A “Perfect Coronal Mass Ejection” Could Be a Nightmare 02/10/2021
Space Weather considers what might happen if a worst-case coronal mass ejection (CME) hit Earth a “perfect solar storm,” if you will.
In 2014, Bruce Tsurutani of Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) and Gurbax Lakhina of the Indian Institute of Geomagnetism introduced the “
perfect CME.” It could create a magnetic storm with intensity up to the saturation limit, a value greater than the
Carrington Event of 1859, the researchers said. Many other spaceweather effects would not be limited by saturation effects, however. The interplanetary shock would arrive at Earth within about 12 hours, the shock impingement onto the magnetosphere would create a sudden impulse of around 234 nanoteslas (nT), and the magnetic pulse duration in the magnetosphere would be about 22 seconds. Orbiting satellites would be exposed to “extreme levels of flare and interplanetary CME (ICME) shock-accelerated particle radiatio