160 Years Ago Today: The Carrington Event

Richard Carrington and his drawing of sunspots that unleashed 1859's solar superstorm.

It was exactly 160 years ago today that Earth's magnetic field was left shuddering like it had never done before in all of recorded history. Why? It was 160 years ago today that Earth was in the waning phases of the mother of all solar superstorms, known as the Carrington Event after the astronomer who witnessed the initial solar outburst as it happened, Richard Carrington.

The Sun was soon to hit maximum for the 10^th solar cycle come early 1860. However, in late August, 1859, the Sun suddenly filled up with dark sunspots and aurora started to be sighted at unusually low latitudes. On August 29, aurora were sighted in Queensland, Australia, a rarity. Then, just before noon on September 1, another flare was observed simultaneously by two astronomers named Richard: Carrington, whose name is now immortalized in history, and Hogsdon, whose name is lost to obscurity.

Reaching Earth in an amazingly fast 17 hours (the widely agreed upon consensus was that the flare of August 29 cleared the path of solar wind and plasma for the flare of September 1), the coronal mass ejection slammed into the Earth's upper atmosphere as no storm had ever done in all of recorded history.The problem with solar superstorms is that they do not harm a living and no one would have even known that they had existed in the age before electronics. There could have been hundreds of storms of Carrington magnitude or even stronger throughout Earth's history but, until we developed electronic technology, we had no way of knowing that they even existed. However, come 1859 and the dawn of the electronic age, there would be consequences.

How strong was the Carrington Event? The solar storm was so strong that telegraph lines, the only electronics of the time, started smoking and/or caught fire. Receivers shocked operators and even emitted sparks. Receivers not destroyed and hooked up to telegraph lines that were not destroyed were able to, for a brief time, transmit without batteries. The first transatlantic cable, laid from the United States to England only a year before, was destroyed. Aurora were sighted as far South as Hawaii, Central America, and sub-Saharan Africa. The aurora were so bright that newspapers could easily be read by their light and, at onset, many people got up thinking that dawn was near. Many witnesses described the light of the aurora as being brighter than the Full Moon.

While it was alone in strength, the Carrington Event is not an isolated event as several strong solar storms have hit Earth since then.

In 1921, Earth was impacted by another large solar storm. Like during the Carrington event, telegraph service suffered as fuses blew and equipment was damaged, resulting in a total near-cessation of telegraph service, including that carried by undersea cables.

In 1989, the strongest solar storm of the Space Age (and the strongest anyone reading this can remember) took place over Canada and resulted in a total blackout for much of the Quebec province for nearly 12 hours. As strong as that storm was at a rating of X15, it was estimated (solar flares couldn't be measured at the time) to be far weaker than the storm of 1921 and nowhere near as strong as the Carrington Event, which has been estimated to be anywhere between X45 and X60).

Fortunately for us, the Carrington Event arrived before our development of nationwide power grids, which could have been completely wiped out by such an event today, which could very well bring about the collapse of modern civilization itself.

Feeling like you can rest easy? Well, don't. In 2012, a solar flare with a power estimated to be similar to that of the Carrington Event missed Earth by about a week. The good news is that the government finally looks to be taking some meaningful action towards mitigating the now well-known risk posed by such solar superstorms.

Until our power grid is finally hardened and our current way of life (perhaps our very lives themselves) protected, we can only hope that our 160 year run of good luck continues.

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