Groucho Marxism

A ‘magnetosphere’ is a region of space surrounding an astronomical object, such as a planet, in which charged particles are affected by that object’s magnetic field. A geomagnetic storm is a temporary disturbance of the Earth’s magnetosphere driven by interactions between it and magnetic field structures that originate from the Sun. In September 1859, the largest geomagnetic storm in recorded history occurred. This was associated with a very bright solar flare on 1st September 1859, observed and recorded independently by British astronomers Richard Carrington and Richard Hodgson. This solar flare and the resulting geomagnetic storm became known as the Carrington Event (presumably to Hodgson’s chagrin).

The event caused extremely bright auroras in both the northern and southern hemispheres. Because of the induced current from the electromagnetic field, telegraph systems all over Europe and North America failed, in some cases giving their operators electric shocks. However, the impact of the event was relatively limited due to low prevalence of electrical technology at that time. If a similar event were to happen today, it would trigger catastrophic, widespread failures: massive power grid blackouts lasting years, GPS and satellite collapse, internet shutdown, and severe disruption to banking, transport, and healthcare. As scary as that sounds, the Carrington event pales into insignificance compared with what are known as Miyake events.

Miyake events are named after the Japanese physicist Fusa Miyake who, as a doctoral student, was the first one to identify them and published the results with co-authors in 2012 in the journal Nature. A Miyake event is an observed sharp enhancement of the production of isotopes by cosmic rays. This occurs when a high-energy cosmic ray interacts with the nucleus of an atom, causing nucleons  – protons and neutrons – to be expelled. Miyake events are caused by solar particles and are estimated to be potentially 5 to 20 times more powerful than the 1859 Carrington event. The impact on civilization if one occurred today is difficult to imagine. And they are not as rare as you might think: Miyake events are estimated to occur roughly once every 400-2,400 years.

What’s particularly worrying about this is that the last Miyake event occurred in 993 AD. So if we assume they occur on average every 1,000 years, we are due another one right about now. And it’s not only extreme solar events we need to worry about. In 1908, a large explosion of between 3 and 50 megatons TNT equivalent occurred near the Podkamennaya Tunguska River in Russia. The explosion was caused by the atmospheric breakup of a stony asteroid about 50–60 metres wide. The Tunguska event, as it has become known, is the largest meteoric impact event recorded history. The effects were limited due it occurring over a sparsely populated area; had it occurred just a few hours later, it would have destroyed the city of St. Petersburg.

Admittedly, a single city being destroyed would not mean the end of human civilization. But much larger meteoric impacts are known to have occurred in the distant past – such as the Chicxulub impact in Mexico that ended the Cretaceous period and wiped out the non-avian dinosaurs. It is quite feasible that a similar impact could happen again in the not-too-distant future. Moreover, we really have no way of predicting when and where such an impact will occur next. Most people imagine that we would be able stave off a large-scale impact by breaking up a meteor with a nuclear weapon before it hit the Earth. But the truth is that we would probably only become aware that such an impact it was going to happen when it was too late to do anything about it.

All of which goes to show that human civilization is a lot more fragile than we usually think. Our civilization might seem stable and destined to last forever, but this is an illusion. It could literally end tomorrow. In fact there is evidence that the human race has almost been wiped out in the past. A recent  (2023) paper in the journal Science suggests that sometime between 800,000 and 900,000 years ago, the population of our ancestors fell from around 100,000 to around 1,000 individuals. The bottleneck lasted for about 100,000 years and brought our ancestors close to extinction. This is congruent with a substantial chronological gap in the fossil record and accords with the lack of genetic diversity in human beings in comparison to our great ape cousins.

Is there anything positive we can take from this? If there is a silver lining, I think it lies in the realization that our existing capitalist system won’t last forever. Of course we all know that to be true on some level, but understanding just how fragile our civilization is brings this into sharper focus. A cataclysmic astronomical event will occur at some point – and probably sooner than we think. When it does, we can only hope that something better emerges from the ashes.