A huge storm in space struck Earth exactly 150 years ago — and if a similar event happened today it would bring the world close to collapse.
On September 1, 1859, the British solar astronomer Richard Carrington raised the alarm when he noted something strange — “two patches of intensely bright and white light” — from a group of sunspots on the surface of the Sun. The amount of sunlight doubled from the solar flare for almost a minute — nothing like it has ever been seen since. And over eight days the most severe magnetic space storm recorded rocked the Earth.
A series of huge eruptions from the Sun sent blobs of highly charged hot gas shooting through space that smashed into the Earth. Normally our magnetic field protects us from solar storms, but in 1859 the planet’s defences were overwhelmed. Fantastic auroras blazed across much of the world, even in the Caribbean and Hawaii. Telegraph systems across Europe and North America collapsed as they short-circuited and set off fires. Magnetic compasses went haywire and magnetic sensors were driven off their scales.
The 1859 space storm was three times more powerful than anything recorded since. And if a similar intense storm happened today it would be catastrophic. Satellites would be knocked out and induced electrical currents on the ground would blow up electrical transformers and bring down national power grids.