The Sun's Great Judgment

Why is it that every single lifeform on earth is so ridiculously resistant to extreme magnetic fields? We make MRI machines that create 10 TESLA magnetic fields and put people inside them! And the person doesn’t even notice! And it’s not just people, it’s like this for all life -- plants, animals, everything. If you put a computer in an MRI machine it would probably catch on fire.

Why does life so scrupulously avoid making metal wires? Evolution is not stupid. It can make wires. It doesn’t make wires because it’s NOT ALLOWED to make wires. Any species unlucky enough to explore this area is courting extinction.

The sun is bigger and more powerful than our tiny minds can truly comprehend. And I apologize for the inadequacy of the analogies I am about to make: the sun constantly boils and seethes with magnetic energy, and as the sun seethes and boils these magnetic bubbles “pop”, and when they do, the magnetic field lines “snap” and fire a ray of extreme magnetic energy into space. These rays directly hit the earth around every 150 years. When they do, nothing happens to life. It barely even notices. Life doesn’t build things out of wires.

In 1859, 160 years ago, one such ray hit the planet. The paper in our telegraph machines caught on fire. We ignored our lesson and went on to make ourselves hopelessly dependent on wire-based technology. Now, no one is left alive who remembers the great Carrington Flare.

We have sinned. We have broken the sun’s commandments and built the abominable wires. And one day, the SUN will rise up like an angry, OLD TESTAMENT GOD, and smite our entire shortsighted, foolish race. When the day comes, you will not feel anything. Your body and brain are carefully built to withstand the sun’s power. But your phone will catch on fire in your hand. The GPS satellites will fry in the sky. The internet, at the speed of light and all over the planet, will be destroyed, like a spider web tossed in a bonfire. The very atmosphere will become opaque to radio waves, covering the world in silence for the first time since the dawn of radio. And the sun will send a sign of its judgment, and a promise to judge us again if we dare to make things out of wires: a Great and Terrible Aurora that covers the entire world.

In theory some of our critical systems like power and military infrastructure are “hardened” against a powerful solar flare. I suspect that what has actually happened is that these institutions have spent a lot of money to buy systems that say they are hardened but are actually not. What do you think will happen when our technology fails? Will we accept it with grace or will it lead to WWIII?

We talk about the risk of asteroids, but the last time an asteroid hit was 66 million years ago. A powerful flare happened only 150 years ago. Why are we not talking about this?

References

Chapman, Sandra C., Richard B. Horne, and Nicholas Wynn Watkins. "Using the Index Over the Last 14 Solar Cycles to Characterize Extreme Geomagnetic Activity." Geophysical Research Letters 47.3 (2020): e2019GL086524.