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The media often fills a void in natural disasters on Earth with headlines about possible astronomical catastrophes. A recent example was a headline in USA Today stating that a “Rare but extreme solar event could disrupt life on Earth.”
The article tells us that a solar superflare would fry communication satellites and produce electric currents strong enough to paralyze the power grid. The article tells us that in 1859, a violent solar storm knocked out the telegraph network in large parts of northern Europe and North America. It said if a solar superflare happened today, it would knock out phone services, GPS, credit card authorization, and weather and climate monitoring. The USA Today report was based on the peer-reviewed journal Science, a publication of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
So, what is the danger of a solar superflare to you and me? The answer to that question is “virtually none.” The point is that solar superflares occur in stars like our Sun roughly once every 10,000 years. The flare in 1859 was not a solar superflare but merely a flare for which the nascent electric industry was unprepared. Today, such a flare would not significantly affect today’s telegraph or phone service.
The lack of possible astronomical catastrophes shows the intelligence and design built into our planet and solar system. A G-2-type star, like our Sun, has infrequent occurrences of solar superflare. Other spectral classes of stars can have solar superflares every 1000 years. That means the occurrence of life on a planet around another star is highly unlikely, if not impossible. In his 1956 CBS television program “Our Mister Sun,” (maybe available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ucQNFBNAdnk) the late Dr. Frank Baxter said, “The more we know of the creation, the closer we get to the Creator.” The lack of solar superflares is another example of the truth of his statement.
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