Become a TechRadar Insider
- Ancient underground rocks could sharply intensify solar storm damage across eastern America
- Hidden crust beneath the United States redirects dangerous electrical currents upward
- Scientists mapped a buried geological structure stretching from Maine to Georgia
Buried deep beneath the eastern United States lies a massive chunk of ancient crust that has remained hidden from scientists for millions of years, but it is not harmless.
This lost basement, known as the Piedmont Resistor, runs from Maine all the way down to Georgia.
It measures roughly 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 electrical whispers
The National Science Foundation funded a Magnetotelluric Array, a network of 1,800 temporary stations placed across the United States to study this palaeo-basement.
These stations measured how well deep rocks conduct electricity by detecting currents induced by shifting magnetic fields in the upper atmosphere.
Paul Bedrosian, a geophysicist at the US Geological Survey, said the array's final map reveals hidden structures that seismic studies could not detect.
The Piedmont Resistor gets its name because it blocks and redirects electrical currents rather than allowing them to pass through, as most surrounding rocks do.
The igneous rocks in this deep-seated basement, which is now buried by silt from eroding mountains, are likely associated with the volcanic eruptions that took place as Pangaea split into Laurasia and Gondwanaland.
The risk this lost continent poses to power grids and data centers
When a solar storm disturbs Earth's magnetosphere, it induces powerful electrical currents deep within the planetary crust.
Most rocks allow these currents to spread out and dissipate harmlessly over large areas without causing damage.
The Piedmont Resistor does not 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 risks 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 large portions of the eastern United States for days or even weeks.
Modern data centers depend entirely 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 geological risks, but most utility companies are not using the new data.
Kelbert warned that the utilities are falling behind, and no government agency is currently forcing them to update their infrastructure plans.
Just like the sun, the Piedmont Resistor is not going anywhere, and the only question is whether power companies will prepare before the next big solar storm arrives.
Via Science
Follow TechRadar on Google News and add us as a preferred source to get our expert news, reviews, and opinion in your feeds. Make sure to click the Follow button!
And of course you can also follow TechRadar on TikTok for news, reviews, unboxings in video form, and get regular updates from us on WhatsApp too.
