Sun's wrath

As the world gets more technologically tuned and connected, life has become easier and information and services accessible at the click of a button. So much so that we have become too dependent perhaps on such buttons. How well protected are our communication and power systems from something as powerful as a solar storm? A full-blown one could wreak havoc by disrupting essential services.

Richard Fisher, head of NASA's Heliophysics Division: "The sun is waking up from a deep slumber, and in the next few years we expect to see much higher levels of solar activity. At the same time, our technological society has developed an unprecedented sensitivity to solar storms. The intersection of these two issues is what we're getting together to discuss."

The National Academy of Sciences framed the problem two years ago in a landmark report entitled "Severe Space Weather Events—Societal and Economic Impacts." It noted how people of the 21st-century rely on high-tech systems for the basics of daily life. Smart power grids, transformers, GPS navigation, air travel, financial services and emergency radio communications can all be knocked out by intense solar activity.

A century-class solar storm, the Academy warned, could cause twenty times more economic damage than Hurricane Katrina.