The Carrington Event

August 28, 1859 - The most powerful solar storm in recorded history started on this day.

Astronomers Richard Carrington and Richard Hodgson couldn’t believe their eyes as they peered through their telescopes and witnessed an unusually bright solar flare shooting out of the sun.

Later that night, these coronal mass ejections (CMEs) started creating beautiful but worrisome auroras in places that usually don’t get those, like Cuba, Hawaii and parts of the Central America near the equator. The night skies were so bright, people were able to read their newspapers in their front yards at midnight.

The solar storm caused all kinds of issues for telegraph operators. People were getting zapped as sparks flew out of their telegraph keys.

It remains the largest geomagnetic storm in recorded history, and it’s used by space agencies as a worst-case-scenario benchmark as they monitor the sun to detect similar events in the future.

If something like the Carrington Event were to happen today, the damage and disruption to our electrical infrastructure would be unfathomable. GPS, power grids, phone and wireless networks would experience major disruptions with dire consequences.

Let’s hope that never happens.