
light, their kinetic energy is actuallyeven greater than that rest-mass energy.
And that's how they can producethis higher energy gamma radiation.
So that's a puzzle that we're helpingto contribute to the solution of working
with my students atMason. That's, as I said,
one component of this larger solarphysics research projects that's going on.
Gregory Washington (28:08):
That is interesting.
Why are we not hearing a lotabout this in the mainstream media?
Do you think people just say, thisis just too science fiction for us?
Or it's, I got bigger fish to fry or,
or worry about right now and to worryabout something that I don't know when
it's gonna happen?
Peter Becker (28:26):
Yeah. Well, I mean,
it's true that your average person isnot gonna worry about a solar flare
because they have much more bread andbutter kitchen table issues to deal with
on a daily basis. Buton the other hand, the,
the profile of the possible internetapocalypse is definitely going up in the
media. I,
I've actually been doing a whole bunchof interviews
(28:47):
couple of weeks on the subject.And, and it is in the popular press.
There's an article in the WashingtonPost just a few weeks ago,
the Wall Street Journal's done aseries. Forbes has done a series, um,
because it's.
Gregory Washington (29:00):
What was the catalyst? What prompted people to start paying attention?
Peter Becker (29:03):
It's really the idea that we're seeing a, an increase in solar activity,
which is documented.
And we also are seeing a largecross section for disruption of
global commerce. So I think it hascaught the attention of certain people,
and that's filtering intothe mainstream media.
And I think this is probablygonna get amplified over time,
(29:24):
because as the activity increases, we'regoing to see reports of, for example,
much more extensiveNorthern Lights phenomenon,
which we just saw a week ortwo ago. As a matter of fact,
two medium-sized CMEs actually didreach Earth just about 10 days ago
and created very spectacular aurora, uh,
a couple of weekends ago that were notedin the popular media. But that's again,
(29:48):
kind of the tip of the iceberg.We may see more of that,
but then that's going to transitioninto blackouts here and there,
not necessarily majorblackouts but significant ones.
The last time we saw areally major blackout was, I think in the late nineties,
the whole province of Quebec, Canadalost power for about 24 hours.
So, you know,
(30:08):
events like that are going to start tobecome more common and it's going to get
people's attention and hopefully willcause us to reconsider what we need to do
in order to harden theinfrastructure. Because again,
we can't control the events themselves.
The sun's gonna dowhatever it needs to do.
And the sun's been around forbillions of years and, and you know,
our modern industrial economy's onlybeen around for a couple hundred years,
(30:30):
so it's completely meaningless amountof time compared to the lifetime of the
sun. So if the sun is entering a phasewhere its activity is gonna change,
we just have to deal with that.
And if that may be something that hasnever occurred before in human history,
because we haven't been around that long,
but we are living with a star and93 million miles away, as you said.
So for the most part,it's extremely beneficial.
(30:51):
It's given us life on earthand all the wonderful things,
the photosynthesis and the warmthand the liquid water that we have at,
in this Goldilocks zone where weare 93 million miles from the sun.
But there can also be an alter ego there.
And the sun is definitely capable ofunleashing tremendous firestorms or
particles that can have very seriousconsequences on Earth. Again, I mean,
(31:14):
there's even worries about events thatcould be even a thousand times larger
than the Carrington event in1859. Very unlikely to occur,
much like large earthquakes.
These large solar disruptionsare impossible to predict.
But we know that the large ones arevery infrequent and very widely spaced.
But if you get a large enough event,
then you're talking about much more severedisruption that's difficult to really
(31:37):
extrapolate from anything thatwe've seen before in human history.
Gregory Washington (31:41):
So let's talk about that for one second.
So that storm that you just highlighted,
the one that wassignificantly more potent and
substantial than the Carrington event,
my understanding is thatoccurred about 14,300 years ago.
Something aroundthat time period. Right?
Pete Becker (31:57):
That's the one I was talking about. Yes.
Gregory Washington (31:59):
And so the thought is the research is that there've been
nine such extreme solar events.
One every 1200 some-odd years.
I'm trying to get you to handicap thisfor me
so, so I can place internet betsso that when it happens,
you can't collect yourmoney, right?
Peter Becker (32:18):
There you go. Always scheming money for Mason.
Gregory Washington (32:22):
Exactly. You know.
Peter Becker (32:24):
The ultimate donor. But anyway, well, it's difficult to put a precise number.
I would say that for an event as largeas this one from 14,000 years ago,
it's probably more like a,
it's probably more like a percent perhundred years for an event that large.
But if you go back tothe Carrington event,
then you're talking definitely about apercent per year for an event that large.
(32:45):
Okay. Because that's gottascale about a hundred years.
So it's about a percent peryear of chance overall.
It's probably only a 10th of a percentor so of this 14,000 year ago event.
Gregory Washington (32:56):
Well then that means we're long overdue.
Peter Becker (32:58):
Yes. That's exactly the concern that the sun is entering, again,
not only Solar Cycle 25, butalso this Gleissberg cycle,
which is a hundred year cycle.
It's beefing up to a level prettysimilar to what it was back in the
Carrington time, becausethat was 150 years ago.
So the Gleisberg cycle would've beenmore active at that time too.
Gregory Washington (33:18):
So there is a cycle that actually is prompting this.
There is a precursor eventsthat are happening that
really give you alarm. Is that right?
Peter Becker (33:28):
Yeah, that's a great analogy.
Because it's much like earthquakesagain, where you can see some precursors,
small earthquakes.And in fact,
we're just seeing this right now inIceland where they're super concerned
because they're having like athousand earthquakes in 24 hours,
if you can imagine. Right?
And they're evacuating villages becausethat definitely could indicate that
there's a large eruption coming. And yes,
(33:48):
there's that kind of correlationof solar activity as well.
But having said that, nobody's runningaround ringing alarm bells yet.
It's not as if we're, I mean,
the analogy with what's happening inIceland breaks down because we're not
seeing that level within the sun,
where we're really anticipatinga huge event, you know,
next week or in the next month.But there is a trend in that direction.
(34:10):
And at a certain point in a year or so,
it's a possibility that alarm bells willbe ringing and we'll actually be much
more worried about this. So the levelof consciousness is definitely going up.
And again, it's also becauseof the vulnerability of economically of the world.
It's not just communicationand sending email,
it's global e-commerce that'ssort of pushing a 20% level now.
(34:32):
If you disrupt that communication,it's a lot more than just email.
It's basically gonna bring the worldeconomy almost grinding to a halt,
except for local economies that can goon in the absence of communication. So,
Yeah. It's, it's a worry.
Gregory Washington (34:46):
It is a worry. So it seems like there should be some
development of backup systemsand backup processes to help
some functions continue.
Peter Becker (34:58):
For one thing, it's a good idea to shield data centers.
We were talking about shielding before.
It's a good idea to shield data centersand also to have redundant backup data
centers. You know, we have these thingson computers called RAIDS systems.
Mm-Hmm.
R-A-I-D-S with multiple hard drives thatclone off each other and have backups.
So if you lose one hard drive, you don'tlose your whole data archive, right?
Gregory Washington (35:18):
Exactly right.
Peter Becker (35:19):
We kind of need to do that with larger data centers too,
because the effects of thesestorms can be localized.
So you might lose one in the U.S. butanother one in Australia, let's say,
could survive. And the loss of dataitself is of course a big deal.
Data is value these days. Data ismoney. So if data's literally lost,
that's just as bad as losingreal time communication.
Gregory Washington (35:40):
Oh, yeah. Without question. Without question. So where's the playbook?
Who's put that together? So you, you'vehighlighted a number of strategies.
Is somebody puttingthat framework together?
It's almost like an insurance policy.We're talking about when, not if.
And we're probablytalking about our lifetime.
Peter Becker (36:00):
Yeah, I think that's probably true. And so, I mean,
the U.S. government and DOD are definitelyworking on mitigation strategies for
their own equipment andtheir own satellites.
And the large communications companiesare working on mitigation strategies for
their networks and theircommunication satellites.
My concern is mostly with the healthcaresystem because I do feel that there's a
lot of vulnerability there andcivilian infrastructure associated with
(36:22):
healthcare, keeping people alive,
which often relies on data transmissionas well as maintaining power.
So I think there's a sortof a soft spot there.
It's not clear to me that there's anygovernment entity that's looking at that
particular aspect of this problem.
Gregory Washington (36:36):
I see. I see. You know,
we had another astrophysiciston Hakeem Oluseyi who has
also taught here at Mason, and hetalked a lot about space exploration.
If there is an event like this, whatdoes it do for space exploration?
Does it make people alittle more concerned?
Peter Becker (36:54):
Yeah, that's a good question. So space exploration,
the ramifications of allthe solar activity kind of depends on your altitude off
of Earth. So we have the space station in,
so-called low Earth orbit about 300miles above the surface of the Earth.
That's low enough that it's somewhatprotected by Earth's magnetic field.
But you wouldn't wanna leave astronautsup there if you knew that a huge CME was
(37:16):
coming by because they would definitelyreceive harmful amounts of radiation.
But they have a Soyuz capsulehanging around up there,
which is sort of their lifeboat. Andyou do have 18 to 36 hours of warning.
So you could bail out and you could getback to the relative safety of Earth.
And again,
Earth's fields are gonna protectyou from the particles directly.
You'll only have to dealwith the secondary effects of the magnetic waves and
(37:38):
electric currents,
but you're not gonna actually getfried by the particles. In orbit's
another story. Now,
if you go farther out into space andyou're talking about a lunar colony, well,
on the surface of the Moon,you're totally vulnerable.
'cause there's no magneticfield protection at all.
The moon has no magnetic field andit's outside earth's magnetic field.
So the idea would be to buildunderground shelters on the Moon. Okay.
And I actually,
(37:58):
I just read an article a few months agoabout how they found a likely spot where
there's apparently a cave on themoon that they may land near.
Because if it's already dug outas a cave, you can go in there,
hopefully there's no weird lunar creaturesor anything.
Gregory Washington (38:16):
Peter Becker (38:18):
But that would actually provide natural shelter from harmful particles that
we're talking about. Now,
when you go and you starttalking about Mars exploration,
that's when things get really diceybecause it takes years to get to Mars and
you're in deep space, wayoutside Earth's magnetic field.
You can't lead shield a spacecraftlike that because if you use lead,
(38:40):
you're not gonna get it off the ground.It's not gonna launch.
So you've gotta find another way toprotect astronauts on the way to Mars.
Once they get there again,
they would probably digunderground shelters and they.
Gregory Washington (38:50):
They might actually be better off than Earth, right?
Because it'll hit Earthfirst and then, right?
Peter Becker (38:55):
Yeah. And, and for that matter,
it might hit Earth and not hit theseastronauts on the way to Mars because the
path you take to Mars wouldactually be a curved path through space.
So a CME that hits Earth,
you might actually be outta the line offire if you're floating around in space.
But the worry is that you wouldn't be,
and then that's a big concern as to howwe would actually protect astronauts.
(39:16):
They'd have a certain amountof maneuvering capability. But the problem is,
is the cloud of gas we'retalking about is so large,
you couldn't actually manually reorienta spacecraft in a direction that would
get you out of that, because thenyou're not gonna reach Mars at all.
You're gonna end up floating around indeep space forever.
Um, yeah.
So they've gotta develop ways of maybeusing electromagnetic fields to create an
(39:37):
artificial magnetic fieldaround the spacecraft.
Kind of a magnetic cocoonor something.
Might be strong enough todo that. Or other types of shielding.
Again, you can't leadshield the spacecraft,
but you can use layers of foil mightbe effective unless you're dealing with
very high energy particles like thoserelativistic ones I was talking about,
which can actually plowthrough thin sheets of metal.
Gregory Washington (39:58):
So as we wrap up over the next five years,
what is your handicap on aCarrington like event happening?
I think the odds are about 50-50because, and the reason I say that.
Those are amazing odds.
Well, the reason I say thatis because after Carrington,
one might ask when was the last timethere was an event that was close to that,
and that was actually in 2003.
(40:19):
And it happened to be theHalloweens solar storm of 2003,
almost exactly 20 years ago.
And that one was just as large anevent and it almost struck Earth head
on, but it was kind of aglancing blow across earth.
So we had a lot of spectacular auroraand Northern Lights and some localized
power blackouts, but weweren't hit directly by that.
(40:40):
And so that was about 20 years.
So my guess is that an event like that,
that directly strikes Earth isn't reallythat unlikely to happen in the next
five to 10 years.
Wow. That's scary.
Peter Becker (40:53):
But again, an event that large, we would definitely survive.
Gregory Washington (40:56):
We would survive as humans. The question is,
what is mankind's state after that period?
I'm getting on another tangenthere, but this is great
It's almost like you should be havingconversations now with humanist.
Because the real issue isnot just what happens once
the solar storm hits.
(41:17):
The real issue is what happens tosociety afterward and how do you
manage and mitigate theaftermath? Is it gonna be a month?
Is it going to be two months, right?
Do you remember what happened inthis society when we could not get
toilet paper
Do you remember whatensued for something as
(41:41):
as mundane as that?
Peter Becker (41:43):
Right. Yeah. You're absolutely right. And you kind of alluded to this earlier too,
in our conversation when you'retalking about radio communication,
loss of communication, whatcould happen to society.
And I think we're at an especiallydelicate time now because of the rise of
conspiracy theories ingeneral right now.
And the kind of the breakdown of rationalhuman thought or American thought
anyway.
Gregory Washington (42:02):
Without question.
The breakdown of rational thought andthe breakdown of understanding and belief
in science, right?
Peter Becker (42:08):
Yes. Yes. Exactly. So if you think about it,
a communications internet blackoutin a context like that, again,
with the country,
awash in more guns than thereare people in this country.
Gregory Washington (42:20):
And imagine what would people do if they couldn't get ahold of their social media
for a month? This willbe catastrophic for some folk.
Peter Becker (42:26):
Yeah. I have to agree.
We can only hope that maybea better spirit will actually prevail if they're not
able to read the conspiracy theorieson social media during the blackout.
Who knows?
It might be actually returned to a simplertime when we spoke more directly to
our neighbors and actuallyunderstood each other eye to eye.
Gregory Washington (42:45):
It would definitely put you in a more localized setting
for communication and engagement.
Peter Becker (42:50):
So that could be good. Maybe.
I guess that's a good way to endon a bright note at least.
Gregory Washington (42:55):
Yeah, end on a bright note.
That is going to wrap things up for ourAccess to Excellence. Thank you, Peter.
Peter Becker (43:04):
You're welcome.
Gregory Washington (43:06):
Peter Becker, a professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy in George Mason
University's College of Science.
I am Mason President Gregory Washingtonsaying, until next time, stay safe,
Mason Nation.
Narrator (43:20):
If you like what you heard on this podcast,
go to podcast.gmu.edu formore of Gregory Washington's
conversations with thethought leaders, experts,
and educators who take on the grandchallenges facing our students, graduates,
and higher education.That's podcast.gmu.edu.
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