- Ancient underground rocks could greatly intensify solar storm damage in eastern America
- Hidden crust beneath the US redirects dangerous electrical currents upward
- Scientists mapped a buried geological structure that stretches from Maine to Georgia
Buried deep beneath the eastern United States is a massive chunk of ancient crust that has been hidden from scientists for millions of years, but it’s not harmless.
This lost basement, known as the Piedmont Resistance, runs from Maine all the way down to Georgia.
It measures about 200 kilometers thick and was formed during the violent breakup of the supercontinent, Pangaea, during the Jurassic period about 200 million years ago.
Listening to the Earth’s electric whisper
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 US Geological Survey, said the array’s final map reveals hidden structures that seismic surveys could not detect.
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 basement, now buried by silt from eroding mountains, are likely associated with the volcanic eruptions that occurred when Pangea split into Laurasia and Gondwanaland.
The risk this lost continent poses to power grids and data centers
When a solar storm disrupts the Earth’s magnetosphere, it induces powerful electrical currents deep within the planet’s crust.
Most rocks allow these currents to spread and spread harmlessly over large areas without causing damage.
Piedmont resistance does not behave like most rocks; it forces these flows to move upward and concentrate in shallow 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 this type of underground basement.
The concentration of electrical currents puts transformers and other grid equipment at much higher risk of catastrophic failure.
A severe solar storm could knock out power across much of the eastern United States for days or even weeks.
Modern data centers are completely dependent on stable electricity to keep their servers running around the clock.
Widespread transformer damage would also disable backup generators because fuel supply chains rely on the same vulnerable electrical 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 lagging behind and no government agency is currently forcing them to update their infrastructure plans.
Like the sun, Piedmont resistance isn’t going anywhere, and the only question is whether utilities will prepare before the next big solar storm arrives.
Via Science
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