The recent discovery of a hidden fragment of Pangaea beneath the East Coast has revealed a giant block of rock, stretching 900 miles along the Appalachian front and reaching 125 miles into the Earth. This slab, named the Piedmont Resistor, was previously undetected by sound-wave surveys but was identified through a 20-year project that measured electricity instead of sound. The slab is believed to have formed when the Americas separated 200 million years ago, and it carries a modern risk during geomagnetic storms. These storms can drive electric currents through the ground, which can then bleed into power lines, potentially amplifying their effects due to the slab's resistance to electrical currents. This could bring the energy closer to power lines, transformers, and other parts of the electrical grid, as evidenced by a solar storm in 1989 that knocked out the Quebec power grid for nine hours. The discovery of the Piedmont Resistor has significant implications for utilities, as it can multiply the threat of solar storms to the grid by a thousand times. However, many utilities lag behind in planning for such risks, and there is no agency forcing them to do so. The study, published in the journal Reviews of Geophysics, highlights the importance of understanding the hidden architecture beneath our feet and its potential impact on our infrastructure.
