Mihkel Pajusalu, an associate professor of space technology at the University of Tartu, said the consequences of the weekend's solar storm were minimal.

"As far as I know, nothing serious happened. In some locations, the GPS technology did not function properly, as one of the satellites went offline for two hours before resuming operations. There were also issues with the Starlink communication satellites," he said.

During stronger solar storms, the density of the Earth's upper atmosphere fluctuates. As a result, near-Earth satellites must deal with a higher-than-normal force that has the potential to modify their orbit. For example, 38 of the 49 Starlink satellites that were launched in 2022 fell back into the atmosphere, even after a minor solar storm.

The outbreak was also somewhat smaller than expected, according to the associate professor. "According to the warning provided on Wednesday, May 8, the storm was supposed to be rather strong, but it was less than expected," he said.

"The known strongest storm occurred in 1859, and it was two to four times stronger than this one," Pajusalu added.

The storm of 1859, known as the Carrington event, created visible storm surges across the planet and burned out telegraph lines in many places. The eruption also caused fires and sparks at telegraph stations.

Another very powerful storm occurred in 1989 when a power outage plunged much of Canada and parts of the northern U.S. into darkness. Six million people were left without electricity. Communication and power grid failures were seen all over the world.

This weekend, the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) predicted some power grid disruption. In addition to GPS, there was also some interference from higher-frequency radio signals.

The robustness of contemporary electronics has been significantly improved

Pajusalu said that contemporary spacecraft and ground technology are designed to resist solar storms.

"The larger the electronics chip, the greater its ability to absorb geomagnetic interference. But lately, everything is getting smaller. So electronic components are becoming smaller and thus less prone to harm," he explained.

The large-scale systems that receive electromagnetic radiation are the most vulnerable. "For instance, just by virtue of their size, massive energy transmission structures – where extremely huge antennas are constructed – absorb more of the harmful energy," he said.

Shields are also being added to electronics today. "For example, the sound that once emanated from the speakers is no longer audible. The speakers used to sound off right away when someone was near the phone. Simply put, electronics are now far more resilient to various electromagnetic disruptions and our understanding of the effects of electromagnetic disturbances is growing."

Nevertheless, to reduce the risk, several science satellites temporarily suspended their observations over the weekend.

Humanity has drawn lessons from history

Heigo Mõlder, a TalTech researcher, who is involved in the study of electric fields and power lines, said that the length of the lines and their east-west orientation played an important role in both the Carrington event and the Canadian blackout.

"In the past, we had very long power lines, even intercontinental power lines: the telegraph lines used to communicate with Morse were thousands of kilometers long. In such long lines, magnetic currents also generate induced extra voltages."

Nowadays, Mõlder said, such things are already taken into account when building power lines. "History has been learned. In general, long lines are no longer built, but substations are used instead and capacitors neutralize excess voltage," he said.

There is also an increasing use of optical cables. These cannot be induced with anything extra, he said. "More and more cable lines are optical and are pressed into the ground. The only additional voltage is still generated by large high-voltage lines and other things that are very long. In Russia, for example, there are still very long power lines."

"I haven't heard of solar-induced magnetic currents causing problems in power lines anywhere these days," Mõlder added.

In recent years, there has also been much discussion about the possibility that more powerful solar storms could threaten thousands of kilometers of undersea fiber optic cables and communications networks. However, an analysis by Google researchers a few years ago showed that they could withstand a storm an order of magnitude stronger than the Carrington event.

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