Ion Storms

Ion Storms

“ Captain.  There is a class four ion storm bearing 278 mark 43, heading 095 mark 23 at 25 thousand k.p.s.  Our present course will have us reaching the outer edge in 2.7 minutes.”

We’ve all heard this or something similar over the years on Star Trek and various other science fiction shows or movies.  But, what is an Ion Storm?  Where do they come from?  What are they composed of?  What makes them so dangerous to starships?  What do they look like? And how bad can they get?
The purpose of this bit of geekness is to take a real world and Trek relevant look at this reoccurring plot tool and determine exactly what effect and/or dangers such a phenomenon would actually pose to a Federation Starship.

What is an Ion Storm?

Simply put, ion storms are Coronal Mass Ejection(CME) that make it out into interstellar space.  An ion storm isn’t your ordinary CME that generally dissipates within a few hundred AU’s of the source star; no, these are huge CME’s that stay more or less cohesive for hundreds, sometimes thousands of light years and travel through space at an average velocity of 2000 – 12000kps.  Velocities up to 28000 have been recorded by Federation ships.

Where do Ion Storms come from?

As stated, an ion storm is a CME; a portion of a star’s outer, plasma atmosphere is blown away due to extreme fluctuation in the stars coronal magnetic field.  We see these kinds of things happening to our star, Sol, every eleven years or so and note it primarily as sunspot activity and solar flares. 
 

What are ion storms made of?

Ion storms are made of solar plasma consisting mostly of electrons and protons, magnetic radiation and sometimes heavier materials like helium, oxygen and occasionally iron.

What do ion storms look like?

Depending on severity and overall electron density an ion storm may not even be visible to the human eye.  They are most often detected and identified by their large, intense magnetic signature and much lower corresponding mass.

How are ion storms structured?

The initial CME that produces and ion storm follows a basic pattern; the Shock Wave; the Prominence and the Core.
The Shock Wave is magnetic front of the CME.
The Prominence is a zone of high electron density and is the only visible part of the CME.
The Core follows and is a gradual reduction of electron density.
As the CME travels, these feature diminish a bit and the whole become a little more homogenized;  the shock wave weakens to a turbulent shock front and instead of being the proverbial ton of bricks it becomes very much like a very turbulent wind, the Prominence and Core blend together becoming a larger area of only slightly diminished magnetic radiation and ionic flux.

How do ion storms relate to storms here on Earth?

Just like on Earth, space, even deep space is filled with wind albeit ‘solar wind’.  This is the net effect of millions of stars pouring out their energies and sub-atomic particles as they burn through their life cycle.  Since these solar winds come literally from all directions, the net effect is that things out in deep space are pretty calm from a space weather point of view. 
An ion storm is much like the thunderstorms that can occur over the Great Plains region of the United States and their severity is just as variable.   They often have a very turbulent zone that precedes them followed by the heart of the storm and ending in a trailing off of severity back to a calm state.
Much like storms on Earth, ion storms can either build in intensity as they move through space and devastate other planetary systems or dwindle down to nothing just a few light years away from their originating star.

What makes ion storms so dangerous to starships?

An ion storm’s most devastating feature is its shock front.  This is what causes most of the physical damage to a starship.  The shock front often obliterates a warp field, dropping the ship violently out of warp.  As the shock front is magnetic (in essence a huge electro-magnetic pulse (EMP)) in nature it also often disrupts any magnetic field within the ship including magnetic containment of antimatter; constriction fields inside the warp core and warp plasma conduits; gravity, structural integrity (SIF) and inertial dampening fields (IDF) and their generators; transporters; communications systems and until the advent of Isolinear chips and ODN links, most computer systems and data storage devices. 
If the starship manages to survive the turbulent shock front there is still the huge plasma field that follows; high temperatures and intense radiation bombarding the ship and ionic flux coursing over the outer hull like lightning and arcing between the superstructures.

How bad can an ion storm get?

Ion Storms are rated in severity on the Tousey Scale.  The Tousey Scale is named for R. Tousey of the Naval Research Laboratory, Washington D.C., North America, Earth; who first observed a CME on 14 December 1971.

Ion storms are rated on this scale from 1 to 7. 1 being the weakest, 7 being the most severe.

T1: Mild magnetic turbulence (< 1% ship wide magnetic fluctuation); minor increase in immediate area radiation (/strong> 1Sv).