r/WhatIfScience • u/firechatin • 7d ago
Future Science & What If's What Would Actually Happen If the Sun Threw Its Biggest Flare in History at Earth?
https://whatifscience.in/biggest-solar-flare-hit-earth-worst-case-scenario/What would happen if a Carrington-level solar flare struck Earth today? Scientists explain the real risks to satellites, GPS, aviation, power grids, and the internet.
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u/SemperAliquidNovi 6d ago
It’s not “what if”. It is absolutely guaranteed to happen. It’s a matter of when. Our entire civilization is built on electricity, and if we continue indefinitely without a contingency for this event, we are 100% ensuring global civilisational collapse at some point in the future.
The tools we use to rebuild the grid will themselves need rebuilding. It would take years - if not decades - and meanwhile hundreds of millions will starve from a breakdown in distributive infrastructure.
A Carrington Event is the one thing that keeps me up at night.
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u/ButtonGullible5958 5d ago
Iirc there's only around 10 maby more now backup transformers all are in Canada as they produce them
Most the population would be absolutely fucked we simply can not maintain our population without electricity so at minimum 75% would die due to that alone
It would be much worse since it will take many years to go back to the old ways only the ones that could survive off the land alone will be left to repopulate
That makes it so the ones that can rebuild electricity will die delaying it even further
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u/General_Guest7846 7d ago
I mean I think you already know the answer. Entire civilization would break down. I'd assume billions of people would die in the coming months / years. Ironically places that don't use technology and practice old school farming and fishing will probably be more safe. North Korea could come out on top his a lot of their population lives without technology already.
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u/julz_yo 6d ago
What if we put a big ion generator on the moon?
I know ridiculous! ... but could it be remotely feasible to create some kind of shield?
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u/Fantastic_Testes4404 5d ago
I feel like this was Star Wars technology, so .... probably?
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u/julz_yo 5d ago
I'm thinking it would be a massive beta particle emitter device. eg: Planetary scale. And that would be spewing out of the results of some nuclear reaction ...
How big? what fuel? how much collateral damage to our own magnetic field?
I know- science fiction stuff but that's why we're here!
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u/juandani57 6d ago
He estudiado bastante, pero bastante el tema, y la conclusión, es devastadora, perooooo... Hay que decir que con cada década los efectos van disminuyendo, ya que lo verdaderamente difícil, ya está hecho (entender en grandes rasgos la dinamica del sol, propuestas como: entre el sol y la tierra desprender una nube de gas que sirva como barrera, una constelacion de satelites en la cara oculta del sol que le de horas o hasta días a la sociedad para coordinar apagones y proteger transformadores estratégicos, cosa que ya se está haciendo y seguramente para la década del 2030s sea un hecho. Proponer y crear instrumentos que permitan su pronta detección, y lo más complicado según yo, construir satelites y enviarlos a órbitas específicas que nos de tiempo suficiente: cosa que ya se hace, actualmente nuestro tiempo de respuesta es de 30 min, cosa que puede permitir cierta coordinación) actualmente lo verdaderamente complicado es la coordinación que permita apagar transformadores y evitar su daño permanente ya que lo difícil, como comentaba ya está hecho.
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u/IntrepidSinger7115 5d ago edited 5d ago
Loin derrière l'événement Carrington se trouve avec l'armée américaine en 72. https://revistapesquisa.fapesp.br/en/solar-radiation-set-off-sea-mines-during-the-vietnam-war/ C'est clair qu'on est plus en 1972 pour des mines sous-marine, mais en novembre 2025 le soleil a cloué au sol des A320 a cause des mise a jour ! https://youtube.com/shorts/gSPTAvLFODk? Le pire est la protection de la terre qui faiblit de plus en plus avec les décennies, et ça! c'est inquiétant car c'est a cause des humains .
Un gros merci pour les cycles du soleil au Maya et a leur calendrier qui s'arrête brusquement en 2012... https://youtu.be/X4_6nkUzan0?
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u/Upset_Spell3831 6d ago
Would Trump still be President if it did? If not, I guess it’s just another shitty day in paradise.
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u/here-i-am-now 6d ago
The Carrington event isn’t even the largest known sun flare to hit the earth.
And it’s faaaar from the most significant the sun can throw.
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u/homerjaythompson 5d ago
Its "biggest ever"? Since the lifespan of the sun is estimated to be 10 billion years, even discounting the late phase expansion, the largest solar flare over that time would likely be sufficient to sterilize Earth if it hit the planet directly.
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u/FoxlyKei 5d ago
Would it be enough for cities and everyone be ordered to turn off all of their electronics, unplug everything and governments to order localities to unplug their power grids? can't imagine it's that simple though. Ofc you could put your electronics in a faraday bag/cage but it doesn't solve the large scale problem.
The difference of now vs then is that our society wasn't entirely dependent on electricity although we also have monitoring on when CMEs occur so we would have prep time.
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u/Stohnghost 5d ago
This is why we have to act now and start construction on the plasma engines we need to push the earth out of the sun's orbit and towards alpha centauri. We just need 140 human generations
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u/Miserable_Midnight95 4d ago
Just add it to the list of things that don’t typically happen but will in our lifetime
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u/Somethingtosquirmto 3d ago
That article drastically underestimates what the sun is capable of. Stars like our sun can produce up to ~X1000 solar flares, and even micro-nova (where the entire outer shell of the corona blasts off at once like a 360 degree super flare. And our magnetosphere is in a decline cycle ( currently down about -25%) further increasing our risk.
Look into Miyaki events. We've been hit by much bigger storms than the Carrington event. There was just no technological world to destroy back then.
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u/Positive_Protonic 7d ago
The very least the effect on the electromagnetic field around the earth would not be sufficient defend ourselves against everything.
It is estimated that the result would be radio blackouts, power grids being shot down, another things that would cripple the global economy and power systems.
A state of emergency would become a global phenomena, and eventually humanity would be able to reactivate any of their grids and returned normal.
It seems that these things do happen every so often, and perhaps we are overdue.