The Spinning Magnet

by Alanna Mitchell

  But perhaps there was another killing mechanism. New findings in the 1970s and 1980s were showing that the magnetic poles are important for navigation in almost every species studied, in both large and surprisingly small ways. Many use the field to find food, mates, breeding spots, and wintering areas. But, for example, radishes also align their roots according to the field and dogs prefer to urinate facing north-south rather than east-west, as long as they are off leash and not in the midst of a geomagnetic storm. What happens when the poles are reversing? Can species that rely on the poles to navigate still get where they need to go? If not, do they die en masse?

  What of the perils of radiation? The long-standing belief was that the Earth’s thick atmosphere provides a physical barrier against a full blast of solar and cosmic radiation whether the magnetic shield holds or not. Exposure to radiation while you are in an airplane, for example, increases along with altitude and latitude, suggesting that the atmosphere is a filter except near the poles, where field lines converge. But what if the field were decimated? A clue came from ocean sediment records. They showed an increase in radioactive beryllium, a marker of the collision of cosmic particles with the atmosphere during the last reversal. That meant more cosmic particles were getting into the upper atmosphere before colliding and scattering damaging secondary radiation. But it was not a sign that the destructive energetic particles themselves were reaching the surface, just that secondary radiation was.

  And then there was the investigation into damage not from ionizing particles but from a lack of ozone. The Dutch chemist Paul Crutzen, who won a Nobel Prize in 1995 for his work on the ozone hole, showed in 1975 that when solar protons produced ions in the stratosphere, that led, through other chemical reactions, to the widespread destruction of the ozone layer. In turn, that allowed damaging ultraviolet radiation to reach the surface of the Earth. Other investigators found that during a reversal, vast swaths of ozone would vanish, allowing greater amounts of ultraviolet B radiation to strike the surface of the Earth, especially near whatever poles there were at that time. Ultraviolet B radiation is not ionizing, but it can affect living tissue in myriad destructive ways. Skin cancer and long-term damage to the eyes and to the immune system are all linked to the rays. More recently, the French geophysicist Jean-Pierre Valet proposed that the disintegration of the ozone hole could be one factor in the final die-off of the world’s Neanderthal population. The last small populations vanished at the time of the Laschamp excursion forty thousand years ago, when the field was at one-tenth of its normal strength. Neanderthals’ tendency to be fair-skinned and redheaded suggests they were especially susceptible to ultraviolet B damage, just as modern humans with that coloration are.

  In the end, the evidence of how past reversals had affected past life—and therefore how it would affect life during a future reversal—was slender, largely theoretical, and inconclusive. The German physicists Karl-Heinz Glassmeier and Joachim Vogt, who did an extensive review of the relevant studies in 2010, concluded, “It is yet too early to decide in which way magnetic field driven bio-chemical effects influence evolution on Earth.” The implication is that they do.

  I chatted with Baker about these ideas in his expansive office in Boulder, sitting at a large table overlooking the mountains, a wall of books behind us. A Hollywood casting agent would assign him the role of four-star general. He is tall and broad-shouldered with straw-straight, gingery hair. He has learned how to sit stock-still, as if conserving energy for battle. He has testified before the US Congress about the near miss of 2012, and you can see the authority his presence would wield there. You could even conclude that he’s solemn, except that from time to time that prairie-dry wit breaks through and a rare smile creeps across his face. He’s unusual among scientists. There are those who spend their whole careers looking at a single thing. One might examine coral reefs. Another, the chemistry of plastic polymers. Yet another, the physics of how to create primordial atomic particles. Baker’s passion is to put things together across disciplines. He is a synthesizer. There are the leaf inspectors and then there are the forest rangers, is how he puts it. He is the latter. And when he assembles the evidence, he finds a more declarative story about what will happen to life on Earth during a reversal.

  Unquestionably, more potentially deadly solar energetic particles will reach closer to the Earth, he said. That access will be episodic rather than continual. In places, these damaging particles will be able to reach the Earth’s surface right down to where humans live. It’s the same story with galactic cosmic rays, which are a continual threat. The atmosphere will deflect only the slower, less dangerous particles.

  The atmosphere will be a double-edged sword when it comes to radiation; it will both protect and harm. As high-energy particles hit the Earth’s atmosphere, some will splinter into secondary particles, producing an additional shower of damaging radiation, akin to what the beryllium marker from the last excursion showed. An unanswered question is how well the Earth’s atmosphere will withstand the violence of solar wind during the few thousand years or so of a reversal. The general agreement is that a reversal is too short-lived for much atmospheric corrosion to take place. But Baker thinks of Mars. Over time, the relentless solar wind and radiation tore away its atmosphere when that planet’s internal magnetic field died. He would like to see scientists do a closer analysis of how the Earth’s atmosphere will fare.

  He wants to be clear that he does not envision a world with no protection from the terrestrial magnetic field. Instead, the weak multi-pole magnetic field of the reversal will protect parts of the Earth in complex asymmetric bands. They will not follow latitudinal lines. Some mid-latitude portions of the Earth—where humans tend to congregate—will be less protected than others. On the other hand, whole longitudinal lines could be free of any magnetic shield at all. That means there could be radiation hot spots, just as there are ozone hot spots today from holes in the atmosphere’s ozone layer. And not just radiation hot spots, but also lethal patches of intense ultraviolet B radiation from an ozone layer chemically abraded by increased upper-atmosphere solar and cosmic radiation.

  “To me it’s a very real possibility that parts of the planet will not be habitable,” he said.

  For him, examining the past for clues about the next reversal has its limits. The next reversal will be fundamentally different from any that preceded it for one crucial reason: The world the shield protects today is different from what it was the last time the poles succeeded in reversing 780,000 years ago, or tried to 40,000 years ago. For one thing, there are 7.5 billion humans on it, twice as many as in 1970. Last time the poles reversed, human ancestors were here in small numbers. “It completely changes the game,” Baker said.

  We have cut down forests, plowed the lands, hunted creatures for meat and sport, changed the chemistry of the air and the ocean through the burning of fossil fuels, built industries and cities and networks of roads. As of 2012, nearly one-third of species that the World Conservation Union had assessed were under threat of extinction. And it’s hard for animals to move freely to and find new living spaces not already taken by human civilization and industry. Humans are driving the Earth system, just as geological forces, such as volcanoes, have done in the past. At the same time, the magnetic field, independent of human action and impossible to control, is plotting insurrection. It speaks to Baker of the possibility of a malignant confluence of effects. Of tipping points. Even if in previous times a reversal was not accompanied by widespread destruction, today it might be. When multiple hazards conflate, the result can be unimaginably worse than a single event. What if the magnetic shield is down and a solar storm erupts and there happens to be a giant earthquake?

  But in addition to the biological hazards connected to a reversal, there are the dangers to the vast cyber-electric cocoon we have encased ourselves in, stretching from the depths of the ocean into space. It is the central processing system of modern civilization. And parti
cles don’t have to reach the surface to do damage. The Earth’s atmosphere is populated with satellites, the International Space Station, and airplanes filled with crew and passengers. Solar energetic particles can rip through their sensitive, miniaturized electronics. Telluric currents produced by cosmic plasma–generated magnetic oscillations in the atmosphere can blast the transformers needed for the electrical grid. And satellite timing systems governing the grids could be knocked out, which would unravel the electric and electronic infrastructure. Because the electrical system is so extraordinarily connected, a failure in just one part of it will spread like wildfire across the globe. Never, in the history of the world, has there been this combination of systems that respond so dramatically to the changing magnetic field.

  “We are sitting ducks,” Baker said.

  CHAPTER 28

  the cost of catastrophe

  The cost of disaster interests the constitutionally cold-blooded insurance industry. Loss of life, limb, and infrastructure is a business consideration. Which is not to say that those in the industry lack compassion. But it is to say that they look at the future through a different lens from most. That’s why, for example, some of the earliest people to take a serious look at the impacts on society from increasing carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere were in the insurance industry. They wanted to know what they were up against.

  For the same “what if” reasons, the insurance industry is keenly interested in the idea of how magnetic disturbances from space can affect the economy. In fact, since 2015, under British law, insurers must calculate their exposure to the effects of extreme space weather. These are the solar flares, coronal mass ejections, and solar energetic particle episodes that can happen without warning as well as a full-on Carrington-class superstorm. But the actuarial discipline of assessing those costs is in its infancy. It gained impetus after the near miss of 2012. The analyses so far do not extend to the world in the throes of a pole switch with a wasted magnetic field, when storms whose effects outpace the fury of the Carrington will be common. The analysts also confine themselves to geomagnetic disturbances that remain in the upper atmosphere, damaging electrical infrastructure through telluric currents. It’s not a vision of what would happen if damaging solar energetic particles hit next door. But if you are looking for clues about the world with a diminished shield, the insurance industry’s examinations of solar weather provide a few.

  The Helios Solar Storm Scenario, for one. Developed in late 2016 at the Cambridge Centre for Risk Studies, part of Cambridge University’s Judge Business School and financed in part by the insurance giant American International Group (AIG), the study is the global insurance industry’s first test for exposure to space weather. It is based on interviews with astrophysicists, economists, engineers, utility managers, and catastrophe modelers, among others. It looked at what space weather would cost the US insurance industry, based on three possible scenarios of single-strike damage to American electrical infrastructure. The scenarios ranged from a relatively modest solar storm to a superstorm whose effects could spin out over months. For example, damaged extra-high-voltage transformers used in electrical grids could take a year or more to rebuild and replace.

  US insurance industry losses alone were pegged at between $55 billion and nearly $334 billion, depending on how long the damage lasted. Most of that would come from the loss of power to customers. To put that in perspective, the devastation wrought by Hurricane Katrina in 2005 cost the insurance industry $45 billion. The losses from solar weather could beggar some insurance companies, throwing them out of business.

  The same Cambridge group took the research further in a study published in 2017, also financially supported by AIG. This one looked at what it would cost the American economy per day if an extreme solar storm hit the electrical grid, and then it added in ripple-down effects on the economies of other nations dependent on trade with the United States, finally arriving at global estimates. The rationale is that the modern economy is so dependent on the electrical grid that failure there would cascade globally.

  The study takes as its starting point the fact that most of the activity during an extreme geomagnetic storm happens in the band from 50 to 55 degrees geomagnetic latitude. In the northern hemisphere, that takes in Chicago; Washington, DC; New York; London; Paris; Frankfurt; and Moscow. In the south, it would affect Melbourne and Christchurch. Then it devises four scenarios, each of which reaches across different latitudinal bands in the United States, and therefore into different industries and economic centers. The span of the solar storm would depend on its power. It could move closer to the equator if the storm were severe.

  The least expensive scenario affects 8 percent of the US population in a band mainly along the Canadian border. It costs the American economy $6.2 billion a day in direct and indirect losses, or 15 percent of the US daily gross domestic product. Adding in global costs takes the total to $7 billion a day. (All figures are in constant 2011 US dollars.) As the hit spreads across more of the country under other scenarios, costs also grow. The final scenario, affecting all but the most southerly US states and two-thirds of the country’s population, comes with a daily price tag of $41.5 billion to the US economy. That makes up 100 percent of daily US economic production. Additionally there would be $7 billion in costs to the global economy, for a total of $48.5 billion a day. In each scenario, every sector of the economy is affected, from manufacturing to finance to mining to construction to government. The countries outside the United States most affected are those whose economies are most intertwined with America’s: China, Canada, Mexico, Japan, Germany, and the United Kingdom.

  The study’s authors take pains to note that they are only looking at the damage to the electric grid in the United States of a one-day event and knock-on effects from that disruption within the United States and other countries. They have not calculated all global costs from a potential solar storm that persisted across time and geography. What if power grids across Asia and Europe fell at the same time? What if, as some other analyses suggest, rounding up the machinery needed to fix the problem could take a decade or more? In other words, this is a limited set of scenarios.

  The electrical grid is not the only technology that would be affected by a powerful solar storm. In a study financed by the UK Space Agency, Jonathan Eastwood of the Blackett Laboratory at Imperial College London and others have concluded that the full economic impact of space weather is unknown, even as the number of incidents is likely to increase. They call for urgent work to figure out the costs. But in the report, the authors compile a startling list of systems already known to be affected by space weather. Again, they do not look at the world in the throes of a reversal and only look at a magnetic disturbance that remains in the atmosphere with effects on technology at the surface of the Earth.

  Like the other reports, this one mentions risks to electrical grids. It also pinpoints risks to highly conductive railway and tram networks from telluric currents and the problem of interrupted service for electrified mass transit. And then there’s communications. Satellites can suffer great harm from severe space weather, even though they are built to withstand it. That’s why satellites flying over the South Atlantic Anomaly, where there’s more radiation in the atmosphere, shut down to protect themselves. Energetic electrons in the outer Van Allen belt produce the equivalent of Leyden jar sparks of static electricity, damaging satellite electronics during a storm. Solar energetic particles can cut through miniaturized components, leaving a trail of damage. The trend today is toward greater miniaturization and the smaller electronics become, the more damage one particle can do.

  Mobile telephone systems rely on global navigation satellite system (GNSS) timing information, which stands to be seriously disrupted by waves in the ionosphere during a severe solar storm, perhaps for days on end. Driverless cars and road charging technologies, both of which are becoming more common, are also dependent on satellite timing systems a
nd they too will be less reliable.

  And the number of satellites circling the Earth is poised to grow and become more interconnected, according to a 2017 study on the effects of space weather on the satellite industry. New uses for satellites, including for Internet and taking images, is prompting the industry, already worth $208 billion in 2015, to plan for large new fleets of small craft. As of 2017, for example, Boeing was working on plans for a fleet of thousands and SpaceX for a fleet of 4,425. Some of the newest rely on communications between satellites, meaning if one goes down, it affects many. But many of these build-up plans have emerged over the past several years of unusually calm solar weather. Not only that, but because satellite industries compete with one another, they don’t tend to share information about problems that arise in the environment above the Earth or how to solve them. The study’s authors found that the satellite engineers they interviewed were having trouble convincing company owners that it was worth the money to protect satellites from the rigors of space weather. Space, while not quite seen as the benign vacuum of old, was still not appreciated for the malignant creature it can be.

  A lesson in the consequences of not understanding the potential of solar storms to interfere with communications systems recently emerged in an account by members of the US Air Force. It was May 1967. Lyndon B. Johnson was president of the United States, and Leonid Brezhnev was general secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. The Cold War was in full force, as was the war in Vietnam. The war in the Middle East was a month away. Times were so tense that the US Air Force Strategic Air Command had one-third of its bomber force on alert at all times.

  The sun began to erupt with great solar flares, blasting radio and other electromagnetic waves toward the Earth. A coronal mass ejection followed. Those bursts of radio waves interfered with the system set up by the United States and its allies to track ballistic weapons on their way to North America from the Soviet Union. But the military leaders of the day had never seen a solar storm affect their equipment that way and believed that it was deliberate jamming of their system by the Soviets. It was such a politically fraught time that military commanders took the jamming of instruments to be a potential act of war. They were on the point of launching a full-on nuclear aircraft assault when two members of the US government’s solar forecasting staff realized what was happening. The attacker was the sun, not the enemy. Had the bombers been launched, military leaders would not have been able to recall them, because communication lines relying on satellites were too scrambled by the magnetic storm. The incident could have changed the course of geopolitical history. How would leaders today handle such an emergency?