- Ancient underground rocks could dramatically intensify solar storm damage in eastern America
- Crust hidden beneath US redirects dangerous electrical currents upward
- Scientists mapped buried geological structure stretching from Maine to Georgia
Buried deep beneath the eastern United States is a huge chunk of ancient crust that has been hidden from scientists for millions of years, but it’s not harmless.
This lost basement, known as Piedmont Resistor, stretches from Maine to Georgia.
It measures approximately 200 kilometers thick and was formed during the violent disintegration of the supercontinent Pangea, during the Jurassic Period, about 200 million years ago.
Listening to the electrical whispers of the Earth
The National Science Foundation funded a magnetotelluric array, a network of 1,800 temporary stations located across the United States to study this paleo-basement.
These stations measured how well deep rocks conduct electricity by detecting currents induced by changing magnetic fields in the upper atmosphere.
Paul Bedrosian, a geophysicist with the U.S. Geological Survey, said the final map of the array reveals hidden structures that seismic surveys failed to detect.
The Piedmont resistance gets its name because it blocks and redirects electrical currents instead of allowing them to pass through, as most surrounding rocks do.
The igneous rocks of this deep-seated basement, which is now buried by silt from eroding mountains, are probably associated with the volcanic eruptions that took place when Pangea split into Laurasia and Gondwanaland.
The risk this lost continent represents for power grids and data centers
When a solar storm disturbs Earth’s magnetosphere, it induces powerful electrical currents deep in the planetary crust.
Most rocks allow these currents to propagate and dissipate harmlessly over large areas without causing damage.
Piedmont Resilience doesn’t behave like most rocks; It forces those currents to move upward and concentrate in shallower rock layers, much closer to human infrastructure.
Anna Kelbert, a geophysicist at the Center for Astrophysics, says this geology can make the risk of solar storms 1,000 times worse in regions with these types of underground basements.
The concentration of electrical currents puts transformers and other grid equipment at a much higher risk of catastrophic failure.
A severe solar storm could leave much of the eastern United States without power for days or even weeks.
Modern data centers rely entirely on stable electricity to keep their servers running 24 hours a day.
Widespread damage to transformers would also disable backup generators, because fuel supply chains depend on the same vulnerable power grid.
Federal hazard maps have been updated to reflect these geologic hazards, but most utilities do not use the new data.
Kelbert warned that utilities are falling behind and that no government agency is currently forcing them to update their infrastructure plans.
Like the sun, the Piedmont resistance isn’t going anywhere and the only question is whether power companies will prepare before the next big solar storm hits.
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