A solar storm and our exposure to the Sun
The weekend spectacle of “northern lights" across a vast patch of the northern hemisphere, with its colours caught vividly by smartphone cameras, was truly extraordinary. The last such event was about two decades ago. It posed a minor threat to sat-com links, but wasn’t linked to climate change; nor was it anthropogenic in any other way.
It was on account of a major spike in solar activity—a Sun storm with its flares making a geomagnetic impact on Earth. Clouds of ionized gas and magnetic fields had shot out of a cluster of sun-spots to magnify what’s usually a tame “aurora borealis" in polar regions. The Sun is about 4.6 billion years old, with a life expectancy of some 5 billion years more.
The planet we inhabit is a few hundred million years younger, but how long it survives would depend on how we define survival. At the current pace of global warming, a man-made disaster like none other, how habitably will the Earth survive and for how many life-forms? Surviving differs from thriving; often, starkly so. Our collective future demands that we duly rise above narrow domestic walls to focus on this challenge.
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