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Imagine the following situation: the South and Southeast of Brazil remain without electricity for 12 hours after a high-level magnetic (or solar) storm.
Thousands of people are left without television, without internet, without cell phones … Basically incommunicado, in an age where communication is everything and the internet has become increasingly important in times of social detachment. The companies in the sector lose billions of reais as the hours go by and chaos approaches.
Of course, the situation is (fortunately) totally hypothetical – and, for scientist Marcel Nogueira, a researcher at the National Observatory, in an interview with CNN, it should continue like this for a long time – but it is enough to raise the question: is mankind ready for a strong solar storm?
In 1989, in Québec, Canada, the answer was no. Due to a storm of this type, currents charged with radiation found weak points in the local electricity grid and about 6 million people on the east coast of the country were without power for half a day.
The Canadian recovery process was costly and left a lesson in popular saying: prevention is better than cure. In the United States, at the time, more than 200 power grid problems were recorded – without blackouts.
Now take into account that all this happened without an aggravating factor that only the South and Southeast of Brazil have: both regions have a lag in their magnetic protection called South Atlantic Magnetic Anomaly (Amas), which makes rains of the type become more intense.
“Amas does not affect our day-to-day lives as directly. With our weakened magnetic field interacting with Earth’s magnetic field, there are signs that the impact of a magnetic storm here would be more intense, so you would run the risk of having blackouts, blackouts, so this can be extra attention to strengthen electricity “
scientist Marcel Nogueira
According to him, the anomaly is “a fragility in the Earth’s magnetic shield”. That is why, when satellites cross the area affected by Amas, it is common for more sensitive mechanisms to be turned off to avoid serious effects caused by the strong radiation emitted.
“Of course, this can affect Internet cable TV satellites, but what happens is that they are often either prepared to avoid these anomalies, or avoid this orbit at all costs,” he explains.
For Nogueira, the preparation of equipment and the strengthening of electrical energy on Earth would be sufficient to minimize the impacts of an eventual magnetic storm. “If a magnetized cloud comes to our planet, we cannot prevent it, it will come and we have to accept that we will be impacted. Even so, we can protect the transmission line systems and we can create an anti-blackout system. more effective, “he says.
Nogueira also says that, on the science side, it is possible to “know two to three days in advance when something may affect the Earth”. “When we see a very intense solar flare, we can trace the route and prepare for it, choose to turn off certain things than to take a short circuit”, he says.
A magnetic storm is difficult to predict. Nogueira explains that the most intense ones usually occur when “we are at the maximum part of the Solar cycle”, which lasts 11 years – in 2021, the Earth is far from the highest peak. The less intense ones cause minor disturbances and some animals can become disoriented, such as birds and whales.
“Amas is yet another technological challenge on the part of the satellites that orbit the region because they need to withstand a higher dose of radiation than in other parts of the Earth. In addition, we need to study magnetic storms,” he says.
Amas, the Bermuda Triangle and GPS
Upon hearing about Amas, many people on social media began to think about what this implied for GPS and the Bermuda Triangle. According to Nogueira, there is nothing mystical about the phenomenon.
“Amas does not affect airplanes and helicopters, nor does it cause planes to disappear on trips from Porto Alegre to Rio de Janeiro, for example,” he says. “The same goes if you order an Uber or a food by app: everything will arrive normal, because the GPS will continue to work. Although we are in a region of anomaly, it will not directly impact our lives”, he jokes.
The Bermuda Triangle is also another theory that should be dismissed, according to Nogueira. For him, it is necessary to take into account the evidence – which, so far, for the scientist, shows that “everything works very well in the regions affected by Amas”.
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