No solar disaster ? this time

A weak solar maximum might sound like a blessing but could leave us wide open in 2024

Read more: "Earth in for bumpy ride as solar storms hit "

EVERY 11 years or so, the sun goes mad, flinging huge balls of plasma towards the Earth. It has been 12 years since the last solar maximum and there are signs that the sun is gearing up for another outburst.

We should be worried, as the world has become increasingly vulnerable to solar storms. So it may be a blessing that the upcoming maximum is expected to be a feeble one (see "Earth in for bumpy ride as solar storms hit").

That blessing, however, could be decidedly mixed. Whatever happens over the next year or two, there will be another solar maximum in the early 2020s, another about 11 years later, and so on until... well, who knows. One day a real monster will hit us and we need to be ready.

But we don't seem to be good at preparing for solar storms. We have already proved prone to complacency and short-termism during periods of calm. Some electricity companies in the US have been installing transformers that are more efficient than older ones, but also more vulnerable to solar storms.

If we sail through the next maximum unscathed, that complacency can only deepen. By 2024 chances are we will be even more dependent on vulnerable technology. Nobody wants a "solar Katrina" but a couple of moderately damaging storms will probably act as a wake-up call, reminding us that the threat is all too real.

It would have other benefits too. The world is loath to forgive scientists who predict a catastrophe that doesn't materialise. After the 2009 bird flu pandemic that never was, scientists acting in good faith were accused of scaremongering, setting back preparedness for a threat that has not gone away. A solar storm no-show could deepen complacency even further.

Last but not least, a decent solar maximum could finally spur NASA to replace its Advanced Composition Explorer probe, which floats between the Earth and the sun and gives us our best estimate of the power of an incoming storm. ACE is old and rickety and its sensors could be fried by a big storm. We would then have time to replace it with a shiny new one to help make sure we don't sleepwalk into disaster in 2024.

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