But that was where certainty began and ended. The cause of the electromagnetic explosion eluded them, as did their ability to predict whether it might happen again. With over three hundred staff in the Physics building alone, Orrin couldn't take that risk. If there was any recurrence or escalation in severity of the incident, the consequences could be devastating. For hours, the three men worked in near silence, running scans and tearing through endless lines of code. “Lads?” Orrin pushed back from his monitor, fighting panic. Dale moved across to him immediately, but Phil merely raised an eyebrow. “I've just run a data comparison on magnetospheric fluctuations for the last year against the records from THEMIS,” said Orrin hesitantly. Phil nodded expectantly. The THEMIS mission by NASA had been established to gather multi-satellite data on space weather events, in particular, the origins of substorms that could affect Earth. Magnetospheric fluctuations were measured by five orbiting satellites which relayed the data for analysis to multiple highly regarded institutions.
