BOZEMAN – Montanans have been dazzled in recent months by colorful displays of the aurora, or northern lights, which occur when plasma and energetic particles ejected by the sun slam into Earth’s atmosphere and clash with the planet’s magnetic field.
As spectacular as those light shows have been, Montana State University solar physicist Rachael Filwett says the solar energetic particle, or SEP, events that caused them were insignificant compared to others that have bombarded our planet in the distant past. Those events carried radiation levels dangerous enough to kill astronauts in space, wipe out satellites and space stations, and massively disrupt communication networks and other infrastructure on Earth.
“There’s no comparison in modern space records,” said Filwett, assistant professor in the Department of Physics in MSU’s College of Letters and Science, who recently was awarded a three-year, $185,000 National Science Foundation grant to estimate the upper-limit strength of future extreme SEP events. “These are much larger than events like the recent flares that have caused the northern lights.”…