Disclaimer: This blog is my side hustle and is separate from my role at SVB
Sections:
Click to skip the storytelling and go to the markets I analyze.
- Northern Lights Tourism — The next travel trend IMO
- Freeze-Dried Foods — Not a whole lot of data on this market, but the food is good
- Carrington Event 2024 — Who are the startups that will save us from an electrical shutdown??
Northern Lights Tourism
Arctic tourism has dramatically increased in the last two decades. The global polar travel market (which includes Antarctica, the Arctic, and the Himalayas) was valued at $830.5 million in 2022 and is expected to reach $2 billion by 2031. In a study that measured tourism based on social media impressions, it was found that the Arctic winter tourism footprint increased by over 600% from 2006–2016. From 2018–2022, there was a 15% increase in Arctic travel. In 2019 it was found that 32% of tourists in Norway were Northern Lights tourists.
Winter arctic tourism is expected to see a boom in 2024–2025 due to the sun entering a solar maximum (more on that below). Another cause for the increase in tourism has been TV shows and movies. Disney’s Frozen caused travel to Norway to jump by 37% from 2013–2014. Game of Thrones had a similar effect on tourism in Iceland.
I’ve been WAITIN for this one! Turn it up!
The Northern Lights (or Aurora Borealis, if you’re fancy) has been on my bucket list since childhood. It was the reason I took my Scandinavian trip in the first place. I traveled all the way up to Tromsø, the capital of the Arctic Circle, and spent two nights hoping, praying, and manifesting that I’d see the lights.
While the lights occur almost every night, you must be in the right place at the right time with the right forecast to see them. Even then, they might never appear. You could have clear skies and never see them. Or, you could have cloudy skies all night, and then suddenly, there’s a break in the clouds, and the lights are dancing above you.
Additionally, you’re not guaranteed a jaw-dropping view. Sometimes, the lights are the beautiful, vibrant green you’ve always imagined. Sometimes, they’re a pale greenish-grey that you can still clearly tell are the Northern Lights, but aren’t AS impressive as you expected them to be. Sometimes, the Aurora is just a faint grey streak in the sky that looks like a cloud until you take a picture of it and realize that the grey “cloud” is actually the Aurora you’ve been waiting to see.
Cameras are essential for the Northern Lights. Outside of using one to take flawless photos of myself under the lights, they are used to confirm that what you’re looking at is the Aurora.
The most stunning photos you see of the Aurora online are because the camera picks up much more color than the naked eye. Not only does it look greener in pictures than in person, but sometimes you’ll find that the lights actually have some red, blue, pink, yellow, or purple that you couldn’t spot without a camera. While I was not fortunate enough to see a multi-colored Aurora, two people on my tour had seen red lights a few nights prior.
During my first night in Tromsø, I did a Northern Lights tour. It’s the reason I’m able to spit facts right now. The sky was very cloudy, so the tour guide gave us hopeful yet realistic expectations of what we could expect to see. We spent 2 hours driving South towards the coast, trying to find a break in the clouds. Every so often, we’d stop and check the skies, and our guide would point out the Aurora hidden behind the clouds.
As we were nearing hour 2 of our chase, our guide told the driver to pull over on the side of the road, and we all hopped out into a field at the edge of a forest (fun fact: Norway has open camping laws!). The second, and I mean THE SECOND, we got out of the van, the skies cleared, and the lights danced full force above our heads. It looked like long, vertical stripes rapidly moving around the sky.
After admiring the lights for 10–15 minutes and truly not believing our luck, we set up a campfire and had hot chocolate along with a rehydrated, freeze-dried meal (which was DELICIOUS, btw).
Freeze-Dried Food — Much tastier than the Astronaut food we all tried as kids
The dehydrated backpacking and camping food market was valued at $134.1MM in 2022 and is expected to have a CAGR of 8.6%, reaching $220MM by 2028.
While most companies I found had no investment data, Oso Meals raised $1MM from angels in June 2023. A few other companies I want to highlight:
- American Outdoor Products: One of the original freeze-dried food manufacturers. They are the mastermind behind Astronaut Foods, the producers of the iconic Astronaut Ice Cream that is found in every space museum to ever exist. They also produce gourmet meals for the outdoors, which are packaged under Backpacker’s Pantry. The company was founded in 1951 by a Girl Scout’s Troop leader who wanted a lighter alternative to canned foods for outdoor adventures.
- Next Mile Meals: Provides ketogenic meals for backpackers. The company was founded in 2018, and is now a small family-run business based in Bend, OR.
- Real Meals: Provides chef-cooked freeze-dried meals. The company launched in November 2023 and is based in New Zealand.
- Drytech AS (packaged under the name REAL): Produces high-quality non-GMO freeze-dried meals. The company was founded in 1989 and is based in Tromsø, Norway. I can personally testify that these meals are incredible.
Campfire time also included campfire stories, where we learned all about the Northern Lights.
The Science Behind the Lights
First, let’s talk about the solar cycle. Every 11ish years, the Sun’s north and south magnetic poles swap. This swap causes the Sun to go from low solar activity (solar minimum — last occurred in 2019) to high solar activity (solar maximum — expected to happen THIS YEAR). Kind of like our economy, LOL.
The Sun is constantly ejecting charged particles from its corona, and every once in a while, the ejections are so powerful they reach Earth. These large ejections are called Coronal Mass Ejections (CMEs for short). During solar minimums, CMEs occur about once a week. During a solar maximum, CMEs occur roughly every 2–3 days.
These ejections create solar wind, which travels fast af (up to 45 million mph) and collides with Earth’s upper atmosphere. It’s lowkey kind of violent if you think about it. But don’t worry! Earth is mother and we are baby, and our planet protects us from these collisions. These charged particles get deflected to the poles and interact with the molecules in our atmosphere (oxygen and nitrogen mainly), causing the molecules to heat up and form the lights. The lights’ color depends on which molecule is interacting with the Sun’s particles and where the interaction is occurring. The most common aurora color — green — is caused by collisions with oxygen at an altitude below ~59 miles. Interactions with nitrogen emit deep red and blue colors, which mix to create a purple hue. The rare red Aurora is caused by interactions with oxygen at high altitudes, around 120–180 miles.
Reading the Aurora Forecast is Easier Than Reading Your Astrology Chart
There are a few things that can predict whether you’ll see the Northern Lights or not.
Kp-Index
The Kp-Index measures the level of geomagnetic activity. This index ranges from 1–9, which tells you how active the lights will likely be and how far south (or north if you’re at the South Pole) the lights will be visible. A Kp value of 0–2 indicates a dim, low-activity aurora that will stay close to the Poles. A value of 8–9 suggests the lights will be bright and active and extend further towards the equator, visible in the USA’s northern states. A few days before I landed in the Arctic Circle, the solar activity was so intense that people in Italy got to see the lights.
Solar Wind & Density
The faster the wind, the harder the particles from the Sun hit the molecules in our atmosphere. The higher the density, the more particles hit our atmosphere. These two measurements help predict the Aurora’s strength and how much time you have to prepare to see them.
IMF (Bt)
The Interplanetary Magnetic Field (or Heliospheric Magnetic Field, as I JUST learned from Google) is the magnetic field of the Sun that is carried outward by solar wind. The strength of the IMF is measured by Bt, whose unit is measured in nano-Tesla (nT). The higher the Bt value, the better the geomagnetic conditions.
> 10Bt = okay conditions
> 20Bt = strong conditions
> 30Bt = hella strong conditions
There’s a bunch more science behind it that I didn’t feel like explaining (because, frankly, I don’t understand it enough), so I recommend checking out this article I referenced.
Bz
The IMF is a vector quantity with three axes. Bz is the axis oriented perpendicular to the ecliptic (the Earth’s orbital plane around the Sun), so it’s the unit for the north-south direction of the IMF.
The IMF and Earth’s magnetosphere are like magnets. Earth’s magnetosphere points upwards, so when the Bz is oriented southward, it connects with the magnetosphere. Earth’s magnetosphere is then disrupted, allowing solar particles to enter our atmosphere along Earth’s magnetic lines, thus creating the Aurora. The Bz is the most crucial data point for Northern Lights prediction. A negative value is a MUST; the more negative it is, the better the auroral activity. The only way for the Aurora to show up with a positive Bz value is during super-high solar wind speeds. But that’s an extreme situation.
While all of these values can help predict the lights, it is still not guaranteed you’ll see them. The light indicators are constantly changing, and measurements are not accurate.
Carrington Event — The Dreaded Solar Storm Reddit is Going Wild Over
Remember how I talked about the solar maximum? WELL, this high solar activity can have substantial impacts on Earth.
One recent example occurred in 2022 when 40 of SpaceX’s Starlink satellites fell out of orbit due to a solar storm. That particular storm was pretty mild, with a rating of only 2 on a scale from 1–5.
The largest solar storm on record is the Carrington Event, which occurred in 1859. This storm wreaked havoc on telegraph systems, shocking telegraph operators (physically, not emotionally) and setting telegraph stations on fire. Skies as far south as Cuba and Jamaica erupted in colorful auroras, and people could read their newspapers at night as easily as they could during the day.
In today’s society, which is heavily dependent on electronic systems and infrastructure, the effects of a storm of this magnitude would be far more detrimental.
To attempt to paint the picture:
Power grids, satellites, communication systems (including airplanes), GPS, data and financial systems, and transportation infrastructure would all be impacted. Imagine having to use PAPER MAPS again?!! Like we’re not built like that anymore. And the mass cellular outage we had in the US last week? Imagine that but like…for everyone. GenZ would cripple without TikTok (I’m talking about myself).
Additionally, flight passengers and crew near the poles would experience increased radiation levels. Not to mention the high levels of radiation astronauts aboard spacecraft would experience.
Astronaut and flight passengers wouldn’t be the only ones whose health is affected. Studies have found that high solar activity has been linked to myocardial infarctions, reduced heart rate variability (HRV), an increase in strokes, and a decrease in melatonin. Human pandemics have also been linked to periods of high or low sunspots (the areas of the sun that spawn CMEs). For example, Covid-19 started during a sunspot minimum. However, only a fraction of the population (10–15%) is affected by solar activity, and much of that boils down to one’s age, lifestyle, and overall health status. This peer-reviewed article is a fascinating read if you want to explore this topic further and read all the papers the researcher cites.
If that didn’t do it for you, it’s estimated a Carrington Event today would cost up to $2.6 trillion in North America alone, with up to 40 million people in the US being affected by extended power outages ranging from 16 days to 1–2 years. This study by Lloyd’s of London provides an excellent analysis of just how much damage could be done. For our European friends, this paper by the European Space Agency (ESA) puts the expected damage in Europe at around 15 billion Euros.
Fortunately for us, Solar Cycle 25 is expected to be fairly weak. So, hopefully, we’ll only experience beautiful Northern Lights without a Carrington Event.
And if we DO have a significant solar event, here are some startups working on this problem and the venture funds investing in them.
Venture Firms
- Airbus Ventures (the corporate venture arm of Aerobus Group) — founded in 2016, this firm invests in these verticals: low-carbon economy, mobility, advanced materials, electrification, security, manufacturing systems, computing, and sensing.
- Generation Space (subsidiary of Seraphim Space) — exclusively targets early and growth-stage SpaceTech companies. They also have an accelerator (Space Accelerator) that supports startups from pre-seed to Series A.
- New Science Ventures — founded in 2004, this venture firm invests in the Life Sciences and IT sectors. They focus on both early and late-stage companies and are headquartered in Connecticut.
Startups
- Mission Space — provides space weather data intelligence for space and ground-based businesses. The company has raised a total of $1.2M as of 2021. Investors include Amazon Web Services, Fit 4 Start, and Seraphim Space.
- Vorago Technologies — located in Austin, TX, this semiconductor company provides radiation-hardened components and extreme-temperature solutions for space, avionics, defense, and industrial applications. They last raised their Series D round in 2015 and are backed by New Science Ventures.
- mPower Technology — provides light and adaptable silicon solar cell solutions for space and terrestrial applications. Their DragonSCALES technology provides radiation protection and recovery that helps both in Space and on Earth. They most recently raised $5M in September 2023, and investors include Hemisphere Ventures, Cottonwood Technology Fund, One Ten Capital, Sun Mountain Capital, and the US Department of Defense.
Speaking of the Department of Defense, various government and research entities are also conducting their own missions. The ESA’s Lagrange mission aims to actively monitor solar activity to provide early warning of harmful space weather. It is set to launch in 2025. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association (NOAA) is also launching a satellite to improve forecasts and warnings of damaging solar activity. The Space Weather Follow-On (SWFO-L1) is set to launch this year.
That’s all for now. I’m in my abrupt ending era. Look down below for more pics of the Northern Lights.
Bye!
