- We'll have to have a chat after.

(gentle music) Now, as you are already aware, this morning, the threats from Extreme Space Weather was raised from moderate to significant.

There is some uncertainty as to the impact zone, but UK is suddenly at risk.

I'll now hand over to the Chief Scientific Officer.

- Yes, as I briefed the Director of the Civil Contingency Secretariat last night, the Met Office has been seeing fairly significant activity on the Eastern side of the sun.

- But we'd planned for at least that, there was the seminar you did at the home office, or what was it called again?

The last bad one, a couple of centuries back?

- The Carrington Event.

- And a few telegraph operators got singed eyebrows, right?

- Point is though Home Secretary, as I'm sure you'll recall from my presentation that our technologies are much more sophisticated now.

- The impact of a similar size storm will be considerably worse.

- Okay.

But it's not a great big meteorite, or the sun suddenly blowing up.

- It's neither of those scenarios and actually be making the press very aware of that later.

Be great.

If we could all stay on message on this one, - While I have a bottle of Lagavulin with a foreign secretary, this will all go the way it normally does.

- I am sure we are all hugely reissued by that Angie.

Now, perhaps it could pick up the threads in terms of practical implications, just in case the shark actually is in the mortar.

Like the last time.

- Of course, Prime Minister - Stage one of a bad sort of storm would knock on satellites, potentially destabilizing all transport and navigational systems.

- I understand aviation is the biggest concern?

- Yes, there are real worries over flight safety.

After a serious particle blizzard.

- At stage two is potentially the most disruptive part.

The storm will almost certainly release several blasts of plasma into space.

And then one of these reaches earth, it could cause huge damage to the power supply through voltage, instability, and transformer damage on the network.

Some areas could be without power for months.

- The National Grid begs to differ.

They think it could be restricted to a couple of remote areas.

- And they could, we just don't really know and neither do they, but even one day without power is enough to drive most people insane and do huge damage to the economy.

Think of the impact of weeks or even months, - Or when are we going to know whether all any of this is going to happen?

- We expect to see more large flares on the visible face of the sun.

The Met Office are monitoring for plasma launches, but even then it would have to come our way.

And even then there would still be one critical variable left.

Does the incoming plasma field have a North or South magnetic orientation?

- Which is the one we don't want.

- Hats off Nad, frozen North harmless.

The probability is absolutely 50, 50.

The plasma eruption could have very little impact at all, or it could be extremely serious.