Solar Storms | Can we survive another Carrington Event?
On September 1, 1859, astronomer Richard Carrington was observing a huge sunspot. Suddenly, a flash of intense white light burst from the sun's surface. He had become the first eye-witness of a major Coronal Mass Ejection or CME. And it was headed straight for earth.
2022-04-14 19:00:00 - The Why Files
Seventeen hours later, the night sky in North America lit up like the day. Aurora Borealis, typically only seen near the north pole, were visible as far south as Colombia. In the southern hemisphere, Aurora Australis were visible North of Brisbane.
A few hours later, on September 2, the most powerful solar storm ever recorded crashed into the Earth's atmosphere. Our magnetic field was immediately overpowered and created chaos around the world.
Nobody had ever seen anything like this before. This became known as the Carrington Event. At the time, scientists thought this was a unique phenomenon. It wasn't.
It's happened before, it's happened since and it will happen again. And when it does, it could be the worst natural disaster in human history.
Let's find out why.