Until recently, I took the sun for granted, just like most people. It never occurred to me that something as seemingly benign and everyday as our sun could have catastrophic effects. But as it turns out, the sun is capable of wreaking havoc and destruction on our planet through the most nefarious of means — by electromagnetically destroying and inactivating our beloved electronic devices, the big ones as well as the little ones.

Here’s how it works: the sun is quiet most of the time but every now and eleven years or so, we get what is called a solar maximum when the sun spews large quantities of solar radiation and ionized particles in what are called coronal mass ejections, or CMEs. It is just such a CME that is currently threatening orbiting satellites around earth — a huge blast of solar “plasma” that was hurled outward by the sun. Most of the time, these CMEs don’t hit us — they hit Venus or Mercury or empty space — and then they cause no problems. But what happens if one of these solar explosions happens to be aimed at Earth?

Well, back in 1859, a very powerful solar storm hit Earth and, in a matter of hours, fried telegraph wires around the world, causing some teletype machines to burst into flames. By all accounts, this was a very powerful solar storm. The storm upon us now is not nearly as strong. But you get the idea. The effect of solar storms on wires and electronics can be devastating. It even has a name: the Carrington Effect.

The potential for damage to electronic devices, including satellites such as those that facilitate GPS systems as well as wired equipment, is what has some solar scientists worried. They fear that in our much more wired and electronically connected world, the effect of a major solar storm would be much greater. In fact, the biggest fear is that it could knock out the power grid, not just for hours, but for months or even years. Yikes!

The jury isn’t even out on this one, as it is with other threats to our personal and national security. Scientists are pretty much in agreement that another storm on the level of 1859 could end life as we know it for a significant amount of time, and that it isn’t a matter of if, but of when. Not surprisingly, the government has been holding high level meetings for the last five years with people from across the official spectrum including NOAA, NASA, Homeland Security, the Military, FEMA, the Department of Energy, Congress, representatives from utilities and industry, and other interested parties. Attendees at these meeting do not emerge optimistic. One scientist attending the October 2011 conference at the National Defense Institute in Washington, DC, said unequivocally that an event on a par with the 1859 storm would be “the worst disaster society could imagine.”

One reason we’re seeing a lot of solar activity right now is that the sun is entering a period of solar maximum. 2011 had sunspot activity nearly every day, and more than its share of CMEs and solar eruptions. But the real peak of this cycle’s solar maximum isn’t expected until later this year and into 2013. That would imply that the worst is yet to come.

A number of studies point to a worse than usual solar maximum this year. According to Mausumi Dikpati of the National Center for Atmospheric Research, "the next sunspot cycle will be 30% to 50% stronger than the previous one," putting it on a par with the Solar Maximum of 1958. In 1958, they saw the Northern Lights in Mexico.

Backing up Dikpati, a team of NSF-funded researchers from UC Berkeley and the University of New Hampshire released a paper reporting that the "biggest breach of the earth's solar storm shield" has been discovered allowing both solar wind energy and plasma to enter the magnetosphere of our atmosphere. As a result of this new THEMIS project data, they are predicting bigger geomagnetic storms in the current solar cycle. They learned this by actually flying a spacecraft up into the magnetosphere and measuring the density of solar particles found there. They measured a thick layer, over 4,000 miles or one Earth radius thick and growing rapidly.

Naturally, there is concern about the solar maximum, but what if we manage to dodge that bullet— what then? According to Dr. Frank Hill, a scientist with the National Solar Observatory, the sun may be having a last hurrah (for a while) at our expense. Hill said in a paper released in June of 2011 that the indicators he studies are all pointing to a noticeable slowdown in solar activity in coming years. In fact, Hill is wondering if we might not be heading into an extended solar minimum, during which the sun will be quiet for decades to come.

Great news! I hear you saying. Not necessarily. The last extended solar minimum experienced here on Earth between 1645 and 1715 has a name — the Little Ice Age. Indeed, during the solar minimum of the late 17th century it was unusually cold, so much so that crops failed and ice formed in places where it had not formed before. People all over Europe learned to ice skate. People in Manhattan were able to walk across New York Harbor to Staten Island. It was an unusual time, to say the least.

Dr. Hill is backing off of any ice age predictions for the coming century — he says that the relationship between solar activity and climate is poorly understood and that the expected lull in solar activity should only cause a 0.3 degree Celcius drop in global temperatures, not enough to cause an ice age. But, you never know.

And that concludes what I know about solar weather. Hopefully, I haven’t scared you too much. On the plus side, solar storms are known to produce spectacular auroras. If we’re lucky, we may see the Aurora Borealis here in southern Vermont at some point in the coming year. On the other hand, we could also see a major whack to our electronic life support systems, and that would be less fun. But no matter what happens, expect that future electronics will be devised with solar weather in mind. We depend on them too much to take chances anymore.